REDEMPTION BY PRICE – Charles Spurgeon
REDEMPTION BY PRICE
“You are not your own: for you are bought with a price.” – 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20.
Attacks have often been made upon the central doctrine of the Gospel, namely, the doctrine of Redemption or Atonement, for it is well-known to be the crux of the Gospel. These onslaughts have, in many instances, been very craftily made. They have professed to be mere corrections of our phraseology, but were essentially assaults upon the Truth of God itself. We believe that in and through the blood of Jesus, we have redemption, and that we have been ransomed from destruction by the Mediator’s death, the Lord Jesus having bought us by the suit and service which He rendered in our place and on our behalf.
The Mercantile Theory of Atonement
When we speak very plainly upon this point, certain pretentious Divines, whose custom it is to sneer at the old theology, at once raise objections to what they are pleased to call, “the mercantile theory of Atonement.” With weak minds, an ugly phrase stands for argument, but in this case, there is really nothing horrible in the description, even if it is allowed all its force. There may have been, among us, certain persons who carried ideas of the shop and the counter into their notion of redemption, but we maintain that even these were nearer the Truth of God than those who reduce the ransom paid by the Lord Jesus to nothing and make His Redemption a meaningless figure of speech.
Within the idea of purchase lies hidden the essence of the Savior’s work, and therefore it is to be adhered to. He is coming again to complete the Redemption of the purchased possession, and we shall not forego our hope to please the squeamish. Paul, at any rate, was not afraid of the mercantile theory, if men so please to call it, for he writes, “You are bought,” yes, to make it still more sure, he puts it, “bought with a price.” This is put very strongly, and there is no planing it down. If it means anything, it must mean that a price was paid for us!
The Reality of the Redemption
Instead of our being forever captives under bondage and death, a Ransom has been found, according to that ancient saying, “Deliver him from going down to the Pit—I have found a ransom.” The song of Heaven is no idle rhapsody. Listen how they chant the solemn hymn before the Throne of God and the Lamb, saying, “You are worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof: for You were slain and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation.” Was it not said of Him while He was here below, “The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many”? There was a substitutionary Sacrifice presented on the behalf of His people by Jesus Christ, who thus redeemed His chosen from their lost estate. This was a matter of fact and an efficacious action, actually ransoming those who were redeemed.
We do not believe in a cloudy, phantom-like Atonement, which did something or nothing and was a mere exhibition without results. We believe that Jesus did actually redeem His people by a Ransom, which Ransom was His suffering and death in their place, by which the justice of God was satisfied and His Law was honored. If there were no other text in Scripture, the one which is now before us would abundantly justify us in using those very expressions which have been ridiculed as mercantile—“You are not your own: for you are bought with a price.” Though we were not redeemed with corruptible things, as with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, yet the transaction was, none the less, real and effective. An equivalent was given, a possession was secured.
Objections to the Doctrine of Substitution
The fact is, the objection is not merely to the mercantile expression—the objection is to the very idea of Substitution and a vicarious Sacrifice. The pretense is that mistaken words are criticized, but it is a mere pretense—the gun is aimed at Christ’s bearing Divine Wrath in our place—this is the doctrine which they cannot endure! They will have to aim very often and burst their cannon before they will be able to destroy our belief in the truth of Substitution while we have the 53rd chapter of Isaiah remaining in the Bible and other passages of sacred Scripture to the same effect. Even if they could disprove the Doctrine of Vicarious Suffering and show that Substitution is an ignorant fancy, the best thing they could do would be to wring their hands in agony because they had blotted out the brightest star that ever shone amid the storm-wreck of a tempestuous conscience.
No Truth of God within the circle of theology is so eminently consolatory to souls burdened with sin as the great fact that Jesus Christ bore the sins of many and carried away, on His own shoulders, the transgressions of His people. Let others believe or disbelieve, I nail my colors to the Cross where Jesus, my Lord, paid His blood as a price for me!
The Costliness of Man’s Redemption
It is a high honor to our poor fallen race that man is the only redeemed creature in the universe! He, alone, has cost the Lord His life! Rebellious angels kept not their first estate—they are left to their doom and no price has ever been paid for them. Other angels, sustained by God’s power, still keep their high position in His sacred courts, but they are not redeemed by blood. In them, there is an exhibition of Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, but there is no display of Free Grace and dying love. Only man stands in this respect—nowhere else is the blood-mark—the blood-mark of the Son of God! We, alone, are the flock of God which He has redeemed with His own blood!
