An Eternal Redemption

This is our 10th and final episode in our series on the biblical theme of redemption.

To redeem is to transfer something back to where it belongs.

God designed humanity for life, but we're instead captured by death.

And so the entire story of the Bible is how can God transfer us back into his life?

That is, redeem us.

In economic terms, this transfer of ownership usually requires a payment.

And we even say things like, Jesus paid the price for our sins.

But in what way is the blood of Jesus a payment?

Today we begin in 1 Peter, who says it wasn't gold and silver that redeemed us.

We're redeemed by the precious blood of the Lamb.

The point of drawing those two into relationship is not to say that they're similar.

The point is to say that they are not similar at all.

One is you pay it off and you give us something of equal value.

With the precious blood, it's, yeah, this doesn't belong to death, so just hands off.

We'll also look at Hebrews 9, which is about how Jesus provides the ultimate sacrifice, the tabernacle, and the entire sacrificial system we're pointing to.

Sacrifices are only meaningful if they're joined and offered by someone whose life becomes a mirror of what the sacrifice symbolizes, which is a posture of repentance and surrender, aligning myself with the desire and will of God.

Well, what kind of life did the Messiah lead?

It was a life completely aligned with the will of the Father.

So the life of Jesus can become our life.

And when it does, we are redeemed.

That is, transferred back into the life that God has created us for.

Paul will say, I died with the Messiah.

I was crucified to the world and the world's crucified to me.

And the life that I'm now living is actually the Son of God living in and through me.

Today, we conclude this journey journey on the theme of redemption.

Thanks for joining us.

Here we go.

Hey, Tim.

Hello, John.

Hello.

Hi.

Okay, welcome to the real last episode

of the Redemption series.

That's right.

We begin the last episode thinking that we were having the last episode conversation.

Yeah.

But

as always, in the most wonderful way, your questions force us to go deeper than I imagined, which I'm feeling great.

I feel like I got clarity from our last conversation, which ended up being kind of like a discussion on redemption in Paul's letter to the Romans, part two.

Yeah.

So we worked through Romans chapter eight and then also brought in the flow of thought from Hebrews chapter two that aligns closely with ideas in Romans eight.

Do you want to try and summarize where we're at

right now?

I could try.

try.

So the theme of redemption is about being transferred into a rightful possession.

In the story of the Bible, God is what all of this is for.

It's on a journey towards union with God.

That's what he created humanity for and creation for humanity to rule creation, for it to go on this journey of union with him.

The glory of the sons of God ruling over us.

That's right.

Or their perfection, their becoming mature.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And instead, humanity declared independence from union with God and said, we want to go on our own,

not realizing that we are now in union with something else.

Playing into the hand of the snake.

Yeah.

And the power of darkness, the present evil age.

Yeah.

Who is also a creature granted a degree of semi-independence that is also...

Like humanity.

Yeah, that's also in rebellion against.

And in a way, we're kind of tangled up in slavery together to this maybe even more cosmic idea of chaos and death.

Redemption is about God repossessing, transferring us back out of slavery into freedom.

And so when we look at the Old Testament, we look at the Hebrew Bible and we see God doing that for Israel out of slavery from Pharaoh into their own land.

But we also can look at how God does that for land, where an Israelite has been given land to steward by God.

It gets dispossessed, and then it can be repossessed through the year of Jubilee.

And that's a redemption.

Yep.

Yeah.

And the logic underneath that Jubilee redemption is everything belongs to God.

Humans are made stewards and temporary overseers.

And so this whole story of being in wrongful possession, being brought back out into repossession, that's the main idea of redemption.

But depending on how you look at it, it really just a story of rescue.

Rescue is someone's in danger.

God wants to deliver them out of danger into safety.

Which is also a story of liberation, which is also a story of freedom.

All of these are different ways to talk about it.

Or, as we'll see today, a story of purification.

Okay.

Throw another one in there.

Yeah.

And so when we looked at the Psalms and the prophets, this idea of being redeemed can really be swapped out often for just being rescued or liberated.

But at its core, this term means transfer of possession.

Yeah.

Being repossessed.

Yeah.

Okay.

With that in mind, we get to Jesus.

And all of Israel during the time of Jesus is waiting to be repossessed by God.

And for them, that meant the Romans and anyone in league with them are gone.

They have freedom in the land.

That's their redemption.

Yeah.

As Zechariah, father of John the Baptizer, redemption from our enemies to serve God and worship him without fear.

Yeah.

Yep.

