When I was a boy pedaling newspapers in 1973 a crime came to the forefront that found the newspapers for months spilling ink. As my habit was always to read the paper thoroughly before delivering them I followed with interest the kidnapping case of John Paul Getty III, the grandson of Billionaire J. Paul Getty. The kidnappers initially demanded a ransom of $17 million for his release and through twists and turns that included receiving the ear of the 16 y/o grandson in the mail, the Billionaire finally negotiated a 2.2 million dollar ransom price for his grandson. The kidnappers were paid and the boy released. He was ransomed…. that is a ransom price was paid in order the he might be redeemed from those who had imprisoned him and had treated him so cruelly.
The idea of ransom that we read here in Mark 10:45;
“The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
Is found through out the Scripture.
In the OT the concept of redemption and of ransom as the price paid in order to purchase back something that was captured is found in the Hebrew word “Kopher.” This word is often translated as “ransom” and communicates the idea of the price paid to secure the release of something or someone. So this idea of a ransom price paid for release goes way back.
In Ex. 21:30 we read how the law provided for a ransom payment be paid in order to redeem a life.
“If payment is demanded of him, he may redeem his life by paying the full amount demanded of him.”
This idea of ransom as the price paid for redemption was a center piece in the the OT sacrificial system as we read in Leviticus 17:11
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.”
Here we learn that God’s people were atoned for and so redeemed by means of a sacrifice that served as a ransom price paid. The sins of the people were symbolically covered because the ransom price was paid — a ransom price of sacrificial blood and redemption was secured.
However, this ransom principle was there in the great Hebrew Passover. There we find the Passover lamb being a type of Jesus. When Jesus says that He came to give His life a ransom for many his hearers should have connected in their minds the Passover lamb as the ransom price paid for the release of the Hebrews from their bondage, sin, and misery inflicted upon them by their Egyptian task masters.
Let us briefly collect here what we have learned about the idea of “ransom.”
The ransom price paid in Scripture was the price paid to redeem … to purchase back something or someone who had been captured and was in a onerous situation characterized by hardship and cruelty.
What we see here is that ransom and redemption in the Scripture goes together like peas and carrots. There is no redemption without a ransom price being paid. Without the shedding of blood as the ransom price there is no forgiveness or release from sin.
We have also learned already — though we are going to tease it out further — that this ransom that Jesus talks about giving Himself as in Mark 10:45 is another demonstration of how the Scripture speaks as one organic unit.
When Jesus speaks of being a ransom for many He does so in the context of it having been already said of Him by His cousin that “He was the lamb of God who had come to take aways the sins of the world” (John 1:29).
There at the beginning of His ministry Jesus is spoken of as that OT Passover sacrificial lamb whose mission was to pay the ransom price that would redeem God’s people by removing them from the prison-house of Satan and more importantly from the terrors of God’s just wrath.
From the very beginning of His ministry Jesus is marked out as the lamb who would pay the ransom price and then towards the end of His ministry Jesus says explicitly that He is the one who is going to pay the ransom price that would secure redemption for those who would sue for peace.
This idea of ransom and redemption has thus been building throughout the Scriptures. Like a blizzard that finally arrives with the coming of Jesus Christ the storm of salvation has been building and building throughout the OT. Part of that burgeoning storm that was promissory of Christ being a ransom was the idea of a ransom price that had to be paid in order to secure release from inflicted sin and misery and certain wrath to come that we find in the OT.
We find it explicitly in the OT sacrificial system where even though it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats could ever take away sin, still the blood of bulls and goats were types of one who was coming whose blood could pay the ransom price justly required by the Father and so take away sin.
Types… types… the work of Jesus Christ paying the ransom price that was sufficient was the anti-type of those earlier types. That is to say that Jesus as the lamb of God who gave Himself as a ransom for many was the fulfillment of all that was anticipated by pictures and symbols in the OT. In theological language they were the type … the movie trailer …. and Jesus is the anti-type … all that was promised in the movie trailer.
