To Whom Did Jesus Pay Our Ransom?
00:00:00.000 | Well, the gospel of Jesus Christ is of first importance, Paul tells us.
00:00:09.040 | So few things are more important than rehearsing the glories
00:00:12.640 | of Calvary over and over again.
00:00:15.120 | And that leads us to today's question from a regular listener
00:00:18.440 | to the podcast named Frank.
00:00:20.160 | Pastor John, hello, and thank you for investing so much time and thought
00:00:23.820 | into this podcast over the years.
00:00:26.200 | I'm a regular listener, and my question for you is about Jesus who, quote,
00:00:30.200 | "gave himself as a ransom for all," 1 Timothy 2.6.
00:00:34.400 | But who did Jesus pay the ransom to?
00:00:38.400 | Is he making the payment to Satan to free us from Satan's captivity, or is
00:00:43.880 | he giving his payment to God to free us from our penalty?
00:00:47.680 | So does the New Testament tell us anywhere who Jesus's ransom paid?
00:00:53.040 | The New Testament, it seems to me, never says in just so many words that the
00:00:59.080 | ransom Jesus paid was paid to God.
00:01:01.680 | But there is a hint in the Old Testament, and I think the pictures of the death of
00:01:09.560 | Christ in the New Testament as a sacrifice made to God for the obtaining of a
00:01:18.280 | redemption, if not explicit, are implicit in that the payment was made by God to God.
00:01:27.480 | But it's important here to remember that all these descriptions in the New
00:01:33.560 | Testament—redemption, justification, propitiation, reconciliation, and so on—all
00:01:43.600 | of these things are analogies taken over from human experience, some of them
00:01:48.720 | metaphors, and like all analogies, some aspects apply, some don't, and we have
00:01:55.480 | to ask in every case which ones do and which ones don't.
00:01:58.720 | So, for example, it would be a terrible mistake, I think, to say that the use of
00:02:03.880 | the word "ransom," which Jesus did use about his own death, means that there's
00:02:09.880 | going to be an exchange of money between anybody and God.
00:02:13.880 | In fact, Peter went out of his way in chapter 1 to say that we are not ransomed
00:02:19.960 | by silver and gold.
00:02:21.120 | So the best way to think about the image of ransoming, I think, is to let the
00:02:27.800 | actual biblical descriptions of the death of Christ flesh out for us what the
00:02:34.440 | analogy of a ransom means.
00:02:37.560 | So just a word about Satan, though.
00:02:39.640 | No way, no way is the death of Christ a negotiation with Satan or a payment to
00:02:49.080 | Satan.
00:02:49.600 | When Christ meets the demonic forces in his ministry, they don't say, "Did you
00:02:55.440 | bring the money?"
00:02:56.280 | He commands, and they go.
00:02:59.760 | No negotiation.
00:03:01.720 | And when Paul describes what happened to Satan on the cross in Colossians 2:15, he
00:03:08.560 | disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to an open shame, triumphing over
00:03:13.760 | them in him.
00:03:15.760 | So this is total defeat, not negotiation.
00:03:18.680 | So in my mind, there's no thought in the Bible about God paying the devil a
00:03:25.520 | ransom.
00:03:26.040 | So here's the clue I mentioned from the Old Testament about God being the
00:03:31.200 | recipient of a ransom.
00:03:32.840 | In Psalm 49.7, we read, "Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price
00:03:44.400 | of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice."
00:03:51.200 | And then verse 15, "But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he
00:03:58.280 | will receive me."
00:03:59.360 | Now, I don't think this is a direct reference to the ransom of Christ, but
00:04:06.320 | rather a picture of how difficult it is to get people out of Sheol, who is laying
00:04:12.480 | claim on all these human beings like a kidnapper.
00:04:16.280 | But it certainly is suggestive that if a ransom is to be involved in rescuing
00:04:23.240 | humans from death, it's not going to be unbiblical to talk about paying it to
00:04:29.120 | God.
00:04:29.640 | So when Jesus comes into the world, he says in Mark 10.45, "For even the Son of
00:04:38.000 | Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for
00:04:44.560 | many." And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6.20, "You were bought with a price, so
00:04:51.440 | glorify God in your body."
