Did Jesus’ Death Have to Be a Gruesome Crucifixion?

Hey, Tim.

Hey, John Collins.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi.

We're doing a question and response episode.

Yes, we are.

We just finished the Redemption series.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

We, our past selves did.

Our past selves did.

And the present podcast just released those episodes.

We were just having a conversation, though.

That's right.

Maybe a peek behind the curtain.

Because our animation studio and everyone who works on resources for every theme study, they need a lot of time to build everything.

So we've had these conversations

a year ago?

Yeah, we had a hard time remembering quite how long ago it was just that long ago.

Yeah.

So what that means is that it was such a great refresher to come back.

to all of your questions that were being sent in over the last few weeks.

And it was fun to read through them all.

And also, I had to actually go back and re-listen to some of our conversations.

To remember.

To remember.

So thank you.

That's the peek behind the curtain.

So we just finished releasing the podcast episodes on redemption.

The video is coming out soon-ish.

The video is releasing this week.

It's wonderful.

Yeah.

So cool.

With a bunch of other resources.

that the scholar team puts together, our editorial team puts together,

all the wonderful people.

So it's all ready.

One thing about that I do remember, even though it was a year ago-ish, about these series of conversations on redemption in the story of the Bible is that

this topic and this theme in the Bible is one that I was part of why I assigned it to us was because I wanted to push for greater clarity,

deeper understanding for myself.

So

I think that happened.

Did you find some more clarity?

I think so, yeah.

And I think the video and the final episodes of the podcast kind of show where we achieved that.

And so a number of the questions that came in, as always, I read them all.

I look for repeated themes because we can't answer them all.

But a number of the questions relate to the issues that I feel like we ended in.

We ended in.

So, I'm excited to have a look at that.

And that's where I feel like it got a little messier.

Oh.

And by messy, I mean just more complex and more mystical and more nuanced,

textured.

Yeah.

Yes, I agree.

In In one sense, though, my memory is that it ended up feeling more simple.

Okay.

Great.

And with more

clarity.

So we're going to, I guess, redo the whole series right here in a Q ⁇ R episode by interacting with all of your thoughtful and insightful questions.

So with all that said, shall we dive in?

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's start with a question from David in Ontario, Canada.

Hi, John and Tim.

My name is David, and I live in Timmins, Ontario, Canada.

In my faith tradition, Jesus's death is often referred to as a payment for the penalty of sin.

How does this payment relate to redemption?

If there is no payment to the powers that hold humans as slaves, why does God demand a payment?

Thanks for your fantastic work.

Great question.

Just hitting the nail on the head, I think, for how many

people

experience the imagery imagery in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, of Jesus dying for our sins.

That's a very common phrase used by the apostles.

And then also the frequent use in Paul, Peter, the letters of the Hebrews, of Jesus' death as a redemption, a redemption payment.

And then a handful of places where Paul will talk about the wages of sin is death

or sin as a debt in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us.

Sin as a debt.

So you can take all those ideas and kind of wrap them together and make a story of sin is when we do wrong, then we're indebted to God.

Somebody has to pay the debt.

Somebody has to die because of the wages of sin is death.

So Jesus dies at the demand of God's justice

to pay back what humanity owes to God.

Yes.

That's a very common way.

That's how I was introduced.

That's how I was introduced.

And I think a reflection for me after doing the series with you was

that is a very straightforward explanation of Jesus' death.

Right.

It's kind of easy to understand.

It's true.

Right.

And it relates to our normal day-to-day experiences of failing in some way.

Now we owe somebody.

We owe someone.

They demand that we pay them back.

Maybe I can't pay them back.

Someone else pays them back for us.

And we're like, oh, that's probably happened to all of us in some way,

big or small, before.

So you

presented a big wrinkle in that, which from the very beginning, which was, in what way does God owe

death or the Satan anything?

Right.

Really?

So redemption language.

Yeah.

All the way back to the beginning of the series is about something that ought to be in my possession or in rightful possession by somebody has wrongfully gone out of their possession or maybe tragically.

And the reclaiming, the process of reclaiming, restoring that person or thing to rightful possession.

That's what the word redemption refers to in the Bible.

And often there is an item of value of exchange given.

Yeah, because redemption is a marketplace metaphor.

It's a metaphor that comes, yeah, from the economic world of buying and exchanging.

Yeah.

That's right.

So if you're going to use a marketplace metaphor to talk about the death of Jesus,

then you can tell this kind of straightforward story that we just told.

That's right.

It is possible to get that straightforward story out of a whole variety of passages in the New Testament.

But the question is, if you look at each of those passages in context, if you look at the roots of redemption language in the story of the Bible, does that story really accurately reflect

how Jesus would talk about it, how Paul talks about it?

And I think what we discovered, what I tried to point out, is that it doesn't.

It actually doesn't match.

God isn't demanding a payment.

God isn't demanding a payment.