Or to use my earlier language, salvation is a blizzard coming but in the OT we get only the beginning of the falling snow… that falling snow is a promise of the blizzard coming but the blizzard is not yet here but the early snowfall promises its coming. All that blood, sacrifice, dead animals, in the OT were the first falling salvation snow that were predictive of the salvation blizzard coming that found its arrival in Jesus as that lamb who would serve as a ransom for many.
This is of interest to all Christians because it is by Christ’s paying of the ransom price that we are delivered from the dominion of darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear Son whom He loves. It is by this paying of the ransom price that we are redeemed from God’s just wrath against sin and sinners. Without Christ giving His life as a ransom for many we remained, like John Paul Getty III, held captive to the forces of destruction.
We pause again to emphasize what we have learned here. We have learned that the Scripture provide an organic unity that speaks of a coming salvation… a coming ransom. We have learned that that organic unity often uses the literary technique of type and anti-type. The type is the movie trailer… the anti-type is all that the movie trailer promises. We have learned that the Scriptures are like a coming blizzard of salvation. In the OT we have the first beginning snowfall that is promissory of the blizzard of salvation that will arrive in the coming of Jesus Christ to be the lamb of God who will give His life as a ransom for many.
If we wanted to we could talk about how the idea of ransom was already being hinted after the fall. There God promised a blizzard announcing the coming of a Messiah who would ransom His people by crushing the head of the serpent. There, after the fall, with Adam and Eve being covered by God with animal skins already there is a hint that without the shedding of blood there will be no forgiveness of sin. And that theme is developed as the theme of ransom is developed throughout the OT. The Passover lamb for the Hebrews is the ransom paid for release. Isaiah 53 explicitly talks about how this lamb who would pay the ransom price would be wounded for our transgressions and how by His stripes we would be healed.
What we have considered so far teaches us that apart from some kind of ransom paid there is no release of the penalty of sin that we are under.
Many are those who have come forward who have tried to insist that this idea of a ransom paid in order to being the price paid in order to release us from our sin and misery and God’s just wrath, is not required by Scripture. Yet, Jesus Himself here says that the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give Himself as a ransom for many.
Let’s spend a wee bit of time breaking that down;
First, we speak of Christ’s humiliation in His ransom
When Christ’s speaks of His paying the ransom price He is speaking of the final step downward in His work of humiliation. He was born under the law. He was despised and rejected by men. He was in all ways tempted like we yet without sin. Now, however He reaches the apex of his humiliation. He goes to the Cross to pay the ransom price for our redemption. There on the Cross, as our ransom price securing our redemption, the God man endures the turning away of the Father’s pleasure that those who would come under the Ransom peace might one day be comforted with knowing that the Father is pleased with them for the sake of Christ the ransom.
Second we speak of one particular of Christ’s ransom work
The particular I want to speak briefly of here is to whom is the ransomed paid. Some of the early church Fathers spoke of a theory of ransom and redemption that was called the “Ransom to Satan theory of the atonement.” In that theory this ransom price of Christ’s Cross death is paid to Satan as the one who has imprisoned God’s people in the dominion of Darkness. Christ deceives Satan by dying on the cross, becoming as it were bait that Satan might seize and yet the hook in the cross was the resurrection and Satan, being fooled has been plundered of His creaturely captives.
However, it is better to speak of Christ’s ransom price being paid to the Father because the great danger to those needing to be redeemed .. those needing to be ransomed was not being under Satan’s dominion but was rather being under the Father’s just wrath against Sin.
So, when it comes to the Ransom we do not speak as if that price was paid to Satan for our release from his cruelty though that certainly is one of the chief benefits. No, we speak instead of being ransomed from the Father’s just wrath against Sin. This was our greatest fear… and our greatest danger. But the Son pays the ransom price and by His stripes we are healed and God’s wrath is turned away from the Redeemed because it fell instead on the substitute.
So, this ransom was about glorifying God before it was about releasing man, though there was no glorifying God that did not eventuate in the releasing of His church. John Owen captured some of this in His catechism;
Q. In what does the exercise of his priestly office for us chiefly consist?
A. In offering up himself an acceptable sacrifice on the cross, so satisfying the justice of God for our sins, removing his curse from our persons, and bringing us unto him. — Chapter 13.
