In the previous posts in this series, redemption was defined as deliverance by the payment of a price, and then the question of what it is that sinners are delivered from by Christ’s redemption was also examined. The redeemed have been set free from bondage to sin, Satan, and a legal sentence of death, and that deliverance puts them into a different state than their previous one. In this post, let’s look at the scriptural descriptions of the new state of redeemed people.
The redeemed are free.
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery.(Galatians 5:1 NET)
Those who are redeemed are not redeemed in order for them to be put in bondage to yet another form of slavery, but in order for them to be truly free. Accordingly, Paul warns them to be careful to guard that freedom. In this context, the slavery the Galatians are warned about is bondage to the law, but it’s a general principle we can apply to any set of rules or regulations to which a redeemed person might obligate themselves.
The righteousness of a redeemed person is not to be defined by obedience to certain rules or laws, but rather through Spirit worked faith working through love. This means that while it’s not a law based righteousness, it’s not a licentious freedom, either. After all, licentiousness is really the expression of bondage to sin, something that’s been left behind as a result of redemption. It is, rather, a freedom that works itself out as Spirit wrought obedience.
It’s true freedom, but it’s also freedom that produces a different sort obedience, and a freedom that is, in one sense, quite demanding. That’s why we find the state of the redeemed person expressed in another way, too.
The redeemed are Christ’s slaves.
Romans 6:22 tells us that the redeemed have been “freed from sin and enslaved to God”. They are freed “for freedom,” and yet they are freed to be “enslaved to God.” It is intriguingly paradoxical, especially as expressed in 1 Corinthians:
For the one who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord’s freedman. In the same way, the one who was called as a free person is Christ’s slave.
You were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men. (1 Corinthinans 6:22-23 NET)
The redeemed are freed people and yet Christ’s slaves. They are bought with a price, and so they should remain free; they are bought with a price, and so they belong to God and should serve him:
Or do you not know that … you are not your own?
For you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6: 19, 20 NET)
That the redeemed are bought with a price sets them free from slavish obligation to the law, but at the same time obligates them to shun immoral behaviour and glorify God instead.
Putting them together
It’s the nature of the complete reversal of direction for the redeemed that allows it to be described in these paradoxical terms.
Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice – alive, holy, and pleasing to God – which is your reasonable service.
Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind … .
It’s an obedience that is based in the merciful work of God in redemption, and a servitude that is the right response to what has been accomplished for us and in us. In that sense it’s a reversal from one kind of servitude to a contrasting kind of servitude—slavery to sin as opposed to slavery to God. But it’s also being transformed by a renewed mind, which gives the freedom to be a new sort of person with a new way of life, free from the tyranny of of the old way of life, which was, in contrast, being conformed to the world—the bondage of the old sort of person to the old way of life.
Yep, the redeemed are delivered for freedom and, at the same time, delivered for service to Christ.