You won't find that language anywhere in the New Testament.

Yeah.

That's one thing.

In fact, not only is God not the one demanding a payment, God is the one who gives the payment.

God is giving the payment.

Okay.

So you're still using the payment.

metaphor.

Right.

Yeah.

So in which way are you using it then?

Okay.

So David, you're referencing this phrase, Jesus' death pays the penalty for our sins.

So that language is primarily rooted in a handful of lines in Paul's letter to the Romans.

And it comes specifically from the end of Romans chapter 6, where Paul has this line, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Messiah, Jesus our Lord.

The word redemption doesn't appear here, but the economic ideas are here.

Yeah, that you that you owe a wage or compensation.

Well, what's interesting, because wages is what we think of, it's what you get paid for as a result of your labor.

Oh, yeah.

And that is the word, Paul is using that word.

Okay.

But in the sense of an outcome, like if you work and do a whole bunch of things, there is an expected exchange of value.

There's an expected consequence.

There's an expected result that's coming your way.

Yeah.

If I work eight hours for an employer,

the outcome, the expected outcome is that I'll get, you know,

the wage.

So you're saying the wage is just talking about an expected outcome.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

So if I fail to love God and others, that way of existing in the world will produce a very predictable outcome, like a bunch of broken relationships, and I'm going to die because I'm not connected to God's eternal life.

Okay.

If I fail to love God and love others, I'm disconnected from God and from others.

Now, I'm sure there is a more generic word for consequence that's not a marketplace term.

You're saying this term is more of an economic term?

It is, yeah.

Wage, pay, compensation.

But the idea is that a life of sin, and the word means failure, moral failure, a life of failing to love God and others, as it were, produces a whole bunch of effects and consequences that become my wage.

It's what I get in return.

What you get in return for what you have done?

A life of failing to love God and others.

And

that is dying.

And death is the ultimate cutting off of all my relationships and its separation from God's infinite life that he wanted to give me and wants to offer me, but that I refuse.

Yeah.

To the dust you return.

Yeah.

So that's the point.

That's like

exhibit A, human history.

Yeah.

Like the wages of sin is death.

Okay.

It's actually a really straightforward observation about human life and history.

Yeah, okay.

But God's really not satisfied with his human image-bearing partners having that fate.

And so what God has given is a gift.

that is eternal life.

And how did that eternal life make its way to human beings?

Through the Messiah, Messiah, Jesus our Lord.

So, my whole point in this whole commentary on Romans 6.23 is even to say the idea that Jesus died as a payment for the penalty of sin doesn't quite,

I think, accurately even state what Paul's trying to say in Romans 6.23.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

We'll get to redemption in a moment.

Got it.

What he's saying is that not that Jesus' death and resurrection paid off God

for what I owe God.

It's rather that we are all getting the outcome of our choices

of moral failure to love God and others.

And outside of reciprocity and exchange, God didn't pay anything.

He gave a gift.

Just straight up gave a gift that breaks the whole

economics of exchange.

It is the opposite of death.

Exactly.

It's life.

What breaks the economics of exchange.

God doesn't give us what we owe.

God doesn't pay off God.

Right.

That's not Paul's.

That's not in there.

It's we're dying as the outcome of our choices.

And God

is so generous that he just gives this amazing gift of infinite eternal life.

Okay.

Yeah.

So Jesus' death is never talked about as a...

payment specifically.

It is talked about as a ransom.

It's talked about as the redemption price.

Yeah, the kofer.

The price of redemption.

and i think there was a moment where that landed for me when we were talking about jesus going through death death did cost him it cost him his life cost him his life yes and all the suffering and all the anguish and so to think of that as an ex an exchange of value or some sort of a costly thing that he offered that's right yeah so mark 10 45 the son of man son of adam jesus is referring to himself didn't come to be served but to be a servant.

Yeah.

And to give his life as a,

and the Greek words litron,

which we talked about, it's the item of exchange.

It's the dollar bill that you give to the corner store owner to get the lollipop or whatever.

Lollipops, the dollar.

No, that might be

a lollipop anyway.

So, right?

The lollipop's owned by the store.

Yeah.

I want it to be in my possession.

I give a price of redemption to transfer it from the store's possession.

Okay, now as soon as you're in that marketplace kind of metaphorical world,

when you're there, it's so easy because the trail is so worn for me to then take that marketplace metaphor and then tell the simple, clean story.

Right.

I owe God

my life because of the things I did.

That's right.

Or God demands

some sort of payment.

That somebody die.

And so if, yes.

Yeah.

I need to die, maybe the way through this is God could punish someone else.

Right.

And that's what Jesus did.

Right.

And that's not how this language works in the New Testament.

So when Jesus is using

a word that clearly means the item of exchange.

That's right.

Like, what am I supposed to be imagining?

Yes.

So, and this is why the Exodus story is the foundation for all of this language.

And that's why we spent so much time in the Exodus story.