Therefore, man cost God more than the whole universe besides. The Lord could speak worlds into existence. He could mold ponderous orbs as one rolls clay between His palms, or create constellations as the smith strikes off sparks from the anvil—but to erect the new creation of redeemed men, God must endure the loss of His own Son—resign His Beloved to death! And in the Person of the Only-Begotten, He must ransom men by His own sufferings! I may not venture, now, to describe the agonies of the Incarnate God, but all these were necessary to redeem man. The Lord has given more than Ethiopia or Seba for us, for He has given Himself!
The Marvelous Work of Redemption
Think of yourself, my dear Friend, (if, indeed, you have believed in Christ), as being a singularity in the realm of beings, a special wonder in the creation! You, alone, can say, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Neither in the earth nor in the stars, however, they may be peopled, nor in yonder golden streets, are there any beings except men who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. We are the costliest of creatures! We are dearest to God, for He has spent most upon us and made us the choice objects of His heavenly expenditure.
This work of Redemption is a very marvelous one, for the more one tries to study it, the more its many-sidedness appears. In what respects and under what aspects have we been ransomed? Time would fail me to recount them all. We have been redeemed, we know, in reference to Divine Justice. We had violated God’s Law and, therefore, there was a punishment to be exacted from us. This punishment the Lord Jesus has endured in our place. “The Lord has made to meet on Him the iniquities of us all.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes we are healed.”
The Redemption of the Believer’s Soul and Body
We are justified, or reckoned as just through the Redemption which is in Christ Jesus! Our great Redeemer has done, for the honor of the Law, more than all of us put together could have done, and this stands as a ransom for us—so that we may go free because He has suffered in our place whatever was due from us to the Law of God. This is a blessed aspect of Redemption and one which we hope to always keep prominent in our thoughts and in our teaching. “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree.” May the Holy Spirit teach us to value this great Redemption!
Redemption from the Power of Evil
Furthermore, we are redeemed from the power of evil, even as the Holy Spirit says in the Epistle to Titus, “He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” This Redemption may be said to be not so much Redemption by price as by power, yet even in this, there are signs of price, for the Apostle says, “He gave Himself for us.” It is true that no price was paid to Satan—that is not to be imagined for an instant! We were never the devil’s rightful possession and, therefore, he is compelled to let go of his captives neither for price or reward.
We have been brought out from under the power of evil even as Israel was brought out from under the tyranny of Pharaoh. No redemption money was paid to the Egyptian king, but the Lord redeemed His people with a high hand and a stretched-out arm—it was a case of redemption by power and yet that smear of blood made by the hyssop on the lintel and the two side posts still indicated that price went hand in hand with power and the blood of Atonement was needed as well as the rod of Omnipotence.
In our deliverance from evil, it is not only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we are delivered, but He applies the blood as a cleansing power. The Lord Jesus is “made unto us sanctification and redemption.” Of those who conquer sin and Satan, it is said, “they overcame by the blood of the Lamb.” Grace breaks the yoke from off the neck of the Believer, but the finger of delivering Grace is dipped in blood and leaves Redemption’s token wherever it comes.
The Price of Redemption: A Call to Surrender
Do you see it? Know you not that you are not your own—the price paid in Gethsemane and Calvary has set you apart? Another phase of this Redemption, which we do not often think of, seems to me to be suggested by the text. There was a time, Brothers and Sisters, when we thought ourselves to be our own. Now, says my text, “You are not your own.” “Because you are ‘bought with a price.’” Bought from whom? May I not fairly say that, in one sense, you were bought from yourselves?
Through the Redemption which is in Christ Jesus, a compensation has been given to you for yourselves, so that your rights to yourselves are now the property of your Lord Jesus! That independence and liberty which you once delighted in is now surrendered. You said, “Our lips are our own—who is Lord over us? Who is the Lord that we should obey His voice? As for us, we will be free and do according to our own wills!” But the matchless Ransom has been paid and all idea of self-will and self-indulgence are trespasses upon the enclosed possession of the Redeemer.
