Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Romans 3:23-25 | Date: May 30, 2021 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Jesus. But notice now the thinking that Paul is giving us. Again, it’s a very compressed statement. We need to see the logic of it, how the atonement works. Verse 24: “justified by his grace as a gift.” Now that’s almost a scandalous idea. Here we are guilty before God. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all fallen short of the glory of God. We’re guilty, and yet we’re justified. Remember? Declared righteous. We’ll look at that one in a few weeks. To justify means to declare righteous. So sinners justified—that’s a scandalous idea. How can a righteous judge declare sinners to be righteous? But he says that here. We’ve all sinned, but we’re justified. How? By his grace as a gift. That is, freely. You don’t have to do anything.

Well, that’s even more scandalous. I didn’t do anything to make up the debt that I owed or to pay the price of my sin, and God just pronounces me righteous freely without any strings attached? That’s even more scandalous. Well, how can a righteous God do that? That’s the question Paul is asking here. He doesn’t say here we’re just justified by his grace as a gift. He says we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption or through the ransom that is in Christ Jesus.

The problem of our justification is our guilt, our sin; and Christ, he says, has ransomed us away from that guilt and sin so that God can justify us freely. He’s ransomed us from our guilt and from our sin. Well, how does Christ constitute a redemption? How does who he is and what he did effect a ransoming before God that would free us from our sin so that God could justify us? How does that work? That’s verse 25: “Whom God put forward as a propitiation in his blood.”

God redeemed us by putting forth his Son to die in our place, appeasing God’s wrath, thus redeeming us from our sin and our guilt, so that now God is free to justify us righteously. Sinners though we are, we were delivered from our sin through the ransoming work of Christ, who was a propitiation to God in his death. So we have here then Christ offered as the sinner’s substitute in their place, taking the wrath of God, appeasing God, therefore delivering us from the guilt and sin that left us condemned, and God then free to justify us righteously. We’re justified because we’re redeemed. We’re redeemed because Christ in our place propitiated God. Well, it’s a compressed statement, but that’s his reasoning here.

To Whom Was The Ransom Paid?

And this, by the way, answers a question that you’ve probably not asked, but many have over the centuries, and especially in the early centuries of the church: To whom was the ransom paid? Now, in the early centuries of the church, there was a strong answer that was given. The ransom was paid to Satan. He had to be bought off. He had claims on us, and God had to buy him off. Well, that answer makes an important point, and we will talk about it later, but it’s not that God owed Satan anything. We’ll look at that under another topic, Christus Victor. Satan didn’t have to be bought out; he had to be defeated, and we’ll look at that later in the series.

But here what he tells us in verse 25 is that the ransom was paid to God. God paid the ransom to God. God put forth his Son to redeem us by being a propitiation for us to satisfy the demands of his own justice against us. Our problem being saved is God himself—his justice in condemning us. God now can release us from that condemnation and justify us because his justice has been satisfied through the propitiatory work of Christ by which we are redeemed.

That’s a lot. That’s what’s compressed into this statement of verses 24 and 25. We are justified or accepted before God because we are redeemed. We were redeemed because Christ offered himself in our place, propitiating God’s wrath. The glory, the wonder of it is that God the judge, the offended party, himself paid the penalty to purchase our release from guilt and sin.

Redeemed From The Curse Of The Law

Well, I wanted to reemphasize this in Romans chapter 3. We’ll probably be back here again. But I want you to see now how Paul says the same thing in Galatians, but from an opposite standpoint. If in Romans 3 he’s telling us we’re redeemed or delivered through Christ’s blood so that we can be justified, here in Galatians chapter 3 he tells us we’re redeemed from condemnation, which is just the flip side of justification. If we’re justified, we’re not condemned. If we’re not condemned, we’re justified. Here Paul deals with it from that standpoint in Galatians chapter 3.

Now in the book of Galatians, or this letter to the Galatians, Paul is dealing with a heresy that has come into the church, saying that people, in order to be saved, had to have a certain Jewishness about them. They had to be circumcised and keep the law, and the law became a big issue, and Paul has to fight that off, and he does that in an extensive way. It’s one sustained polemic against the Judaizers in the churches of Galatia.

We come to verse 10 of chapter 3. We come to the heart of what Paul’s argument is with regard to how we are justified. Galatians 3, beginning with verse 10: “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.'” Now it’s evident that no one is justified before God by the law for—and here he quotes the Old Testament—”The righteous shall live by faith.” That’s Habakkuk. But the law is not of faith; rather, “The one who does them shall live by them.” So here he comes to the conclusion, verse 13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.'”

