When it comes to salvation, the way one defines the problem will determine how he defines the solution. Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright reveals sin's "devastatingly wide range of effects."
"Broadly the Old Testament portrays our predicament in terms of the following:
1. A relationship that has been broken: the relational aspect.
2. The disturbance of shalom: the social aspect.
3. Rebellion against authority: the covenantal aspect.
4. Guilt that necessitates punishment: the legal aspect.
5. Uncleanness and pollution: the ritual aspect.
6. Shame and disgrace on oneself and/or on God: the emotional aspect.
7. An accumulating burden: the historical aspect.
8. Death: the final aspect.
"Sin, then, in its broad Old Testament perspective, has a devastatingly wide range of effects. It breaks our relationship with God, one another and the earth; it disturbs our peace; it makes us rebels against God's authority; it makes us guilty in God's court; it makes us dirty in God's presence; it brings shame on ourselves and others; it blights us from the past and already poisons the future; it ultimately leads us to destruction and death."
Christopher Wright. “Atonement in the Old Testament.” In The Atonement Debate, edited by Derek Tidball, David Hilborn, and Justin Thacker, 69–82 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008) pgs. 69–71.
"The Christian church stands or falls by whether it proclaims and lives by the Gospel of the liberating grace of God, or whether its life degenerates into some form of self-salvation. For that reason, the doctrine of the atonement must continue to be at the heart of Christian theology, and the metaphor of the justice of God at the heart of the doctrine of the atonement, if Christianity's orientation to the action of God in re-establishing free human life is to be maintained and articulated."
Colin Gunton. The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition (London: T&T Clark, 1988), p. 100-1.
"Charis [grace] always demands the answer of eucharistia [gratitude]. Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning. Not by virtue of any necessity of the concepts as such. But we are speaking of the grace of the God who is God for man, and of the gratitude of man as his response to this grace."
"From the New Testament point of view, the Sacraments contain the gospel in brief; they contain it in inseparable connection with the death of Jesus; and as long as they hold their place in the Church the saving significance of that death has a witness which it will not be easy to dispute."
James Denney. The Death of Christ: Its Place and Interpretation in the New Testament (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1904) p. 85.
"the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited." (Surprised by Joy, 207)
He applies this logic to reading, defending the practice of reading old books.
"There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books.... Now this seems topsy-turvy. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.... A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light.... It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.... The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books." ("Introduction" in On the Incarnation by Athanasisus, 3-5)
Nate Robinson wears his faith on his sleeve, literally. The 5'9" two-time NBA slam dunk champion recently talked about some of his favorite tattoos.
Most of them have to do with God. I'm really religious. I have FROG — Fully Rely On God; PUSH — Pray Until Something Happens; JUMP — Jesus Understands My Pain. On the back of my neck I've got TNTL — Trust N The Lord. I got another one that says DOG — Depend On God. GAME TIME on my leg right here means God Answers Me Every Time.
Christopher Wright laments the fact that most Christians start the New Testament with Matt 1:18, the birth of Jesus. What they miss, or at least quickly skim, is the genealogy of Jesus. This, according to Wright, is essential, for it presents Jesus as a man with a story.
“What Matthew is saying to us by beginning in this way is that we will only understand Jesus properly if we see him in the light of this story which he completes and brings to its climax. So when we turn the page from the Old to the New Testament, we find a link between the two which is more important than the attention we usually give it. It is a central historical interface binding together the two great acts of God’s drama of salvation. The Old Testament tells the story which Jesus completes.”
Christopher J. H. Wright. Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995) pg. 2.
"For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that 'nothing happens' when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand."
C. S. Lewis, “Introduction.” In On the Incarnation, by Athanasius, 3–10. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 8.
In popular and scholarly worlds the word "redemption" is most commonly used broadly as a general word for salvation. When we say "creation and redemption," "redemption history," or "Christ the Redeemer," we could just as easily plug in "salvation" or "savior" and it wouldn't change what we're talking about. Although there may be a place for this, the vague usage of the term has unfortunately led to the disregard of its actual unique meaning. While many know that redemption has something to do with being freed or delivered (usually from being a slave or a prisoner of war), Leon Morris demonstrated long ago that this word has an even richer meaning than this. Below, I've outlined Morris' 54 page word study on redemption from his book The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, but the gist of his research is this:
Redemption means not only deliverance in general, but more specifically, deliverance by payment of a ransom. Redemption, therefore, focuses not only on that which one is delivered from (slavery) or for (freedom), but the very means by which this was accomplished, the ransom-price. "Redemption terminology is concerned with the price-paying method of release.”
Leon Morris. The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. Third Revised Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965) pgs. 11-64.
·Introduction:“Redemption”: General or Precise Meaning?
o“Redemption is a term which is employed very loosely in much modern theological writing…. This wide use of the term ‘redemption’ is a modern development….. As we shall see, it does not mean deliverance in general, but a particular kind of deliverance” (11).