John Owen
Note that before Owen speaks about the curse being removed from our persons he notes that Christ satisfied the justice of God for our sins. There it is. Christ died for God. Theocentric thinking on the Cross.
This bring us to speak of Christ’s substitution in His ransom
When Jesus says He is going to give His life as a ransom for many He makes it clear He is going to die in their place … He is going to die for them … He is going to die in their stead. This all speaks of substitution. Christ is our ransom because He was our substitution. Christ for us, the hope of glory. An older word for this was the idea that Christ was our surety – one who acts in the place of another.
Because Jesus was our surety … because He acted in our place by paying the just ransom that we could never pay we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is provides one major reason why Christians worship Jesus Christ. They understand that if Jesus had not paid the ransom for them they would continue to be in danger of God’s current and future wrath as well as daily experiencing being under the dominion of Satan w/ all the misery thereof.
But Jesus came to give His life as a ransom for many and the Church is God’s many.
This bring us then to speak of the particularity in Christ’s ransom.
Jesus says here that He came to give His life as a ransom for many. He did not say here that He came to give His life as a ransom for all. This truth squashes the idea of Universalism — that doctrine that teaches that all men who have ever lived will be saved. All men will not be saved because Jesus did not come to die for all men but only for “the many.” Christ came to die for those who would, because of the Spirit’s Work, be convinced of their sin and so be done with themselves as their own god and who would in faith turn from their defiance of God and so know God’s favor.
This particularity of Christ’s ransom … that He gave His life as a ransom for many, and not for all, also puts a stake in the idea of Hypothetical universalism. This is the doctrine that Christ dies as a ransom for everybody without exception yet without everybody being ransomed. Should we believe this perversity that Christ died as a ransom for everybody but everybody is not ransomed we empty the worth of Christ’s ransom. We suggest that it is not really the ransom paid by Christ that rescues us but rather it was our agreement with the ransom that makes the ransom have the quality of ransom-ness. This belief is to empty the ransom of its potency placing that potency in not what Christ has paid for our redemption but in our concurrence with His potential payment.
Now let us turn to speak of one final implication of Christ’s ransom payment;
Christ pays the ransom price to the Father. That ransom price, as we have said, is the shedding of His own blood, because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. The payment of this ransom price delivers God’s particular people from God’s just wrath and from having residence in the dominion of darkness.
That ransom price is paid. The truth of that was echoed in our Lord’s cry, “It is finished.” The ransom price was paid. Now if the ransom price was paid in full this means that those who have come under the covering of the one who paid the ransom price in their place have had their ransom paid in full. The ransom having been paid, God’s just wrath is passed and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
What this then implies is that the ransom price having been paid there will never be any more yet to pay. This in turn means that once we have looked to Christ for release from the Father’s wrath we will never again be under the Father’s wrath for sins. It means further, that we will not lose what have been gained in our place. It means having been saved, we shall be saved. We will be preserved till the end and we will persevere. Christ having given His life as a ransom for many those many who have had a good work begin in them by Christ Jesus will run the race and finish the course. Having been ransomed … having tasted the goodness of God in the land of the living … having had our sins taken way, and God’s wrath turned away because of the ransomed paid we will never come under God’s judgment again. The ransom has been paid in full. Our sins, past, present, and future have been paid for and we now are the righteousness of God in Christ.
This ransom paying for our redemption as it does and delivering us from our sin and misery, delivering us from the dominion of darkness, and delivering us from God’s just wrath works in the redeemed a magnificent gratitude for this peace w/ God. Having been ransomed we now live the ransomed life. St. Paul ties these ideas together … the idea of having been ransomed and living a new life when he writes to the Corinthians;
20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
The idea is that having been ransomed … bought with a price … the effect of that ransom is walk as one who has ben brought back from the dead. Having been brought back from the dead we live unto and for God as His happy warriors.