It's about redeeming someone from slavery.

It's primarily where this language is rooted in.

And the foundation story for that is Israel's Israel's slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt.

And the redeem is first used in the story of the Bible to talk about God transferring Israel out of wrongful possession of Pharaoh and slavery into God's covenant relationship and family.

And we talked about in that story, there were a couple different ways to think about the Kofer or the Lutron.

Yeah.

On one level, God doesn't ever pay Pharaoh.

Right.

Pharaoh never gets an item of exchange.

God just takes his people.

Yeah.

And in a way, you could think of that as him exerting his power and showing his power over creation

was

the Lutron or the item of exchange.

That's right.

Because it's wrongful possession,

right?

Pharaoh wrongfully possesses Israel.

So God doesn't owe anybody.

And that's why in that passage in Exodus 6,

God says, I'm going to redeem them, but there's all these other verbs connected.

I'm going to snatch them out.

I'm going to rescue them.

It's just another way of saying, I just go into the store and say, hey, store, that's actually my lollipop.

You don't own it.

It's actually mine.

I'm going to take it.

I'm just going to take it.

That's right.

And I'm going to show you proof that I can take it.

And that showing proof,

which God did with the plagues,

is all Pharaoh really should have needed.

So that counts for the word redeem.

Okay.

But yeah, what you're flagging now is, oh, but what up?

What's the item of exchange?

Why would Jesus use this word for item of exchange?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

So

here, then, the primary location of this language, it seems to be located in the Passover and the role of the Passover lamb, which

the word in context

of, like you won't read, you can go read the Exodus.

account of Passover in Exodus 12 and 13.

You won't see this word redemption price.

But you will find that that every generation after the Exodus,

whose ancestors, the firstborn son's life, was spared on the night of Passover, that every generation was to replay that night, as it were, every time a firstborn son is born.

And there is an item of exchange that gives that son back to the family because that son belongs to God.

So the basic storyline is that Pharaoh had been taking the sons of Israel and killing them.

And Passover is God's claim that actually

all life belongs to me.

And at this point, all of human life as outside of Eden.

Sorry, this is getting complicated.

Right?

This is the point.

This is the point.

The point is, I could tell you a really clear story.

Yeah.

I owe God a payment.

Yeah.

God is going to take it from Jesus instead.

Yeah.

That's simple.

It is simple.

The problem is you actually don't find that simple story if you sit down and read sections of the Bible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so we, and we did, and you kind of feel that.

Yeah.

But then

it's so hard because that's such an ingrained story.

Yeah.

And it is so simple.

Yeah.

But then I want to replace it with something that feels equally simple.

Equally simple.

Sure.

And I think the reality is

it's not.

There's a bigger story.

It's an ancient story.

You've got a slavery in Egypt.

You've got a Passover lamb.

You've got all this stuff that you need to think about.

You got the blood is the life, and somehow

the blood is protecting us.

And you've got all this stuff.

And it's like not so simple.

Yeah, that's right.

So thank you for that meta moment.

On the night of Passover, God hands all of Egypt and all all of its inhabitants, Egyptian and Israelite and everybody else, over

to the consequences of human failure up to that point in the story, which is death.

And it's this plague.

So God is the one allowing the plague, right, to spread.

spread, but God is also the one

who gives the gift of this blameless Passover lamb's lifeblood is painted on the door of the house.

And it's not that God's paying off God.

God's not even paying off death.

Rather, and this was the clarity we achieved.

Okay.

Is that when the death plague comes to that house, it sees a life that doesn't belong to it.

A blameless life that is fully surrendered over to God, which is what that blood symbolizes, is a life over which death has no authority.

It can't possess it.

So it's not like death comes up to the door and sees the blood and is like, yeah, finally got my blood.

It's the opposite.

Death comes to the door and says,

that doesn't belong to me.

Even though it was surrendered over to death as a gift, it cost the lamb something.

Yeah, it cost the lamb something,

but it doesn't belong to death and just death has to move along.

And that is the complex story.

Within there is the mystery, though.

Yeah.

It's why did the lamb have to die?

Right?

Oh, sure.

Sure.

so

the simple story is well had to die because

someone had to die

or you could say it this way the lamb died

because we are all dying the lamb joined us in our death

yeah we're all dying here outside of eden

and the whole story of what pharaoh's doing to israel and egypt is in a very powerful image of what humans do to each other when they fail to love God and neighbor.

And we're all dying.

And

the death plague is the natural outcome, as it were, in the story, the wages of the whole human train wreck up to that point.

But God gives a gift in the form of a blameless life over which death has no authority or possession.

And the blameless life, then you're saying, joins us in our death.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we can join

Jesus in his life.

Yeah.

Which means then when we go through death, we can then also have Jesus' life.

Yeah.

If I'm, as it were, covered by the blood

of that is with the blameless life of the Messiah who loved me and gave himself for me, as Paul will say in Galatians, then all of a sudden my death is no longer an ultimate end.