And then on the road to Emmaus with the couple that saw Jesus die, they were just like, well, I guess the redemption didn't happen.

And Jesus tells them, actually, the redemption has begun.

And let me explain it to you.

What Jesus saw himself doing in his life and the way he healed people and everything was beginning the redemption.

And that he saw going through death and suffering and then rising again was part of this redemption.

Yes.

And I guess to double-click on that, it's that he lived as the faithful human Israelite covenant partner with the Father, who was living a life of returning to God in faithful, loyal, covenant union.

That he loved God and loved neighbor

as a way of returning, which is the Hebrew word for repent.

So a representative repentance on behalf of Israel.

That's what he's doing in the wilderness

when he trusts the Father instead of turning away like Israel did in the wilderness.

And then the ultimate expression of that surrender and suffering was to die in the place of God's people who have brought death upon themselves.

And so what he shows is the real enemy, yes, Rome is an extension of the chaos and death, and so was Herod.

But the true enemy to confront was the powers, the darkness, the Satan.

And to do that,

he let Rome kill him.

to go through and to actually battle with the real enemy.

Yes, though he let Rome as the physical brute institutional strength

that was joined in league with the leaders of his own people.

So the leaders of his people and the powers of Rome.

Yeah.

And underneath them, the power of darkness is what he called it in Luke.

This is the power that we've enslaved ourselves to.

And so he saying, I'm going to confront that Pharaoh, that power.

That's the power that needs to let you go.

Okay, so then the question becomes for me.

Well, in what way does dying and then rising again, I can see how it shows Jesus's power over death.

Death is not enslaving him in any way.

But how does that help us?

And why was it necessary for Jesus to do that in order for us to transfer back to God?

Because God is more powerful than death, just in and of himself.

He doesn't have to.

go through death to show that he has power over death.

And so we talked about how not only are we in slavery to death,

but we don't know how to choose otherwise.

When we talked about God taking Israel out from Pharaoh, we just kept saying like, God didn't owe Pharaoh anything.

Yes, yeah, right.

He just did it.

Yeah.

But Israel had to decide to go.

Yeah, that's right.

And they did.

And then they kind of grumbled about it later.

Yeah.

But if they were just like, well, actually, we want to stay here, then what would have God done?

Yeah, which is what they eventually do say.

It was better in Egypt.

It would have been, let's kill Moses and go back to Egypt.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the heart didn't actually change.

But they did have enough to like get up and go.

Yeah.

And so the story of the Bible is like, our hearts are so entangled with this slavery to death and darkness.

We don't have it in and of ourselves to respond to the call to get up and to leave.

Yeah, that's right.

It's too entangled.

Yeah.

In a way, it's like, what's a God to do?

Yes.

What's a dilemma?

a divine dilemma yeah

and what god does

is says you need this change of heart

if you want to have life if you want to have life and so what i'm going to do is you are unable to have union with me

you are now in slavery to sin and death um and i can't pull you out of that unless you have a change of heart so i'm going to come to you

and i'm going to have a a union with you while you're still in this state,

which means I'm going to suffer.

I'm going to experience death like you experience death.

And I'm going to show you what it looks like to have a repentant heart, a heart that is tuned towards God.

And I'm going to show you what it looks like to live,

not enslaved by death.

And that's beautiful.

But even by seeing that, now, well, great.

It's a vision for it.

Yeah, yeah.

But I still can't do it.

And then there's something about then him saying, no, you can't do it, but you can be united with me in my death.

In some way, you could actually come in, receive my repentance, go through death with me,

and then out the other side.

That's what I'm calling you to do is to come and accept that.

And that's a gift.

Yeah.

He calls it a gift.

Yeah.

A grace gift.

Yeah, of life, redemption, rescue.

And so when you think of the story of redemption, what Jesus is doing is he's transferring us back to life.

And to do that, he comes and he suffers.

That suffering leads to him dying,

which to think about that, to think about the life of someone going away, that's the blood,

what we would call sacrifice.

And we think of that as like the price that God paid.

But it's not a price to pay off the devil.

It's not a price to pay off death.

It's the price that he paid so that we could then have union with him and get through this somehow.

Yeah, that's great.

So that gets reinforced in a number of ways.

In this conversation, to wrap up, we'll get to Hebrews and 1 Peter, but just as a, this is a risk of Paul part three.

But there are some of the later letters of Paul where he uses the word redemption.

And what's what's interesting is in these earlier ones, you're redeemed from sin and death, like those of the Pharaohs.