00:04:53.600 | So here's why I think the ransom was paid by God to God, and in what sense it
00:05:04.360 | was a ransom.
00:05:05.120 | And the key text, absolutely crucial, I think, is Romans 3.24 and 25.
00:05:10.960 | Here's what it says.
00:05:12.560 | "They are justified by his grace as a gift." That's what it means to be treated
00:05:19.120 | graciously, as a gift.
00:05:20.480 | "Through the redemption, the ransoming that is in Christ, whom God put forward as
00:05:35.080 | a propitiation by his blood." In other words, a sacrificial offering made on the
00:05:41.600 | mercy seat to God to avert his wrath and restore man, what a ransom does, restore
00:05:48.160 | us to the rightful belonger, parent or God or whoever we've been kidnapped from,
00:05:52.240 | so to speak, to be received by faith.
00:05:56.040 | So the picture is this.
00:05:57.400 | Man has fallen short, far short of the glory of God, has offended the glory of
00:06:04.800 | God, has besmirched and dishonored the glory of God, chapter 3, verse 23, and
00:06:09.840 | chapter 1, verse 23, "We have committed treason by exchanging the glory of God
00:06:16.040 | for images.
00:06:17.080 | God in his holiness and wrath upholds the glory of his name by sentencing us in
00:06:26.160 | condemnation to eternal suffering in hell.
00:06:30.720 | But he's also a God of great mercy, and he prepared another way for his glory to
00:06:40.560 | be upheld in justice, namely," that's what Romans 3, 25 is about, "namely by
00:06:48.160 | sacrificing his son for those who believe instead of sending them to hell." And that
00:06:54.920 | sacrifice, Paul says, ransomed, redeemed people from the wrath of God.
00:07:02.760 | Glorious gospel, from the wrath of God.
00:07:05.520 | Romans 5, 9, "Since we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we
00:07:13.720 | be saved by him from the wrath of God."
00:07:17.320 | That's the big issue.
00:07:18.600 | That's the big problem in the universe, God's wrath.
00:07:22.080 | And by the shedding of blood, we have escaped the wrath of God.
00:07:26.760 | The blood ransoms.
00:07:28.760 | It redeems from the wrath of God.
00:07:32.120 | So if I answer, "How did it do that?
00:07:36.400 | How did the payment actually work?"
00:07:41.120 | I would say that what was paid was the repair of God's dishonor.
00:07:49.400 | The repair of God's dishonored glory, because the death of Jesus, in giving up
00:07:56.520 | so much glory, out of love and honor to the Father, has repaired all that has
00:08:02.600 | been dishonored by the sins of God's people.
00:08:06.040 | That's what's been paid.
00:08:07.240 | So in that sense, I think the ransom was paid by God, in Christ, to God, in
00:08:18.440 | sending his Son to die, to rescue us from God's wrath, because of the massive
00:08:24.560 | debt of glory that we owed to the Father and could never, ever pay.
00:08:31.440 | And the payment was not silver and gold, but the blood of Christ, exalting
00:08:37.760 | and restoring the glory of God.
00:08:41.400 | Incredible.
00:08:42.880 | Amen and amen.
00:08:44.440 | Oh man, I don't think the gospel will make sense until we see the payment
00:08:48.480 | being exacted from God and paid to God.
00:08:51.000 | That's absolutely critical insight.
00:08:52.800 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:53.560 | And thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your week.
00:08:57.080 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive,
00:09:00.120 | and even reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions
00:09:03.240 | that relate to the substitutionary work of our precious Savior, Jesus Christ.
00:09:07.000 | A glorious theme for our minds and hearts to feed on.
00:09:10.400 | You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org.
00:09:14.160 | Forward slash AskPastorJohn.
00:09:16.360 | Well, we are going to close the week talking about how far Christians can go
00:09:21.200 | in supporting extrajudicial killings by its own government.
00:09:26.160 | Uh, this is a huge topic in America with police shootings, but this is also a very
00:09:31.280 | huge issue right now, uh, for Christians in the Philippines.
00:09:34.680 | And, uh, John Piper and I will return on Friday to see how the Bible bears
00:09:39.200 | on this very controversial subject.
00:09:41.040 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:09:42.680 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:09:45.080 | We'll see you next time.
00:09:46.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]