It's a passageway into the resurrection life that God gave to me as a gift.

Yeah.

The gift of God is eternal life.

Okay.

Can I try on then maybe this

simple alternative?

Please.

Which still has, I think, some texture to it.

Yeah.

I love how you said the natural consequences or the wages of just the way we exist is leading everything to death.

And God

is allowing that.

And there's a sense of independence that he gave us.

Yeah.

Yes.

Because it's our choice.

Adam and Eve chose.

And right?

That's what every generation has been choosing since.

But God's not happy with that.

We don't belong to death.

He wants to snatch us out of death, bring us back into life.

And the way that he did that was to come and be with us in a form of human and divine, connected, and in which death has no claim at all.

Over the life of the Son of God.

Yeah.

Nope.

And

will not descend into death.

But

Jesus,

that human and divine,

joins us in our death and goes through death with us.

And that

cost him.

Cost him his life.

Yeah.

And in a way, it was him surrendering and giving something of value.

And you can think of that as a payment,

but not if you're thinking he's paying someone off.

That's right.

But a payment if you're thinking it cost him something.

That's right.

In human interactions, paying someone is because I owe.

Yeah.

But now with the son of God giving his life as a redemption price, for God to redeem something, it's just completely different because God doesn't owe anybody anything.

Right.

But still, the metaphor is still useful.

Yeah.

I think.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then by joining us in his death, we can join him in his life and somehow get pulled through death.

Yeah.

The son of God offers as a gift his own surrender to the Father as a representative life into which we can be, what, wrapped in, enfolded?

Covered by the blood.

Covered by the blood.

Yeah, there's so many metaphors for it.

I think it's after we finished the series.

Because we kept talking about it.

I remember for a week or month or so afterwards.

Yeah.

You know, we'd would ever come into the office and be like, you know, I was thinking this, try this on.

And it was either in my head, I don't know if I said it out loud to you, but there is this perennial way, common way that we think of asking the question, why did Jesus have to die?

Yes.

And usually that have to

implies that there's something between Jesus the Son and God the Father, and that God demanded or had to make something happen

implied in that have to.

And I think a way to honor the way the biblical authors of the apostles talk about it is that Jesus had to die because we are dying.

And we are the ones that God

loves and wants to recover and restore to life.

So Jesus dies because we are dying.

That's the best way I can find in English.

to reflect what the apostles are trying to say in these passages that we covered in the series.

Yeah, and this gets back to then my question, which was, why can't Jesus pull us out of death without going through death with us?

And we had a really interesting conversation about that.

Yeah.

In fact, the language you're using is the exact language of the next question.

Perfect.

That was sent into us from Kaira in the country of Turkey across the planet from us.

Wonderful.

Yeah, let's hear Kaira's question.

Hi, Tim and John.

This is Kaira from Istanbul, Turkey.

I've really enjoyed wrestling through through this theme with you guys.

I have two questions.

One is, you talked about Jesus pulling us through death from the other side.

My question is, why did it have to be such an awful, gruesome death of the crucifixion?

Couldn't any death have accomplished the same thing?

My second question is, you talked about redemption and release or forgiveness, almost as if it was two sides of the same coin, rather than a prerequisite of the price has been paid on the cross of redemption.

So now God can forgive us.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on how forgiveness fits around this topic.

Thank you so much.

God bless.

Yeah, wonderful.

On point.

Yeah.

These are great questions.

Really great questions.

So there's two.

There's two questions.

Yeah.

First is this idea of Jesus pulling us through death from the other side.

Yeah.

He can go through death because death has no rightful claim on him.

Yeah.

So as he says in John, no one takes my life from me.

I lay it down and I'll pick it right back up again.

Okay.

Before we get to her question, I think my question was, why did Jesus have to go through death?

Why couldn't he pull us out on this side?

And I think when we talked about that, I think we just talked about how we have to go through death.

At this point, there's no other choice.

We kind of have to have to.

Like God can't grant us eternity.

eternal life in the state that we're in he or he doesn't want to there's something about you know we talked about how Jesus could heal people or even resurrect people, but then they're going to die again.

Right.

And so, so, really, it's like there's no other way to eternal life but through death at this point.

Yeah, I think I would want to back away from the language of God can't.

Okay.

Right.

And just say,

because of,

and here I'm just trying to reflect on the way the Eden story works.

Because of the genuine partnership that God wants to engage with in creation

and with human images as God's partners.

The arena of freedom that God has given to humans

allowed us a choice into how we would partner with God or not.

And we mostly choose not.

That's how the story goes.

And so that not partnering with God creates a set of wages, an outcome, and creates a whole world that is, in the biblical story, life outside of Eden.

And so life outside of Eden is life characterized by mortality, of coming from the dust and we go back to the dust.

And even like our

mode of our material mode of existence is all dust bound.

Yeah.