Look at this interesting example in Titus where Paul says, chapter 2, verse 11, for the grace of God has appeared, the gift, that's the word gift, bringing rescue to all humanity.

instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desire, to live sensibly, righteously, godly in the present age.

We're looking for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, the Messiah Jesus, who gave himself to redeem us from.

Now, just close your eyes and you expect

from the power of sin and death.

And that's not what he says.

He says to redeem us from every kind of lawlessness.

Lawlessness.

So what he's describing is behavior patterns

of doing what is, it's on nomiyah, anti-Torah,

living out of sync with God's

will revealed in the Torah, God's instruction, redeeming us from all of the ways that we don't follow God's instruction.

Somehow that's the bad guy.

The Pharaoh is our pattern of decision-making.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because that is sin.

But he's describing of us being redeemed, repossessed,

out of the possession of our own patterns of decision-making.

Isn't that interesting?

It's a twist.

Is it a twist or is it just a synonym of sin?

It's a synonym of sin, but I just like it because it kind of makes it more concrete, easier to understand.

So he uses something, similar idea in 2 Timothy, where he talks about how the Lord's servant, that is followers of Jesus, should not be quarrelsome.

They should be kind to all, all, able to teach, but patient when wronged, with gentleness, correcting anybody who's opposed.

Because you never know, God might give that person the gift to repent, that is, to turn to God, leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they might come to their senses and escape the trap

of the slanderer because they are captive.

They have been captured alive.

It's the word zogreo, like when you,

you know, there's that phrase in like Wild West movies, take them dead or alive.

So this is take alive.

Okay.

So you're captured, but you're

alive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we've been taken alive

by the slanderer to do his desire.

Yeah.

So what it means to be enslaved to the slanderer means

you listen to the snake.

Yeah, the snake's desire.

Yeah.

It becomes your desire.

Yeah.

Which then is another way of saying every kind of lawlessness.

And you know, a transfer of ownership means a transfer of desire.

Go on.

Do go on.

Well, what got us dispossessed?

Saying not your desire, God.

Oh, yeah, that's not.

It's my desire.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then what this seems to be saying is like, yeah, and now you're trapped by that desire.

Yeah.

And now that desire in this tangled web of chaos and violence and you're stuck.

And it results in every kind of anti-Torah.

You can't listen to the wisdom of God and fulfill it.

So at the core of this transfer is

realigning desire.

Yeah.

Because

when you talked about God could snap his fingers and heal your body, God could snap your fingers and give you freedom from

debt.

He could snap his fingers and give you

just all the things.

Yeah, yeah.

But he needs that desire to shift.

Yeah, well.

Otherwise, you're still enslaved to death.

The threat.

You're just going to replay the pattern.

You're going to die eventually.

Yep.

Yep.

That's totally right.

And that begins with repentance.

And what we've been saying, which is this whole new idea for me,

that we actually can't repent.

Yeah.

Jesus repented for us.

Yeah.

And somehow we can be united in his repentance, which is us repenting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Our repentance is accepting his repentance.

Yeah, that's right.

And then that's at the hook, the hinge of this

transfer now into ownership with him again.

We're painting the blood on the door and we're saying, it's not our blood,

but we're going to accept it.

And so now we're in this new realm.

Okay, great.

So what a wonderful transition.

I wanted us to glance at the two last places in the New Testament where the word redemption appears, which is in the letter to the Hebrews and and then the first letter of Peter.

1 Peter, written through a scribe.

Peter says later in the letter, I wrote this letter by means of a guy named Silwanis, which is why it's beautiful Greek, beautiful, stylistic, rhetorical Greek.

And it's written to a whole network of churches throughout what today we would call the interior of modern-day Turkey,

Asia Minor.

And mixed Israelite, non-Israelite communities.

So he can just sling Hebrew Bible terminology like just like crazy and assume everybody's tracking.

But he's doing it with Greek and for mostly a non-Israelite audience.

The letter as a whole is there's some suffering going on.

We don't know what.

Imprisonment, beatings,

persecution,

because this is now a cultural religious minority within the dominant Greco-Roman world.

And they're paying the social cost for being deviants, social deviants.

So he's trying to compel them that allegiance to Jesus and what he has to offer is more valuable than anything that your former way of life could ever get you.

So that's the basic flow of thought throughout the letter and then right here in this passage.

So in chapter 1, verse 13, he says, therefore, with minds that are alert and sober, set your hope on the gift that's going to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is apocalypse at his coming.

Be like obedient children.