Now in verse 10, Paul simply makes the point that those who depend on the law, depend on works to be accepted before God, are under a curse. Now there’s something of an elliptical statement in verse 10. There’s a presupposition smuggled in. It’s not stated explicitly. Look at verse 10 again: “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not abide in all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.'” What’s the point? Well, the underlying presupposition there is you’ve not done everything that is written in the law to do it. You’ve not kept it well enough. So anyone who relies on the law is under a curse. Why? Because the demands are too high and you haven’t kept it. So if you want to approach God on the basis of works, you’re lost. You haven’t done well enough. Because, verse 10b, the law demands more than you’ve done.

So, verses 11 and 12, the law will never get you there. It’s the wrong approach. Works is one way, faith is another. And then verse 13 comes the question: How then shall we escape? If we’re guilty, we’re unable to do well enough, we have not done well enough, we can’t make it up, how in the world then can we escape the curse of God against our sin? Answer, verse 13: “Christ redeemed us.” There’s our word: “redeemed us from the curse of the law.” He’s delivered us from the curse of the law, how? “By becoming a curse for us.” There’s our idea of substitution again: “For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.'”

Notice again, how is it that Christ has redeemed us? What was the price that was paid? Answer: he became a curse for us. Now, as I say, the idea is of substitution here, but notice the language. He doesn’t just say he takes our curse. The language is more graphic than that: “He became a curse for us.” Christ, the Son of God, come to become a curse for us. It’s very close to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21: Christ was made sin for us. Our sin given to him; he takes the sin, and in turn the righteousness that he has comes to us, and there is this great exchange.

Not far behind this is the idea of the sacrificial system in the Old Testament. We offer the sacrificial lamb. There was a transfer of liabilities—laying your hand on the animal, confessing sin. There’s a transfer of liabilities to the animal. The animal then takes the role of the victim. It is slaughtered and bears the penalty of the sin due to the one who offered it. Jesus here in Galatians 3:13 takes the role of the sacrificial animal. He bears the curse. He stands in our place, and by becoming a curse for us, we are delivered from the curse.

Now notice verse 13 again. I point this out, I think, every time I come to this verse. It’s, I think, significantly helpful in our understanding of the gospel and understanding how Paul came to understand the gospel. Paul was the great opponent of the gospel of Christ. He understood it. He understood the claims of Christ. He hated it. He opposed it. And notice what he says in verse 13b, “For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.'” There’s Paul’s reasoning. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written—and here he quotes from Deuteronomy 21—”Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

Now in the context in Deuteronomy 21, a criminal was discovered, he was convicted, he’s sentenced to be stoned, and after he is stoned, he is hanged on a tree to show that he is under a curse. And the statement of Deuteronomy 21: “Cursed is everyone who’s hanged on a tree.” It’s showing that he’s under God’s curse for the crime that he has committed. In fact, the term here, “the tree,” especially “hanged on a tree,” becomes something of a technical term for “cursed of God.” So that’s what Deuteronomy, that’s what the law of God had said: that anyone hanged on a tree was cursed of God.

You can just easily imagine Saul, before he became the apostle, persecuting the church—you can just imagine him going around to the synagogues preaching against this new faith. “Christ, the Messiah, crucified? That is not only ridiculous, it’s blasphemous.” And you can just hear Saul in the synagogues taking his text in Deuteronomy 21: “Anyone hanging on a tree is cursed of God.” And they are saying that Christ, that our Messiah, was cursed of God? Well, it’s not only ridiculous, it’s blasphemous. You can just hear him preaching that. And he’s got biblical proof: Jesus was cursed; he can’t be the Messiah.

And that one little prepositional phrase made all the difference: He was cursed for us. And I think on the Damascus Road, Paul comes to this staggering realization: “Oh my. Yes, Jesus was cursed of God, but he was cursed for us.” By becoming a curse for us, he redeemed us out from under that curse so that we go free. From what then are we redeemed? We’re redeemed from God’s condemning curse. We’re pardoned. We’re delivered by the payment of the ransom price. And that ransom price is a substitutional curse-bearing by the Lord Jesus. Our sin brought a curse. We escaped that curse. God can’t just let it go, though. He keeps honest books. The curse fell instead on the Lord Jesus, and by that we are redeemed.

I have time to consider this only for a second, but you have to consider for a moment the implications of that with regard not only to the security of the believer, but to the matter of assurance of salvation. It is in the heart of every one of us. We know it intuitively. But after death, accounts are going to be settled. And that’s a fearsome thing. But for the Christian, there is this knowledge: Christ has borne the curse for us. And we can face death with the assurance that we are accepted because the curse has been exhausted. And by that, we have been ransomed to God away from condemnation.