So this mode of existence is actually too weak and frail

to actually inherit the full reality of infinite life.

So no matter what,

we have to go through death.

Yes.

So death is the re-entry back into the garden, means passing by the cherubim and the fire and the sword.

Form of death.

And it means a giving up of

what we are accustomed to as calling reality or life.

And we've got to give up a whole bunch of this

to transcend into the next level, whatever, of what God has in store.

And what we'll find on the other side is the apostle is so insistent, so is Peter, that it's not a disembodied non-physical existence.

It's some form of an embodied existence, but it's a transformed, like Jesus' resurrection body.

And so in that sense, we have to die, but that death is a rebirth.

Well, thank you.

And I want to have five more hours of conversation about that.

Yeah.

But that is good enough for now.

Yeah.

Now then to the question, to Kyra's question.

Yes.

Why did it have to be so gruesome?

Okay.

That's right.

So Jesus pulled us through death so that death for us now likes to be a daughter.

So let's take for granted Jesus went through death for us.

Yeah, we get that.

Why?

Isn't this a great little mental exercise?

Why?

Yeah.

What's the deal with the like, oh, because I think the story, the simple story will say, well, it's gruesome because, oh, you know, like, that's what you deserved.

You deserve worse, you know?

Think of all the, think of all the fiery torment that you're getting.

escaped out of.

Sure.

Got it.

In other words, the awfulness of Jesus' death becomes an image of what would happen to me had God not done that.

Right.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

Haven't you ever guessed the problem?

Probably.

I think the problem with that is that you just wouldn't find Jesus or the apostles ever saying anything like that.

Yeah, it's an inference.

In the New Testament.

When you do find the awfulness of Jesus' death, being focused and reflected on, as you do in the gospel narratives.

But then the Apostle Paul, in his letters to the Corinthians, specifically talks about the foolishness, the scandal of the crucifixion.

Yeah.

What he's talking about is that the way that God chose to love and rescue the world was so counter and opposite of how humans would ever think to solve a problem.

Yeah.

That it's actually God's wisdom to do something that looks weak and foolish and despicable.

Yeah.

It's God's wisdom so that no one could look and say, ah, see, like, I knew God would do it that way.

Or that no one could look and say, hey, look how God saved the world.

That's pretty close to how I would save the world.

Like, it's just counter.

That's how Paul talks about

it.

It is cool.

And maybe underneath that, there is this portrait in the Hebrew Bible about the snake crusher from Genesis 3, that he'd get bitten by the snake as he crushes the snake.

And that metaphor becomes a way to describe how God consistently uses people who are in places of weakness, suffering, and that he loves to exalt and use those people to accomplish his purposes in the world.

And Joseph is the first kind of suffering deliverer character

in Genesis.

And then Moses becomes a rejected kind of suffering leader.

The people constantly oppose him.

You talk about Job as Job?

That kind of character.

Yeah, he suffers enormously, but then he's able to pray for and play this priestly role for his friends at the end of the story.

So it's also this image of that God

wants to show to us that the ways that we think are normal to be human and create societies and are actually so destructive

that even when he comes among us to give us a gift, we destroy God.

And that itself shows us the reality of our need for the gift of God and in the Messiah Jesus.

Something like that.

It highlights our foolishness, but then there's also something which gives us a peek into the upside-down wisdom of God.

Right.

Yes.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is what I was name, what Paul is trying to name in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, especially if anyone wants to follow up.

So, but it's such a great question, Kaida.

Why, why couldn't Jesus have gone to a peaceful death and just joined us in mortality?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's something about, and Jesus appealed to the scriptures.

He said it had to be this way.

And he quotes from

the prophets.

He quotes from the Psalms,

which are all building up this portrait of the Messianic deliverer as somebody who dies as a rejected one.

It's really interesting.

Yeah.

And then I'm picking up on something new for me, which is while it is gruesome and gory, and you get things like the Passion of the Christ movie, which really highlights that.

What I think I heard you saying is more so, it's humiliating.

It was a humiliating death.

Oh, yes.

The purpose of crucifixion wasn't just to kill somebody.

It wasn't to be gory.

No.

But it was to like

make that person look like a fool and humiliate them.

Yeah.

And

to subjugate them, to show that they are dominated by

the one doing the crucifixion, which is the Roman Empire.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So having said all that, Kaira, it's a really important question.

I'm just so glad you asked it.

I'm so glad you asked it.

I found myself feeling like, hmm, that's there are some questions in life that you, in Christian faith, they're not like meant to just get answered.

Yeah.

The question itself is meant to take you somewhere

that you're really never supposed to leave.

And this feels like one of those types of questions for me.

And that's just her first question.

Yeah.

So many great questions.

Okay.

Second is, are redemption and forgiveness or release two sides of the same coin?

Yeah.

This was such an aha for me as we talked that the word forgiveness is

the word release, which is the idea behind a redemption.

That's right.

The Greek word is.