Don't conform to the bad desires that you had when you used to be ignorant.

So he's referring to

growing up in Asia Minor, thinking about the whole thought world

of having your view of reality governed by the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities.

One day they like you, one day they don't.

It's a pretty terrifying world to live in.

Don't conform to that anymore.

And this is slavery to

death.

That's what he's going to call it in just a moment.

Just a moment, yeah.

Down in verse 17.

Because you call on a father

who judges every person's work without partiality.

You should live out your time as immigrants here in reverent fear.

So

God's going to hold us accountable without partiality.

You're just an immigrant here.

He opens the letter saying to the exiles.

So viewing our time and existence in this phase of creation as a sojourner.

He says, because you know that it wasn't with corruptible things like silver or gold that you were redeemed.

And then when he says what you have been redeemed from, it's closely aligned with what Paul just said in Titus.

He says, you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you by your ancestors.

Okay.

That's what you're redeemed from.

From.

That's what you're possessed by now.

Yeah, or what you were possessed.

Yeah, that's right.

So maybe let's just go with that middle part before we talked about silver and gold versus something else.

So the Pharaoh figure here, you're enslaved to and need to be repossessed.

Evil desires, an empty way of life handed by your ancestors.

Yeah.

So this is very similar to Paul's, you were redeemed from every kind of lawlessness.

Yeah.

He's naming a pattern of behaviors and here a multi-generational cultural tradition

as like

the way to be human.

Right.

It's just so interesting that it's human behavior patterns that become the enslaver

because other times it's you're set free from the power of the devil.

Other times it's you're set free from death.

But here it's you're set free from the way of life that you were raised into,

which has underneath it then, well, where does that way of life lead?

Right.

Yeah.

What

is the energizing force behind that way of life?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

It's a package deal.

The fact is, you were redeemed from that empty way of life, but it wasn't with money.

You can't redeem someone from death with money.

With money.

Death doesn't need your money.

Nope.

Death will be a shepherd, feeds on you and takes you to the grave.

You can't bribe that shepherd.

So it wasn't with money that you were redeemed from that way of life, but rather with the valuable, the precious blood of the Messiah.

So the blood being compared to money makes you think of the blood as currency.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And when you start thinking of the blood as currency, it's easy to slip in and go, oh yeah, because death needed to get paid off.

That's right.

And then you can easily, I think, fall into a way of thinking about the death of Jesus as

satisfying the

anger of a God who says, well, someone's got to die around here.

And if it's not going to be you, it's going to be my son.

Right?

Am I filling that out?

Okay.

So let's pause.

Let's notice that when he says it wasn't with corruptible things like silver, gold that you were redeemed, it was with the precious blood.

The point of drawing those two into relationship is not to say that they're similar.

The point is to say that they are not similar at all.

They couldn't be more different.

It's not with silver or gold.

It's rather with this other thing.

In other words, the point of drawing them into relationship is to say that they're fundamentally different.

Yeah.

Okay, because you could say they are maybe fundamentally different in how valuable they are.

Okay.

But they're still two different ways to think about currency.

That's right.

That's right.

And are you saying, no, one's a currency, one's fundamentally different?

Yeah, what does valuable blood

of a royal priestly representative mean?

Because remember, blood is life.

The fundamental association with blood is not death as such, but rather is an image of a life.

And we know that life is without blemish or defect.

It's a blameless life

that ought not to die.

So we're kind of underneath that story world here,

which is why we'll look at Hebrews next.

So the blameless life that was led

by the Son of God, the royal priestly Messiah of Israel on behalf of all humanity, that was the means of God repossessing.

And I'm now can identify with that life.

That blood can cover the door of my house.

It can cover me.

And when death comes, it's not that he's like, oh, okay, I'm going to take that.

Instead, he goes, oh, I can't touch this.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

Because this

is not mine.

Yeah.

This is blameless life.

Yeah.

And if you're in that house,

I can't go in.

Yep.

You're not paying death off.

You're holding death back.

Yeah, you're saying this life doesn't belong to you.

Here's a life that doesn't belong to you.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

So by saying lamb, he's evoking the Passover.

Yeah.

Because the Day of Atonement, for example, was with goats.

And

the other atoning sacrifices could be lamb, rams, or goats, or bulls or cows.

So he's evoking Passover particularly by talking about a lamb without blemish.

That's right out of Exodus 12.

So I'm just saying out loud why your mind went to Passover just a moment ago with the blood on the house.

But the point is that the precious blood of the Messiah that is blameless didn't belong to death.

