Word of Encouragement (10/14/2021)

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

The praise of the four creatures and the twenty-four elders explicitly states what was hinted by the appearance of Jesus Christ, particularly as a Lamb: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation....” Jesus is presented as a Lamb because He was slain. He was not slain in a tragic accident; He was slain to offer up His life as a ransom. This ransom was to set free a people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

That He had to pay ransom for our freedom shows what kind of trouble we were in. We were in bondage—the kind of bondage we could not just run away from. It was different from the bondage that the Israelites were under in Egypt. We can say that their bondage was illegitimate. They were not purchased as slaves with money. They were not conquered and taken as spoils of war. They were peaceful sojourners in Egypt until Pharaoh decided to make them slaves just because they were foreigners. But our bondage was legitimate. Our First Parents pledged their loyalty to Satan by listening to his words rather than God’s; they sold themselves as slaves of sin by sinning against God. And we were born as slave-children of Adam and Eve. And we confirmed our slavery to Satan and sin by “following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience..., [living] in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:1-3).

There was no way to be free from such bondage apart from a proper ransom. But what would constitute a proper ransom? We can know what it is by the ransom Jesus paid for us. He had to pay it with His own life, by being slain for our ransom. Our ransom required nothing less than the life of the eternal Son of God made man. Our ransom had to be the life of God’s divine Son, who is infinite in value as God, because our sin, as an offense against the infinite honor of God, is infinitely wicked. Our ransom had to be the life of God’s eternal Son because our sin, as an offense against the infinite honor of God, deserves eternal damnation in hell. We can see why no one other than the eternal Son of God was found to be worthy to open the scroll.

If the eternal Son of God paid our ransom with His life, we are indeed free from the bondage of Satan and sin once for all! Satan has nothing on us. Sin cannot claim any right over us. You are free—not to live according to your sinful desires but to serve the One, who laid down His life as a ransom for your life and rose again from the dead so you might live in newness of life! “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness” (Rom. 6:12-13)

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