I'm being redeemed from my sins.

I'm being released from my sins.

I'm being forgiven of my sins.

That's right.

I'm being rescued, snatched out of death,

which is the sin, the failure.

Yep, that's right.

So we focused on specifically the Gospel of Luke, how Jesus talked about he appealed to the language of the Isaiah scroll in Luke chapter 4 to describe his mission.

He's the anointed one to bring good news to the suffering and the poor and the hurting and the blind and to announce release for the captives.

And that word release is the word then in Luke he goes on and teach in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our sins as we forgive.

Release us from the consequences of our sins as we release others from the consequences of their sins.

So release and redemption are different ways of talking about the same thing.

I love that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And so in a similar way, you can forgive somebody without them giving you a payment for what they owed you.

You can release them.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And

in a way, that is what God has done.

That's what Paul's point, all the way back to Paul's point, is that you deserve death.

Yeah, you deserve death.

That's your gift.

And it's what you're getting.

It's what every human generation is getting when they die.

But God wants you to release.

Yeah, but God just gave a gift

in the life and death and resurrection of the Son.

So I guess it's just an affirmation, Kaira, that redemption and release are two sides of the same coin.

Release is another

synonym for forgiveness.

And so in that sense, God does...

just choose to forgive humans.

But the way that he forgives humans

in the person of the Son of God to become human, to live and die with us, though death has no rightful claim on his life.

Okay.

Great.

I love how the questions are kind of feeding along with our actual just conversation that we're having right now.

We're kind of summarizing it again.

So the next question that I think fits in at this point is from Nathan in Indiana.

Understanding Jesus' death in the model of the Passover lamb and understanding redemption as a transfer of possession is echoing through my understanding of many different spiritual concepts.

And one of those that keeps coming to mind is how Jesus delivers those who are possessed by evil spirits.

Is it appropriate to view these individuals as undergoing a redemption of sorts and transitioning from being under the possession of sin and death and the evil one and then into the possession of God?

Or are these events better understood as I've always in the past understood them as Jesus just simply removing these entities from those who are being controlled by them?

Thank you.

Thanks, Nathan.

That's a good question.

Yeah, really, really thoughtful question.

And we did actually talk about this, I think it was in our episode on Luke.

So I just thought it's great to bring it up again.

So I agree with you, Nathan.

I think you're, what you call it,

redemption is echoing and having this effect on all kinds of other ideas that you've had as a Christian and thinking about the Bible.

So I agree with you that redemption language is an appropriate way to think about Jesus'

healings of people

or his, you know, exorcisms of evil spirits.

And often those are...

connected to each other.

In fact, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus calls it that.

Like, that's actually what he calls it.

He calls a healing a redemption.

Yeah.

So there's a story.

We went to it, but I'll just recall it again.

This is in Luke chapter 13, where Jesus comes across a woman who has something wrong with her back, but she's like permanently bent over or like hunched over.

She can't straighten up.

And so Jesus just says to her, This is Luke chapter 13, verse 12, Woman, you are released from

your sickness, from your infirmity.

He put his hands on her, and she all of a sudden stood straight up and started praising God.

And then Jesus.

That's the word redeemed.

It's a synonym

to redeem, but it means to release out of possession, to set free.

They were trapped, were enslaved in the bad situation.

To her infirmity.

You're set free, liberated.

And then when Jesus describes it, in verse 16 of Luke chapter 13, he says, This woman is the daughter of Abraham,

and the Satan

has bound her,

like

tied ropes around her is the metaphor for 18 long years, and she has been set free.

And what day of the week is it?

It's the seventh day.

It's the Sabbath day from the thing that bound her.

So this is both a release from a physical infirmity, but the physical infirmity is itself a sign of her living outside of Eden under the influence

of the snake.

Yeah.

That it's a sign of her dying body.

So he healed her.

Yeah.

But, you know, she eventually died again.

Yeah.

So in that sense, he didn't completely liberate her.

Right.

But on this side of his death and resurrection, it was a redemption from authority under the snake.

And I guess you could say what...

Jesus did in his whole life and death and resurrection was due for all of creation and permanently what he did for that woman temporarily on that Sabbath day.

Something like that.

But he calls it a release.

Yeah.

So what does that do?

How does that,

other than just being cool?

Right.

Well, I think it just keeps us in this world of we are captive by

death.

Well, and then also captive by this evil.

And more and mortality, right?

I mean, having mortal bodies that break down and parts don't work.

Yeah, it's part of being captive to death.

That's right.

And there is this

agent of chaos, the Satan, that

is

using the power of death to like

bind us, I suppose.

There's something there.

And that the ultimate redemption is to be completely pulled through that.

Yeah.

But when Jesus comes and heals this woman, he is in some way enacting that kind of freedom from death, even though it isn't a completed, final redemption.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, in one of

the Apostle Peter's speeches in Acts, in the early chapters of Acts, you know, when after Pentecost happened, When he retells the story of Jesus, more than once, he talks about Jesus' healings and exorcisms.