But yet the Messiah willingly surrendered his life to death on behalf of those who actually do rightfully belong to death.

Yeah, you said it's fundamentally different.

You can imagine

the Israelite standing at the door.

The darkness is coming, the destroyer.

And then he says, here, take these coins.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

Good.

Good.

And the destroyer would

be like, I don't want your coins.

I don't care about coins.

Like, I'm just taking what is mine,

which is people who are enslaved to me.

And you're all coming with me.

There's no amount of coins.

Yep.

Yeah.

But the blood of the lamb,

blameless lamb.

And I love the picture of then the destroyer coming and going,

I can't come in.

Yep.

Yeah.

This doesn't belong to me.

This blood does not belong to me.

And people in this house now don't belong to me.

That's great.

Thank you for for that.

In other words, the blood is functioning in the same slot as the thing that redeems.

Yeah.

The means by which the repossessing takes place.

Right.

But the way that it does it is fundamentally different.

Fundamentally different.

One is you pay it off and you give it something of equal value.

With the precious blood, it's, yeah, this doesn't belong to death, so just hands off.

Yeah.

I'm taking back

what's mine.

What's mine?

And what is mine is the thing that I love, which is why I'm taking it back.

And what's what's mine is the people who will go into the house.

Yeah, that's right.

Paint the blood on the door.

That's right.

That's what's mine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

That is cool.

Thank you for that little parable.

That was just a good meditation on this passage in light of Passover and trying to make it real concrete.

No, that's it.

Okay, so let's get cosmic.

It wasn't cosmic.

So the precious blood of the Messiah, who was a lamb without blemish or defect, you know what?

That lamb was chosen before the world was ever created.

Okay.

But was apocalypsed in these last days for your sake.

Like God saw this coming?

This has been taken two completely different directions

in the course of Christian theology.

But what seems clear is that

it was always a part of the divine plan

that God would create and join God's own self into union with that creation in the person of the eternal son.

Like death and violence is not a surprise to God.

Yeah.

And then the, you know, it's funny.

I was introduced to these two words, I think somewhere within the first year of following Jesus.

I had no framework for them.

Supralapsarian and infralapsarian.

Wow.

Yeah, you hung out with different people that I was hanging out with.

No, this is with a mentor of both yours and mine.

Oh, well, we didn't have this conversation.

It's whether God decreed that he would save creation through the incarnate Jesus after

human sin

or before human sin.

Okay.

In other words, was God's purpose to become one, incarnate, with creation in the person of the Son?

Was that a knowledge and a decree made within God that whether humans had rebelled or not?

In other words, is the incarnation only a response to human sin?

Or was it always in the divine plan to become one with creation in intimate union?

And I think what we've been saying is the whole point is, yes, to always become one.

But what if

the images of God,

through listening to God's voice, through a heart that listens,

could

find that union and progress towards that union,

then

God,

God's self, and the eternal word wouldn't have to suffer into death for the union to happen.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that is the supralapsarian view.

Okay.

So lapsarian lapsus means sin in Latin.

Oh.

Like a lapse.

Like a lapse of judgment.

Lapse of judgment, yeah.

So super lapse means God's decision to become one with his creation is before, above, and beyond human sin.

Infra means within.

So it was a decision made within the reality that humans have rebelled.

Okay.

What's interesting is just once you really start trying to put together the biblical story in logically coherent ways, you realize there's these gaps in clarity in many passages of the Bible that can be filled in in different ways.

And this passage raises an interesting question, which is, it was in the divine mind that God would become one with creation in the person of the Son.

From the beginning.

From the beginning.

But that opens up a couple different possibilities.

Okay, anyway,

let's go to the letter to the Hebrews.

And we're going to see a meditation on the same set of issues with the word redemption in the mix.

But instead of thinking Passover, we now need to transport ourselves into

the Day of Atonement.

Okay.

So let's pause, refresh the slate, and pivot into Hebrews 9 and the Day of Atonement.

Okay, the Day of Atonement stands at the center of the center of the Torah in the Hebrew Bible.

And it is a ritual that happened annually in ancient Israel where the high priest would do a bunch of things with a bunch of different animals ritually.

But the main event to deal with the sin of Israel that had accumulated over the last year was related to two goats.

They both are spotless, blameless, like the lamb, the Passover lamb.

But one of them, the priest, puts his hand on and confesses all the sins of Israel and is said to put them on the goat.

And then that goat is exiled and sent out into the wilderness for Azaz El.

That guy.

Yeah, totally.