§“The basic word in the word-group is lu/tron, ‘ransom’.This word is derived from lu/w, a verb with the general meaning of ‘to loose’” (11). “It’s meaning [lu/tron] accordingly is ‘payment for loosing’, ‘ransom price’. From lu/tron a complete new word-group developed…. It is important to realize that it is this idea of payment as the basis of release which is the reason for the existence of the whole word-group.Other words were available for to denote simple release…. Redemption terminology is concerned with the price-paying method of release” (12-13)
olu/trow - to redeem
§“The derivative verb lu/trow usually means in the active ‘to release on receipt of ransom’, or possibly ‘to hold to ransom’.In the middle the sense is rather ‘to secure release by payment of ransom’, i.e. ‘to redeem’.The meaning at bottom is the giving of a price in exchange, often for that which was one’s own and which has somehow found its way into someone else’s possession” (16).
oaÓpolu/trwsiß - redemption by ransom price
§“In view of the frequent use aÓpolu/trwsiß of in the New Testament it is necessary to take notice of its use in non-biblical literature…. The word has a clear and consistent meaning.In every passage, without exception, there is the payment of a ransom price to secure the desired release” (17-18).
·The Jewish/Hebrew Background
§There are three primary Hebrew words that translate in the LXX to the lu/tronword group.“lu/trow translates in the main two Hebrew verbs, g’l (45 times) and pdh (42 times).No other root is represented more than four or five times.lu/tron introduces another Hebrew root, since it translates kopher on six occasions”(19).
olAaÎ…g
§“The basic idea in this word-group has to do with family relationship”…. Thus in the Old Testament use of the word we find two distinct ideas.The primary thought is the general one of family obligation, and arising out of this is the narrower concept of the payment of price, of redemption” (19-20).“There are some very important passages wherein Yahweh is the subject of the verb g’l. In these we are to think of God as the great Kinsman of His people [Exodus and New Exodus]”(21).
oh∂dDÚp
§“The ground meaning of this root is undoubtedly that of ‘ransom by the payment of a price’, indicating something in the nature of a commercial transaction… [The] idea of a substitute is basic to pdh”(22-23).The verb is used to describe the Exodus, but rarely of the New Exodus.
orRpO;k
§“The noun kopher means a ransom price…. In its biblical usage it refers to the sum paid to redeem a forfeited life”(24).“[T]he thought of substitution is plain” (26).
oConclusion
§“The investigation of the ideas conveyed by the three main word-groups which the lu/tron words translate in the LXX shows that redemption consistently signifies deliverance by payment of a price.There may be other ideas, like that of family obligation in g’l, or the element of grace in pdh, but as a stubborn substratum in every case there is the basic price-paying conception” (26).
·Redemption in Rabbinic Writings
o“All three Hebrew roots that we have seen employed in the Old Testament to express the idea of redemption are employed in much the same way in the Rabbinic literature” (27).
·The lu/tron Word-Group in the New Testament
olu/tron
§2x (Mark 10:45; Matt 20:28)
§“We have seen that lu/tron in the LXX consistently denotes the payment of a ransom price substitutionary in character…”(33) – this is the plain meaning of Mark 10:45.
olu/trow
§3x (Luke 24:21; Titus 2:14; 1 Pet 1:18)
§To redeem by substitutionary ransom price
olu/trwsiß
§3x (Lk 1:68; 2:38; Heb 9:12)
§To redeem by ransom price, with emphasis on the cost of redemption.
oaÓpolu/trwsiß
§10x (Luke 21:28; Rom 3:24; 8:23; 1 Cor 1:30; Eph 1:7, 14; 4:30; Col 1:14; Heb 9:15; 11:35). This is the “typical term for redemption” in the NT, where “it occurs ten times as against nine times for all the other words from the same root put together” (41).
§Deliverance by ransom payment, with “‘ransoming’ rather than ‘deliverance’ to be the essential meaning of the word”(41).
oaÓnti÷lutron
§1x (1 Tim 2:6)
§“In meaning it does not seem to differ greatly from the simple lu/tron, but the preposition emphasizes the thought of substitution; it is a ‘substitute-ransom’ that is signified”(51).
oConclusion
§“The position then appears to be that the words associated with lutron consistently express the ransom idea…. They did not intend ransom to be taken as a full and sufficient statement of what the atonement was and did, but as far as it goes it gives a picture of one aspect of that great work”(52-53).
·Theological Conclusion: Redemption Entails…
o“From the foregoing examination then we see that where the redemption category is employed there are three aspects of the process of atonement especially in view”(61).
§“The state of sin out of which man is to be redeemed”
“The theme of eating and drinking in the presence of God is promised from Genesis to Revelation. Instead of waiting for their host to give them the fruit from the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve wanted their Happy Meal here and ordered from their own menu.” (232)
"God is at work, gathering a people for his feast in a fast-food world.... While our consumer culture offers instant gratification in drive-thru spiritualities, the gospel seats us at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the Triune God serves us with his heavenly gifts." (12)
“The theme of eating and drinking in the presence of God is promised from Genesis to Revelation. Instead of waiting for their host to give them the fruit from the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve wanted their Happy Meal here and ordered from their own menu.” (232)