Redemption Through His Blood

Look over a few pages at Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1. It’s a closely related idea here. Here Paul uses the redemption language again in verse 7: “In whom we have redemption through his blood.” As you know, in this passage Paul is itemizing the great blessings of what it is to be in Christ. Blessings from God the Father, from God the Son, and finally, at the end of the passage, verses 13 and 14, blessings from God the Spirit. And here in verse 7, he’s speaking of the blessings we have in Christ, “in whom we have redemption through his blood.”

Now here we have again the precise language of ransoming. We have a ransom. We were ransomed by his blood. What was the ransom price? His blood, paying the ransom price of our redemption. And notice how here he connects and really almost identifies the idea of redemption with forgiveness: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Well, we’re back to what we saw last week: the commercial category. This is accounting imagery. You’ve seen it several times in your Bible reading that there’s this metaphor of God keeping the books. And in Judgment Day, the books are opened, keeping a record of our sin and to see what is owed. Part of the importance of that is measuring exactly the degree of punishment that is deserved by the sinner in judgment, and so on.

But it’s this accounting category. Sin has accumulated a debt. We have robbed God, as it were, of his glory and his majesty. We’ve robbed him of obedience that is due him, and we have to pay it back. The problem is we can’t pay it back. The debt is too high. And what he tells us here is we’ve been redeemed from that debt. We’ve been forgiven from that debt. The debt is canceled. Sins have been remitted. We’re released from the debt. It’s that commercial accounting category. It’s like the psalmist in Psalm 32 where he says, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity.” That is, my debt isn’t counted against me.

We have the same thing in Colossians. We saw this several weeks ago in Colossians chapter 2, verse 14, where Paul says Christ has “canceled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” It’s graphic imagery, accounting imagery—this record of debts that stood against us, a written notice of what you owe to God, and that has been canceled. And Paul says in Colossians chapter 2, how is it canceled? It was nailed to his cross. Graphic imagery, isn’t it? That IOU, that debt, was nailed to Christ’s cross, and in his death that debt was paid.

Now that’s what Paul says here in Ephesians chapter 1. On what ground are we forgiven? Verse 7 again: “In whom we have ransoming through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.” We are forgiven, then, not just by divine fiat. God hasn’t just declared it, that we’re forgiven. God keeps honest books. We’re forgiven because the debt was paid by our substitute, which constituted the ransoming price that brought our freedom. Ransomed and so forgiven. So we’re redeemed from the curse, we’re redeemed from our indebtedness to God, and we’re forgiven.

Ransom Us From All Lawlessness

Now I want to move on from that and look at Titus chapter 2, and I want you to see that redemption has implications not just regarding our legal standing, or in this forensic sense, our legal standing before God the Judge, but redemption has implications that affect life and living here and now. Titus chapter 2, we have this wonderful passage beginning in verse 1, where Paul is telling us how to live—the obligations of Christian living. What does it look like to be a faithful Christian?

And so in verse 1, he says, “teach what accords with sound doctrine.” And what accords with sound doctrine, you’ll find in verses 2 and following, is right behavior. That’s what accords with sound doctrine. So, verse 2: older men to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in the faith, in love and steadfastness. Verse 3: older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good. Verses 4 and 5 have to do with young women, but the older women are to train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, to be pure, working at home, kind, submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Verse 6: young men, likewise urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Verses 7 and 8: Titus, you too, show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, sound speech that cannot be condemned so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Verses 9 and 10: bondservants, this is how you behave—are to be submissive to your own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God.

Notice that. Right living adorns the doctrine of God. How is that? What’s the connection there? How does right living adorn the doctrine of God? Well, we’ve said it many times that the gospel promises not only justification and acceptance before God, it promises transformation, right? Verse 11, for—he’s explaining here, by your right living you adorn the doctrine of God our Savior—”for the grace of God has appeared.” Isn’t that an interesting statement? Christ has come. The Savior, the Redeemer has come. But he calls it here: “the grace of God appeared, bringing salvation for all,” doing what? “Training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,” verse 14, “who gave himself for us to ransom us from all lawlessness, and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for good works.”

Again here, our rescue, deliverance is spoken of in terms of the ransom that was paid. But the emphasis here is on the moral entailments of our redemption. Do you see that? “To ransom us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” He has given himself a ransom to ransom us from all lawlessness. Now the underlying assumption in all of this is that he redeemed us not only from sin’s curse, but he has redeemed us from sin’s enslavement. Here were people who were under God’s curse, but not only under God’s curse, they were enslaved to sin, and the whole direction of their lives was marked by sin.