Our vested interest in ourselves, though it never was a true property at all, is once and for all surrendered to Him who has laid down His life for us! We have received at the Lord’s hands a thousand-fold for all that we hand over to Him—the price is so great, so altogether beyond all computation—that we gladly yield our unworthy selves to be the Lord’s forever and ever.
The Force of the Truth: We Are Bought with a Price
I shall need you to remember this form of redemption and to that end I will set it first among the points to which I shall call your attention. Dear Brothers and Sisters, let us try, at this time, to feel the force of the Truth of God that we are bought with a price and are not our own, for it must not remain a dead letter. It ought to affect our hearts and influence our lives. I shall try to set it forth to you in a series of contrasts which I may compare to the double glasses of a stereoscope—they will, I trust, aid you in seeing more clearly and feeling more forcibly. We can never be too much affected by this important practical Truth of God. O that the Spirit of God would press it home upon our hearts and consciences!
Compensation and Yet Gain
First, I see in the text COMPENSATION AND YET GAIN. Compensation is intended to make good a loss, but in our case, the transfer of ourselves from self to Christ is a clear gain. Compensation, then, first—“You are not your own: for you are bought with a price.” You have surrendered, as Believers, your right and property in yourselves. Have you made a good bargain? Assuredly you have, for, first of all, you live and, had you retained your supposed right to yourself, you would have died! He that saves his life in such a sense, by keeping it to himself, shall lose it. You were, in fact, already dead while you lived, because you were living in pleasure and finding that pleasure in yourself. But now the Lord has given you a new, high, noble, Divine life. Is not that a compensation, indeed, for giving up the groveling life of the flesh?
He has given you, in addition to life, peace—you are now at rest in Jesus. As a Believer, you know that your sins are forgiven for Christ’s name’s sake, that the Father Himself loves you, that you are accepted in the Beloved and safe in Jesus’ hands! You enjoy great peace—deep, lasting, ever-flowing. Is it not much better to have peace and to be Christ’s than to be like the troubled sea that cannot rest and belong to yourself?
One drop of sacred peace is an abundant recompense for the yielding up of yourself to Jesus. In addition to peace, you have joy. Sometimes when it is at flood, your happiness is as much as you can bear—you know what it is to be carried off your feet by a whirlwind of intense delight when you are musing upon your Lord and His love to you and the price paid to win you. Oh, the joy, the unutterable blessedness which is the fruit of the Spirit! What delights grow on the bitter tree, the cross! No clusters of the vine can equal the fruit of Calvary’s Cross!
I am sure that whatever earthly joys you have given up, you are abundantly compensated for them all by the joy you find in the purchase price which Christ Jesus gave for you. And then you have a grand reversion—a hope which looks across the stream of death to a better land—a hope of immortality with Christ, of likeness to Him and association with Him and glory with Him forever! Why, my Friend, if there had been a kingdom to renounce; if there had been a world of self-denials and 10,000 pleasant things to be given up, you might have been well content to be repaid by such a price! You have received for your little, the fullness which is in Christ who is All in All—yes, the polluting joys, the dangerous independence, the rebellious indulgences of sin at their best and all put together are not worthy to be compared with the matchless endowments which your Redeemer has bestowed upon you! Today you possess all that the blood of Jesus confers and effects and I cannot, in a few words, tell you the whole of that treasury of Grace!
The Price of Redemption: A Call to Surrender
The price which Jesus paid means cleansing—“The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Is it not better to be cleansed and to be the Lord’s than to be filthy and be your own? The blood of Jesus brings us near to God, for we are “made near by the blood of Christ.” Is it not better to be near to the Lord and belong to Jesus than to be in the far-off country with the swine and the husks and be your own? The blood has spoken peace—it “speaks better things than that of Abel.” Is it not better to be God’s and hear the blood cry, “Peace,” than to be your own and to hear a terrible sound in your ears of judgment to come?
The blood has given you entrance into the Most Holy Place, even into the very heart of God! And is it not better to be the Lord’s beloved and to come close to Him and speak with Him as a man speaks with his friend than to be your own and to be shut out from God and from the Glory of His Presence? Until the blood is sprinkled, no man may dare to approach the thrice holy God, but that once done, we have access with boldness! Is not this a joy?
Charles Spurgeon