Turning the page…
Turning the page…
Glory · The Gospel
Nothing we can pay, and nothing anyone else can pay on our own merits, ransoms a soul: no man can redeem his brother or give God a ransom for him. The price was paid once, by Another, the precious blood of Christ, and forgiveness is received as a gift through faith, never accumulated through payments, penalties, or purchased merits.
https://glorystudy.com/questions/what-price-can-buy-forgiveness · Scripture quoted from the World English Bible
Psalm 49:5-15
As you read: The impossibility of paying for a soul, and the folly of trusting riches at death.
5Why should I fear in the days of evil, when iniquity at my heels surrounds me?
6Those who trust in their wealth, and boast in the multitude of their riches—
7none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give God a ransom for him.
8For the redemption of their life is costly, no payment is ever enough,
9That he should live on forever, that he should not see corruption.
10For he sees that wise men die; likewise the fool and the senseless perish, and leave their wealth to others.
11Their inward thought is that their houses will endure forever, and their dwelling places to all generations. They name their lands after themselves.
12But man, despite his riches, doesn’t endure. He is like the animals that perish.
13This is the destiny of those who are foolish, and of those who approve their sayings. Selah.
14They are appointed as a flock for Sheol. Death shall be their shepherd. The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning. Their beauty shall decay in Sheol, far from their mansion.
15But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. Selah.
Isaiah 53
As you read: Where the impossible payment actually happened: pierced for our transgressions.
1Who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?
2For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of suffering, and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face; and we didn’t respect him.
4Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted.
5But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed.
6All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he didn’t open his mouth. As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is mute, so he didn’t open his mouth.
8He was taken away by oppression and judgment; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living and stricken for the disobedience of my people?
9They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
10Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of Yahweh shall prosper in his hand.
11After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied. My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their iniquities.
12Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the plunder with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
1 Peter 1:13-21
As you read: What redeemed you: perishable currency versus the precious blood of Christ.
13Therefore prepare your minds for action, be sober and set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ—
14as children of obedience, not conforming yourselves according to your former lusts as in your ignorance,
15but just as he who called you is holy, you yourselves also be holy in all of your behavior;
16because it is written, “You shall be holy; for I am holy.”
17If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as foreigners here in reverent fear:
18knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers,
19but with precious blood, as of a faultless and pure lamb, the blood of Christ;
20who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of times for your sake,
21who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.
Colossians 2:6-15
As you read: God cancels the handwritten certificate of debt Himself; completeness is found in Christ.
6As therefore you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, walk in him,
7rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, even as you were taught, abounding in it in thanksgiving.
8Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the world, and not after Christ.
9For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,
10and in him you are made full, who is the head of all principality and power;
11in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ;
12having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
13You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,
14wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;
15having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
Psalm 49 states the economics flatly: none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give God a ransom for him, for the redemption of their life is costly, no payment is ever enough. Micah felt the same weight when he imagined escalating payments: thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil, even his firstborn for his transgression. The case is beyond every creature's purse, and that is the point: what salvation costs, only God can pay.
“none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give God a ransom for him. For the redemption of their life is costly, no payment is ever enough, That he should live on forever, that he should not see corruption.”Psalm 49:7-9
“How shall I come before Yahweh, and bow myself before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will Yahweh be pleased with thousands of rams? With tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my disobedience? The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”Micah 6:6-7
“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus;”Romans 3:23-24
Into that impossibility walks Isaiah's Servant: 'He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him.' John announces Him at the Jordan: behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The ransom for souls is not extracted from men; it was supplied by God, from God.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Isaiah 53:5-6
“The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”John 1:29
“For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”2 Corinthians 5:21
Peter prices it exactly: redeemed 'not with corruptible things, with silver or gold,' but 'with precious blood, as of a faultless and pure lamb, the blood of Christ.' If silver and gold could not purchase deliverance, no treasury of accumulated wealth or merit can either; the currency of redemption is one kind, spent once, at Calvary.
“knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a faultless and pure lamb, the blood of Christ;”1 Peter 1:18-19
“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,”Ephesians 1:7
“nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption.”Hebrews 9:12
Paul describes forgiveness as a legal cancellation God performed Himself: He wiped out 'the handwriting in ordinances which was against us,' took it out of the way, and nailed it to the cross. Who shall bring a charge against God's chosen ones? It is God who justifies. A debt God declares cancelled cannot still be collected, and a record God nailed to the cross cannot be reissued.
“You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us; and he has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross;”Colossians 2:13-14
“Who could bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, yes rather, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.”Romans 8:33-34
“and in him you are made full, who is the head of all principality and power;”Colossians 2:10
Because the payment is complete outside of us, it can only be received, not contributed to: 'by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast.' To him who works, the reward is counted as debt; to him who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Salvation excludes boasting precisely because it excludes payment.
“for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast.”Ephesians 2:8-9
“Now to him who works, the reward is not counted as grace, but as something owed. But to him who doesn’t work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.”Romans 4:4-5
“not by works of righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,”Titus 3:5