He uses a phrase from the Hebrew Bible.

He calls them signs and wonders that Jesus performed.

And the word sign means exactly what it means in English, which is one thing.

It points to a bigger thing, but that is itself a little mini instance of the ultimate thing.

So

the healings of Jesus are a sign of the arrival of a healed, restored creation.

Yeah.

The ultimate Sabbath day.

That's right.

But it was just a little foretaste of that sign of the coming kingdom of God.

I think, which is why he did these healings as a little foretastes and pointers forward, as opposed to just, you know, magic tricks that demonstrated that he's God.

Yeah.

I think they do demonstrate his identity

as the son of God.

They do a lot more alongside that.

That's good.

So yeah, redemption is a way to imagine the healings and exorcism power of Jesus that we see in the gospels.

And that enriches the bigger story of redemption in the whole of the Bible.

So that was a significant insight for me in the course of our conversations that I think is cool to think about.

Great.

Thank you, Nathan.

Let's go.

skip down to Cody's question.

Okay.

I think this will

do something interesting.

Hello, Tim and John.

This is Cody from Wilsonville, Oregon.

Thank you for your rich exploration of redemption as a transfer of possession back to the rightful owner.

I'd love your insight on a related and foundational question.

What does it mean to be saved?

Is being saved simply another way of saying being redeemed?

Or are there meaningful distinctions between the two?

Does seeing salvation primarily as redemption shift how we interpret verses about being saved?

And does it challenge the common assumption that salvation only means avoiding hell someday?

I would absolutely eat up hearing you two riff on what does it mean to truly be saved.

Thank you for all you do.

You guys mean more to me than you'll ever know.

Oh, thanks, Cody.

And thanks, Cody.

Wilsonville.

I was just there

for a a soccer tournament.

Oh, yes.

We had a final there.

It's a suburb of Portland.

It's a suburb of Portland.

Really big stadium.

Yeah.

Cody, also, maybe just, we've never met,

but you may already have a career in radio.

Oh, right.

Right.

Or something.

He's got the mic.

But, man, you have a very

voice, too.

Yeah, you have a great announcer voice.

Something like that.

Anyway, thank you.

That was both a well-worded question and well-pronounced.

Well delivered.

Well delivered.

Okay.

What does it mean to be saved?

Salvation and redemption.

We also touched on this at different points in the conversation, but I thought it'd be good to bring Ray around again.

You often just retranslate salvation to the word rescued.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I think you do that to help us maybe

take away any baggage we have of what salvation might mean and just to put us in the world of being rescued from slavery or being rescued from something snatched out of danger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sometimes

to

recover what the biblical authors mean by their words, we have to adapt our own English words to help us shake off the shackles of familiarity.

And so the word save has all so many layers, so many people in religious communities, that I have found the word rescue.

It's both just an accurate synonym, right?

In English, if I was saved from drowning, I was rescued from drowning.

Yeah.

I mean, it's great.

But rescue, I think, helps us remember what we're talking about is being rescued from danger.

Yeah.

And

the first time that redeem is used in the Bible, in God's speech to Moses at the burning bush and in Exodus,

it puts both words together, redeem and rescue.

So Exodus 6, 6, we looked at this at length earlier in the series.

God says to Moses, hey, Moses, tell the Israelites, I am Yahweh, and I am going to bring you out.

So that's just, you're inside somewhere, and God's going to make you go out.

So that's a metaphor for you're in Egypt in slavery, you're going to go out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

The next word is, I am going to,

and the verb in Hebrew is itzil,

which means to literally send out your hand and grab something and then bring it out

towards yourself, to snatch.

Yeah.

It's used in lots of different ways.

So it gets translated here.

I'm just, I have a whole bunch of English translations open.

NIV says, I'm going to free you

from being slaves.

I'm going to snatch you from being enslaved to them.

I'm going to free you.

ESV, English standard version, has, I'm going to deliver you.

Deliver is the interesting English word, isn't it?

Deliver you from slavery.

From slavery to them.

And the New American Standard and the NRSV all go with deliver.

Yeah, that's not how you use deliver in normal English.

Like you deliver a pizza.

Oh, yeah.

Right?

Yeah, right.

Or

delivery.

You don't.

Or a package.

Yeah, or a package.

You get a package.

I got it.

The delivery is here.

But what that does mean is it was in the truck.

If I say, yeah, somebody delivered a package, what I mean is they brought it out of the truck.

They snatched it out of the truck.

Yeah.

Okay.

By hand.

Okay.

And took it to my front porch or something.

It got delivered.

But I think we use the word deliver in terms of the process of the carrying.

Yes.

Whereas you could say the package was delivered from the truck.

It was bound by the truck.

Contained within the truck.

Yeah.

So this

that's translated as free or deliver, Hitziel, is one of the common Hebrew words that's connected with acts of salvation.