Which

is darkness.

Oh, yeah.

Actually, Azaz means powerful.

And El means deity.

Some divine, powerful being out in the wilderness.

So that's the goat associated with Israel's sin.

That doesn't go anywhere near the tabernacle.

That goes as far away.

It's exiled like Adam and Eve and the snake.

But then this other blameless lamb who's associated with purity and life, its life is transformed in two ways.

Its life ascends up into heaven.

So it's killed, and it's transformed through the fire into smoke that rises up into the skies.

It goes up and it goes in.

Then its blood, which is a symbol of its life, is taken into the holy place.

Then through the clouds of incense,

which is a symbol of it ascending through the the clouds up into the sky.

You go through the blue curtain,

the veil

that has heavenly creatures on it.

You're going into the heavens, and then you go into the throne room of God,

which is in the skies, the Holy of Holies, which also has heavenly creatures surrounding it, like cherubim.

And

you apply the blood there.

And all of that is a symbolic retelling of humanity's re-entry into

God's throne.

Into God's throne.

You pass by the fire.

You pass by the sword.

Through the fire.

Yeah, sorry.

Through the fire and sword, like the knife that slits the throat of the animal.

The sword.

It's the fiery sword at the boundary of the garden.

Yep, that's right.

Past the cherubim

into

the center of the garden.

Back to life.

Yeah.

And then that blameless life appeals before God, and God takes that blameless life as a representative

for all the people outside and says.

So you guys can be near to.

That's it.

That's the Dave Atonement.

Okay.

So the author of the letter to the Hebrews, I'm just going to call him the pastor.

The pastor is showing in many ways, but especially in chapters 8 through 10, about how...

Jesus is the royal priest, but not of the tribe of Levi.

He is an Israelite, but he's not of the tribe of Levi.

He is the divine human royal priest that the Hebrew Bible was pointing towards.

And he did something that Israel's priests pointed towards through the rituals, but could only point towards and not ever do themselves.

That's the context.

So Hebrews 9, 11 begins a train of thought that uses the word redemption, and that's why we're looking at this.

So in chapter 9, verse 11, the pastor says that when the Messiah appeared as a high priest of the good things that are coming, that's a radical line.

Hmm, the new creation?

Yeah.

Yeah.

He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle.

Meaning God's actual throne room.

Yeah.

Okay.

Not the one made with hands.

Yeah.

That is to say, not of this creation.

He entered into the thing that Moses saw.

Remember, but the tabernacle was a blueprint based on some thing.

God's cosmic throne.

Got it.

Yep.

He entered through the greater tabernacle, and then the...

That's his ascension after death.

He's referring to the combined meaning of his resurrection and ascension.

Yeah, that's important.

Okay.

So first he says what he entered through and then makes a bunch of contrasts.

He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle.

No, not the one made with hands.

And also not through the blood of goats.

and calves.

Yeah, because that's what the tabernacle used.

Yeah.

But rather through his own blood.

So there's a contrast.

Right.

Not through the blood of animals, but through his own blood.

Yeah.

You're saying we've watched animals go through.

Yeah.

And it means them being burned up into smoke, their blood going up to the throne room.

Yeah.

So let's pause right here.

And maybe I would just link back to our conversations about the meaning of the sacrifices

from our series on Leviticus.

from you know a couple years ago but the whole point was that the offering of the sacrifices was not to satisfy the anger of a deity who's like, I got to kill somebody.

Something's got to die.

Yeah, because the sacrifices and the death of the animals themselves were not sufficient to do what they were meant to do if they weren't aligned with the heart posture of the offerer.

And we know this because

Isaiah and Amos.

among all the prophets, have these poems that rail against the offering of sacrifices

when when your life and heart posture don't match what the meaning of the sacrifice is.

So, for example, just as a quick thing, in Isaiah chapter 1, Isaiah says to the leaders of Israel, What are your sacrifices to me?

In 1 verse 11, I've had enough of the burnt offerings, those atoning sacrifices of rams and the fat of cattle.

I have no pleasure in the blood

of bulls, lambs, or goats.

Why are you appearing before me and trampling my courts and you could say well you told us to yeah like all of this is stuff you told us that's why

I hate your new moon festivals your appointed feasts I hate Passover

it's a burden to me I'm tired of having to carry this

when you spread out your hands in prayer I'm going to hide my eyes.

You multiply prayers.

I'm not listening because your hands are covered with blood, which is surely an ironic twist because we're talking about sacrifices.

This is referring to violence towards each other.