But one entailment of Christ’s work is that he has liberated us through his ransoming death, liberated us from sin’s grip, so that now we don’t walk in lawlessness, but live unto God. He’s redeemed us not only from the penalty of sin, but he’s redeemed us from the power of sin and freed us to live unto God. This is not far from what we have in Romans chapter 6, where the apostle there speaks of two different masters. There’s the master of sin that we lived under and we served with all of our body parts; we served sin. We walked in sin, we did sin—that’s the direction of our lives. Until Christ came and, now risen with Christ, we have a new master. And we’re able to live now unto him. Sin’s grip has been broken.

That’s the point here in Titus chapter 2. He has bought us for himself to make us what he has created us to be, and he’s redeemed us from lawlessness. Redeemed not only from the penalty of sin, but redeemed from the power of sin itself. Ultimately—and 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 30 speaks of it this way—our redemption will be complete, redeemed finally from the very presence of sin.

I’ll look at another passage. We’ll look at a couple of more here. 1 Peter chapter 1. I want you to see that Paul is careful, and Peter here, the apostles are careful to emphasize that we’re not just redeemed from sin’s curse, but redeemed to God and from sin’s enslavement so that now we may live for him. 1 Peter 1, verses 14 and following, again we have here the responsibilities of godly living: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’ And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially to each one his deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.”

And now verse 18: Why do we do all of that? “Because you know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” You’re ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers. Here we’re delivered by ransom, the ransom price is the blood of Christ, and we’re ransomed from a life of sin, ransomed to a life of holiness. The Lord Jesus did not come simply to redeem us from hell. He came to change us, and His redemptive work rescues us from the grip of sin, and He says, by the deliverance brought in His blood, we are freed from sin to live unto Him.

One more in this connection, and I want you to see it in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. 1 Corinthians chapter 6. On all of these, I just have to—I’ll give you the context in brief and then narrow it to the point here. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is dealing with some problem of immorality of some in the congregation. There has been fornication, evidently some adultery. Paul is dealing with that, and he says in 1 Corinthians 6 verses 19 and 20: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.” Here, “bought with a price”—our language of the marketplace—purchased. You’re purchased with a price. That price, of course, being the death of Christ.

So here he’s dealing with the personal and the practical ramifications of redemption. If Christ has bought us, then we’re not our own. That’s what he says. You are not your own. You’ve been bought with a price. If he has bought us, we don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to him. We are his property now. And that, Paul says, has massive implications with regards to our behavior. And verse 20 tells us that: “So glorify God with your body.” And you can just about sense the passion in Paul’s words as he writes this. He’s just aghast! What? You’re doing what? Don’t you know you’re not your own? You’ve been bought by Christ. You belong to him now. Glorify God with your body. You have been bought out from sin’s enslavement. You’ve been bought to Jesus Christ. Live for him. Live in keeping with what you are. In other words, all of this redeeming idea is not just theoretical. We’ve been bought from sin and we’ve been bought and redeemed unto Jesus Christ. We’re under new ownership.

Well, we don’t have time to pursue it, but you might, those who are taking notes, mark down Colossians chapter 1 and verses 13 and 14. He doesn’t use the exact redemption language there or ransoming language, but there he speaks of our deliverance as a transferring out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son. And again, the idea there is not just redeemed from sin’s curse but redeemed from Satan himself, redeemed from his enslavement, no longer bound by him and bound to sin, but freed from Satan and sin to live unto Christ, because now we belong to him.

Well, there then is the doctrine of redemption. Christ has ransomed us from the curse. He has stepped into our place. He has become the curse for us. He’s borne our condemnation. That was the ransom price of our freedom. And so he’s delivered us from it. And with the ransom paid, we go free, pardoned judicially, forgiven, and justified. But Christ has not just redeemed us from sin in this legal sense only. He’s redeemed us from sin in a way that affects the way we live. We are no longer bound to sin. It no longer has that grip on us that it used to have. Satan himself no longer holds us under his dominion. Christ’s redeeming work has bought us out from all of that and delivered us from sin and from Satan himself and freed us from that old way of life. And with sin’s grip broken, we are free now to live unto God.

So by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Romans 3:24—by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, we’re free. We’re free from the law. The law can pronounce no condemnation on us now. We’re free from the curse. We cannot be cursed because Christ became a curse for us. We’re redeemed from all of our debts because Christ paid the debt in our place. We’re redeemed from Satan’s dominion because Christ has bought us unto himself and we’ve been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s Son. And we’ve been redeemed from sin itself. With its grip over us broken, it no longer rules over us, but we’re free to live unto Christ. We belong now to Christ, our Redeemer. We’re free in him. We’re free now to live unto him until one day we’ll be free from sin altogether. Amen. Let’s pray.