But it is not yet the Hebrew word that's underneath Jesus' name for salvation.

Yes, you are.

Right.

That belongs to later in the Exodus story when after the Israelites went out of Egypt, but Pharaoh's chasing after them.

This is the night at the Sea of Reeds.

Right.

And

Pharaoh and his army is like charging down the hill.

The Israelites arrive at the shore and they've got an army behind them.

Death on one side, body water in front of them, death on the other side.

What are you going to do?

And the Israelites say to Moses, Exodus 14, 11, is it because there weren't enough graves in Egypt that you just brought us out here to die in the wilderness?

Why did you bring us out of Egypt?

And what Moses says is, don't be afraid.

Stand right here and see the, and there's our word, it's Jesus' name, Yeshua

in Hebrew, the Yeshua of Yahweh that he's going to accomplish.

So this is the foundational salvation moment with its first appearance in the story of the Bible.

Okay.

So going out of Egypt is being delivered.

Being snatched out.

Snatched out.

That's one way of thinking about a deliverance or a rescue.

And a synonym to that is here they're just stuck in a moment that they can't get out of.

And it's dangerous.

They're going to die.

And Yahweh is going to deliver or rescue them, Yeshua.

So these are words for rescue.

So redeem

is focusing on

that you're owned or possessed by somebody and you go out of possession into another.

Redeem is.

Redeem is.

Yeah.

Redeem is focused on the transfer of possession.

That's right.

Rescue seems to be focused on just the like the action or the

movement out of death and danger.

Yeah.

So slavery in the Bible is a non-ideal death environment.

That's why God's foundational act of revealing himself is to liberate from slavery.

But you can also be in danger of dying.

in all kinds of other terrible ways.

Yeah.

And this night at the sea in Exodus 14 is a great example.

So they're two ways of describing the same thing, just with different storylines or different emphasis attached.

Yeah.

And as soon as you ask, what have I been rescued from?

Right.

Then you're talking about slavery to death.

Yes.

What am I being rescued for?

Now you're talking about being the image of God.

Right.

And so underneath this word of rescue is all the other stories, but it's really just this very concrete, actionable like of you were in danger and now you're no longer in danger.

But then the questions become like, okay, danger from what?

What for?

And

that's great.

Yeah.

So Cody, your point is this common assumption that salvation is equated with avoiding hell in the afterlife.

And so you're right.

That's not how the apostles.

use the language of salvation.

They use the language of salvation to describe how God rescued us out of slavery to dying.

And also, like Romans 6, which we meditated on, slavery to patterns of thinking and behaving that are just destructive,

destroying ourselves and our communities.

And

we're saved into a whole new kind of life that he describes in Romans 6 as righteousness, that is doing right by God and neighbor, being in...

an image of God.

So we're saved from slavery to death and patterns of sin that lead to death, and we are saved into being images of God.

I liked how you put that.

So I guess we just riffed on what it means to be saved.

Okay.

I hope that was helpful, Cody.

It was at least helpful to us.

Yeah, thanks, Cody.

Well,

that was...

Great to go back through and think about redemption again

with all those questions.

Yeah, I agree.

And there's many more wonderful questions.

Thank you for sending them all in.

Yeah.

Yeah, this was a really fun series.

Actually, I knew that we were recording this question response episode a couple weeks ago.

So I re-listened on 1.5 to our past selves so that I could have it top of mind for the Q ⁇ A.

But I really enjoyed this conversation with you, John.

It was really helpful for me and the video that summarizes.

Let's talk about that real quick.

So that video is coming out.

That video is coming out.

It went through the script

probably on the higher end of number of drafts when we produce videos sometimes it's three drafts sometimes it's five i think this was creeping up to like draft seven or eight we spent a lot of time rewriting yeah this video and a number of restoryboarding many scenes yeah there was a lot to figure out with this video yes uh we hope that

for those of you who see it and who followed this long conversation about redemption we will be very curious just to hear your feedback and

how you experience all of it coming together in the video.

And we don't just have the video.

We have a lot of other resources.

There's a lot of content to help you to explore this by yourself or in a community.

Kind of keep thinking about reading the Bible in light of redemption.

Yes.

So as always, thank you everybody for both your enthusiasm and support and sending in your questions and just for getting behind this project.

Yeah.

Why do we do any of this?

Our goal, John, as a nonprofit, the media studio, is to help people understand the Bible, experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.

And

everything we make is just trying to help people.

Yeah.

Both, not just understand the Bible, but then to understand and live in the world.

Understand ourselves.

And understand ourselves in light of understanding the Bible.

That's the whole point.

Is that what we mean by experience?

Yeah, I think so.

We're experiencing the Bible, and then you start to experience your own life as a part of

the biblical story.

So that's at least been happening to me because we've talked over the years, and we trust that that's happening for y'all too.

So thank you for being part of this with us.