Yeah.

So then just famous lines, wash yourselves, remove the evil deeds from my sight, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

Repent.

Yeah,

and listen to my voice.

Yeah.

And do what the Torah

asks of you.

Yeah.

So sacrifices are only meaningful if they're joined and offered by someone whose life becomes a mirror of what the sacrifice symbolizes,

which is a posture of repentance and surrender and of aligning myself with the desire and the will of God and not my own.

So that's important then in saying it wasn't through the blood of goats and calves that the Messiah entered into the heavenly tabernacle.

It was through his own blood, which is a symbol of his life.

Well, what kind of life did the Messiah lead?

It was a life completely aligned with the will of the Father.

It was a life of repentance on behalf of those who

can't and don't repent.

I'm just saying all that's buried in that little phrase there to kind of retrain our minds for what it means to say redeemed by the blood.

So

that's what he says next.

So it's through his own blood that he entered the holy place once and for all, having obtained not just redemption.

This is a unique turn of phrase in the Bible.

Eternal redemption.

Come on.

Eternal.

Permanent repossession.

Okay.

Yeah.

How could God ensure that this won't all happen again?

Because if God just were to snap his fingers and say, redeemed, without having permanently changed the heart of his covenant partner, then this will all just replay again.

Yeah.

I think you've asked this question before.

I've certainly been asked it and wondered it myself.

You know, let's go to the last pages of the Bible, new creation, no more tears, Garden of Eden, heaven on earth.

What's to prevent it all from going wrong again?

Yeah.

Like, are we just back to a Garden of Eden setup?

But

what if somebody,

human or spiritual being, decides to peel off and do their own thing again?

What's to prevent that from happening?

What's the difference between the Garden of Eden and the New Eden?

And the difference between those two moments in the biblical story is that in the Garden of Eden, God was with his people, like Adam and Eve's creation.

But in the new creation, God

is one of his people.

He has

recreated and repossessed creation and humans in a way that has fundamentally changed who they are.

But in another sense, to become who they truly are as images of God.

But it's about that repentance, that union of desire and will.

Yeah.

So this is all meditation on the phrase eternal redemption.

Eternal redemption.

Okay.

Meaning that it won't ever have to redo it again.

What will make it last?

What will make it eternal?

What makes it eternal?

Versus just a temporary redemption.

Isn't eternal, isn't that word itself like mean of the age?

Yes.

And the age is an age that lasts.

Exactly.

It's an enduring,

everlasting age.

Yeah.

No, that's an interesting.

Because he did this once and for all, one and done.

So whatever Jesus did doesn't need to ever be redone again.

That's a big theme that he uses to contrast the Day of Atonement, which has to happen year after year after year.

So whatever's happening on the Day of Atonement, it's not actually fixing the problem.

It's pointing to a problem and then pointing to the type of solution that we need, but it doesn't actually provide that solution.

Say that again.

The author to the Hebrews, in using this phrase, eternal redemption, joins it with this phrase, Jesus did what he did once and for all.

And that's a major theme in the Hebrews.

And he's constantly contrasting that once and for all

with the ritual sacrifices in the tent that have to happen day after day and year after year,

which means that the blood of goats

in those rituals is pointing to a problem

and pointing to a type of solution, which is a surrendered life of a human, the human offerer.

But it's not actually providing the solution.

It's just pointing to it.

Got it.

Actually, this is what he goes on to say next.

He says, if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are defiled, if that could make holy for the purification of the flesh, like if God will accept these symbolic lives of blameless animals, how much more will the blood of the Messiah

purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Okay.

And then he describes the Messiah, who he says, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God.

So the point isn't just somebody has to die.

The point is somebody needs to live a life fully turned towards God.

Like, that's what this is really about.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And okay, so let's join that to the Peter passage and our little house parable.

Yeah.

Now we're back to why would the life of a blameless lamb, which is a symbol of the life of the blameless son of God, why would that cover for others who go into the house?

It covers for them, not because it pays off or satisfies Pharaoh.

It's the opposite.

It's that Pharaoh has no claim on that.

Pharaoh, you mean the destroyer.

The destroyer.

Yeah, that's right.

So how is...

The redemption brought about through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, how's that different than me repossessing something by giving somebody money?

Is life like money?

Well, Psalm 49 said no.

Can't buy life with money.

You can't buy it.

There's no currency,

but there is

something that can stand in the door

and can

keep you safe.

And it's not really an exchange anymore.

In a way.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just just like a,

it's a full-on just rescue.

