Chapter 1: What does it mean that Jesus gave His life as a ransom?
The crisis of which Jesus preached was the crisis of an impending judgment of the world, at which point God is going to pour out His wrath against the unredeemed and the ungodly, the impenitent, and that the only hope of escape from the wrath of God was how? To be covered by the atonement of Christ.
At the center of the good news of the gospel is what Christ accomplished on the cross. To get this wrong, to distort it, is to destroy the gospel message. Christianity with no cross is no Christianity at all.
Chapter 2: How did Jesus prepare His disciples for His coming death?
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. R.C. Sproul, the founder of Ligonier Ministries, spent his entire ministry helping people understand the cross of Christ. And in this week's series, he dedicated six messages looking at the cross from different angles to help you in your devotion and love for the Lord.
as you see the beautiful scope of God's grace and to help you defend the biblical testimony of Christ's work on the cross against those who deny or downplay this monumental, essential, and central truth of Christianity.
So don't forget that you can own this series, Dr. Sproul's book, The Truth of the Cross, and his book, Holy Week, when you give a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind at renewingyourmind.org.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of the term 'ransom' in the New Testament?
But be quick, as this offer ends tomorrow. Well, Jesus told his disciples that he came to give his life as a ransom for many. What was this ransom, and to whom was it paid? Here's Dr. Sproul.
I'm sure that there were times in Jesus' life, particularly toward the close of his earthly ministry, when touching his human nature, he just had to be super frustrated. When he made his last trip from Galilee down to Jerusalem, he had an extended tour, as it were, of speaking along the way.
He constantly focused attention on his coming hour and prepared his disciples for the fact that he was going to Jerusalem to die. And somehow it just didn't get across to them.
Chapter 4: How does the concept of ransom relate to redemption?
They fought him every step of the way. And we read in Mark's gospel in the 10th chapter, after Jesus tells them again, he says in verse 32, they were on their way up to Jerusalem with Jesus leading the way. And the disciples were astonished while those who followed were afraid. And again, this is again he does it, he takes the 12 aside and told them what was going to happen to him.
We are going up to Jerusalem, he said, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him and spit on him, flog him, and kill him. Now, five minutes later, the disciples start arguing over who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom of God.
Can I sit at your right hand or can I sit at your left hand? Here is Christ preparing to enter into his grand passion and his closest friends are already arguing about the inheritance. And it was in this context that Jesus says something that is very significant for our understanding of the atonement.
Chapter 5: What are the different theories of atonement discussed?
He said, you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Now here, when Jesus, in his frustration, is trying to communicate to his disciples what his own ministry is all about, when Jesus must state succinctly and poignantly and graphically so that once and for all these dull-witted disciples of his will understand what he's about to do, he says it how. I came not to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many.
The word that is translated ransom here in Mark's gospel is rarely translated by this term, but the concept of the ransom is the root concept in the New Testament behind the broad term that we call redemption. In biblical categories, a redeemer is one who provides a ransom.
Chapter 6: What role does propitiation play in the atonement?
The word is lutron. that is translated here, ransom. And some of you who know your Greek, do you know any Greek? When you learn Greek in college or in seminary, they start off with the first book, you know, book one, volume one, and usually in the very first vocabulary list, the first verb that you learn in Greek, in most Greek textbooks, is the verb ransom. Luro, which means to loose.
The basic verb form is to loose, to set free, to unbind. And the concept of the ransom here is built upon this root of loosing something, setting something free that is held in captivity. Now in the ancient world, the idea of the ransom function very similar to what the idea of the ransom is in our own language.
Whenever we think of ransom, we think of kidnapping, where somebody steals a person and then demands payment for the free release of the hostage person.
Chapter 7: How does the concept of salvation vary in the Bible?
or of the person who is kidnapped. They expect a monetary payment. Now, that's the way it functioned in antiquity. Also, it functioned for a price that was paid to release a slave from bondage. A slave could be ransomed or hostages held in military conflicts. could be purchased and set free by a ransom. Now the question is, who sets the price tag for the ransom?
It is not established by some board of trade that comes in and figures out the going market rate. The price tag for the ransom is set initially by the slave holder, the hostage holder, or the one who is controlling the kidnapped child.
He determines the ransom price and then it's up to the person who is trying to free the hostage, the slave, or the kidnapped person to answer the question whether he attaches enough value to pay the ransom to set the person free.
Chapter 8: What is the ultimate danger from which we are saved?
Now, that's important because in church history, there have been all kinds of theories about the atonement. Part of the reason for that is that if you study the cross and study the atonement in biblical terms, you will see that the atonement, in terms of biblical language and biblical imagery, is a multifaceted event.
They're all different kinds of activities taking place, converging in this one pregnant moment of redemptive history. And so one of the images that is used in the New Testament to describe this multifaceted event is this image of ransom, a ransom that is paid to redeem a captive. That is what redemption is all about, being set free, Israel is redeemed.
God is the redeemer when he delivers his people from bondage in Egypt. The Exodus is a story about redemption. One of the theories that has competed for acceptance throughout church history, the so-called ransom theory of the atonement, is that in the transaction of the cross, Jesus pays a ransom to Satan because Satan has fallen man bound. He has him under bondage.
He has us in chains, as it were, and he is like the kidnapper who snatches us away from our father's house, and Christ comes and pays the ransom to set us free. In passing, let me add that another element that is clearly present in the Bible about the atonement is what has been called the Christus
victor element, which calls attention to the aspect of Christ's work by which he achieves a cosmic victory over powers and principalities, that he comes to destroy the work of the devil, that he comes to conquer Satan and his power over us. If you see me casting out demons by the finger of God, then you know what? The kingdom of God has come upon you.
So I don't want to minimize in any way the fact that the New Testament does have a very strong victory motif wherein Christ conquers the demonic forces, the forces of Satan that threaten us. And we see that antithesis and that titanic struggle that goes on from the very beginning moments of Jesus' ministry where the Spirit leads him into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan.
And even when he withstands that temptation, we read almost as a postscript at the end that Satan departed from him for a season. that he went into retreat, but that retreat of Satan was not a permanent retreat. It was what we would call strategic withdrawal so that he could find a better place to launch another assault against Christ. But the conflict goes through the ministry of Jesus.
And the Bible says that in his death, Christ conquers Satan. So what I'm saying is this, that yes, there is clearly that element of the struggle between Christ and principalities and powers of satanic style. But that does not mean that the ransom of which Christ speaks is paid to Satan. Think of it for a moment.
If Christ paid a ransom to Satan to deliver you from Satan's clutches, who would the victor be? Yes, what every kidnapper wants is not permanent possession of the child. He wants what the child can get from him through extortion and through the exploitation of establishing a premium ransom. And if he can get the distraught parents to pay the ransom, he wins.
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