Well, the gospel of Jesus Christ is of first importance, Paul tells us. So few things are more important than rehearsing the glories of Calvary over and over again. And that leads us to today's question from a regular listener to the podcast named Frank. Pastor John, hello, and thank you for investing so much time and thought into this podcast over the years.

I'm a regular listener, and my question for you is about Jesus who, quote, "gave himself as a ransom for all," 1 Timothy 2.6. But who did Jesus pay the ransom to? Is he making the payment to Satan to free us from Satan's captivity, or is he giving his payment to God to free us from our penalty?

So does the New Testament tell us anywhere who Jesus's ransom paid? The New Testament, it seems to me, never says in just so many words that the ransom Jesus paid was paid to God. But there is a hint in the Old Testament, and I think the pictures of the death of Christ in the New Testament as a sacrifice made to God for the obtaining of a redemption, if not explicit, are implicit in that the payment was made by God to God.

But it's important here to remember that all these descriptions in the New Testament—redemption, justification, propitiation, reconciliation, and so on—all of these things are analogies taken over from human experience, some of them metaphors, and like all analogies, some aspects apply, some don't, and we have to ask in every case which ones do and which ones don't.

So, for example, it would be a terrible mistake, I think, to say that the use of the word "ransom," which Jesus did use about his own death, means that there's going to be an exchange of money between anybody and God. In fact, Peter went out of his way in chapter 1 to say that we are not ransomed by silver and gold.

So the best way to think about the image of ransoming, I think, is to let the actual biblical descriptions of the death of Christ flesh out for us what the analogy of a ransom means. So just a word about Satan, though. No way, no way is the death of Christ a negotiation with Satan or a payment to Satan.

When Christ meets the demonic forces in his ministry, they don't say, "Did you bring the money?" He commands, and they go. No negotiation. And when Paul describes what happened to Satan on the cross in Colossians 2:15, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to an open shame, triumphing over them in him.

So this is total defeat, not negotiation. So in my mind, there's no thought in the Bible about God paying the devil a ransom. So here's the clue I mentioned from the Old Testament about God being the recipient of a ransom. In Psalm 49.7, we read, "Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice." And then verse 15, "But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me." Now, I don't think this is a direct reference to the ransom of Christ, but rather a picture of how difficult it is to get people out of Sheol, who is laying claim on all these human beings like a kidnapper.

But it certainly is suggestive that if a ransom is to be involved in rescuing humans from death, it's not going to be unbiblical to talk about paying it to God. So when Jesus comes into the world, he says in Mark 10.45, "For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6.20, "You were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body." So here's why I think the ransom was paid by God to God, and in what sense it was a ransom.

And the key text, absolutely crucial, I think, is Romans 3.24 and 25. Here's what it says. "They are justified by his grace as a gift." That's what it means to be treated graciously, as a gift. "Through the redemption, the ransoming that is in Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood." In other words, a sacrificial offering made on the mercy seat to God to avert his wrath and restore man, what a ransom does, restore us to the rightful belonger, parent or God or whoever we've been kidnapped from, so to speak, to be received by faith.

So the picture is this. Man has fallen short, far short of the glory of God, has offended the glory of God, has besmirched and dishonored the glory of God, chapter 3, verse 23, and chapter 1, verse 23, "We have committed treason by exchanging the glory of God for images.

God in his holiness and wrath upholds the glory of his name by sentencing us in condemnation to eternal suffering in hell. But he's also a God of great mercy, and he prepared another way for his glory to be upheld in justice, namely," that's what Romans 3, 25 is about, "namely by sacrificing his son for those who believe instead of sending them to hell." And that sacrifice, Paul says, ransomed, redeemed people from the wrath of God.

Glorious gospel, from the wrath of God. Romans 5, 9, "Since we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." That's the big issue. That's the big problem in the universe, God's wrath. And by the shedding of blood, we have escaped the wrath of God.

The blood ransoms. It redeems from the wrath of God. So if I answer, "How did it do that? How did the payment actually work?" I would say that what was paid was the repair of God's dishonor. The repair of God's dishonored glory, because the death of Jesus, in giving up so much glory, out of love and honor to the Father, has repaired all that has been dishonored by the sins of God's people.

That's what's been paid. So in that sense, I think the ransom was paid by God, in Christ, to God, in sending his Son to die, to rescue us from God's wrath, because of the massive debt of glory that we owed to the Father and could never, ever pay. And the payment was not silver and gold, but the blood of Christ, exalting and restoring the glory of God.

Incredible. Amen and amen. Oh man, I don't think the gospel will make sense until we see the payment being exacted from God and paid to God. That's absolutely critical insight. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening and making the podcast part of your week. You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive, and even reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions that relate to the substitutionary work of our precious Savior, Jesus Christ.

A glorious theme for our minds and hearts to feed on. You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org. Forward slash AskPastorJohn. Well, we are going to close the week talking about how far Christians can go in supporting extrajudicial killings by its own government. Uh, this is a huge topic in America with police shootings, but this is also a very huge issue right now, uh, for Christians in the Philippines.

And, uh, John Piper and I will return on Friday to see how the Bible bears on this very controversial subject. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We'll see you next time.