It's full-on saying, you thought you owned this.

You don't own it anymore.

It's in my house.

Yeah.

This is.

You being the snake.

The snake.

And the death.

The death.

The plague.

You

rightfully thought you owned this now because this person was fully entwined with your desires, but that person's now united in my life.

You don't own my life.

So

you can't take this anymore.

Yeah, you know, I brought up C.S.

Lewis a couple times in the last few conversations.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Asalan, the lion, who's the Jesus divine Messiah figure,

talks about why he's going to go die on behalf of...

All of the land of Narnia and the people, why he's going to let the wicked witch kill him.

The white witch.

The white witch, yeah, totally.

He talks about how there is a deeper magic from before the dawn of time.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

And that's the explanation.

Yeah.

You're just like, what?

But what Lewis is putting his thumb on there are these themes from these passages we just looked at in Peter and in Hebrews.

He's not paying off the witch.

He's giving the witch what she thinks belongs to her,

but it doesn't actually belong to her, which means he can pick up his life and take it it back.

And then let that life cover for

and

enfold

all of the others in Narnia

who want to go on a ride into the new creation.

Something like that.

But I love this because the lifeblood of the Messiah stands in the slot of this item of exchange, but really it's breaking the whole notion of exchange.

It's just saying this, I'm I'm taking back what's mine.

Yeah.

It doesn't truly belong to you, snake or death.

And it's doing the thing that we would have to do, but really can't do.

Yeah, that's right.

Which is align our hearts with God's will

and then

to go through death, which has entangled us,

up and back into the garden.

Yeah.

Back into God's throne room.

And we're just incapable of doing it.

Yeah.

And so God

says, I'm going to do it for you.

And then you can do it with me because I did it for you.

Yeah.

That's right.

Which is why redemption can be said to be you were redeemed out of the possession of sin or death, like in Paul.

But you can also be redeemed from a way of life, which is the kind of human life that keeps leading you back into slavery.

The release of sin.

Yes.

The release from sin, the forgiveness of sin.

Yeah, that's right.

Yep.

And be released from this.

Yeah.

This theme isn't about union with God.

What does it mean to be united in his death?

Yeah.

And then also be united in his life.

I think that's a whole nother layer of yes.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

But that's what it means to be purchased by the blood,

be redeemed by the blood, to become God's possession.

Become God's possession

in the way that Jesus suffered and died.

To do that with him.

In union with him.

That's the way through.

Yeah.

And maybe there, yeah, it gets mystical real quick.

I'm just thinking of, you know, moments where Paul will say, you know, I died with the Messiah.

And you're like, really?

I think you're still alive.

And he's like, nope.

No, I was crucified to the world and the world's crucified to me.

And the life that I'm now living is actually the Son of God living in and through me.

So my life isn't really fully my life, which it never really was in the first place, if you think about it.

You know, we think that it is.

But now that it's been repossessed, it's me and the Messiah living in me somehow at the same time.

And he could also talk about that, though, as then just like the first fruits of of a release from

death.

That's not going to come until the whole resurrection of his body.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's right.

When he really will have died

and now be alive to Christ.

So it's like he is dead

and alive to Christ.

Yeah.

He will go through death and be fully alive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like the moment where his physical embodied form catches up with his

mind and heart and spirit are, which are in union with the Messiah.

Yeah.

So the redemption has happened

and we're still waiting to be redeemed.

And creation is waiting for that final moment of redemption as well.

The transfer of possession,

the repossession.

So maybe here we're at that place we always come to in theme videos where

they all merge together.

Oh, it's a hard place.

We're trying to separate redemption out from this theme of all these others.

Salvation, right?

Rescue

and

the return to Eden, repentance, union with Christ.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And maybe it's because

these are all, to use another metaphor, facets, little angled facets on a diamond

that are all about one thing.

Really?

Yeah.

I need to go take a long walk.

There are many beautiful truths that I hope even as we continue, there is something here to keep thinking about for a long time.

Thanks for hanging with us on this journey through the theme of redemption.

We've got a new theme video on redemption.

It's going to release on YouTube in a couple of weeks.

But in the meantime, our team has made some study resources, fun behind-the-scenes content, and it's going to be releasing over the next couple of weeks.

So keep an eye out for that.

You can join us on social.

Make sure you're on our email list.

And you can find it all at BibleProject.com slash redemption.

Next week, we're having a special hyperlink episode.

We've talked about many themes in the Bible.

And so we're going to look at how the theme of redemption has showed up in previous conversations.

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