A King's Ransom (1 Peter 1:18-19)

The Prayer for God’s Glory and the Salvation of the Elect

Let's pray together. Father, we are so grateful for the gifts and talents that you've given our people and their willingness to exercise them for your glory. Our church has grown so much, and so we just get to see and enjoy so many of the great gifts that you've given to your people, and we're grateful for that.

And Lord, my prayer today is that you will speak clearly to your people through your Word, and that I would be kind of removed from the equation as much as that can be. I pray that for those of your elect here who have been redeemed, that they would reflect on that redemption and give you great glory, and that they would live according to who they are.

And for those among your elect that are here today that haven't been redeemed, I pray, Lord, that you might use this gospel message to bring them to salvation. Lord, I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Jim came really close to sealing my thunder.

You probably noticed that a couple weeks ago. He was one verse away. I think he just didn't know exactly what verse I was going to be doing. But our text today will be 1 Peter 1, verses 18 and 19. But before we really get into that, I'll read the larger passage starting with verse 14.

A King's Ransom Illustration from Atahualpa and Pizarro

But before we get into it, I want to start with a little illustration. I want to tell you about a king's ransom, a literal king's ransom. King Atahualpa. You may have heard of the Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro.

I'm not saying it right, Ed. He came to the area of modern-day Peru in 1532. The Incas had a vast empire in South America. Atahualpa was king of the Incas. He had a kingdom of over 10 million people.

Pizarro invited the Inca king Atahualpa to a feast. That feast was actually an ambush. He captured King Atahualpa. They basically destroyed thousands of his warriors. They had guns. The Incas didn't. They were very afraid of those weapons.

Many of them ran. Many of them were killed. So Atahualpa was imprisoned. Atahualpa was wise. He said, hey, I see the cell I'm in. I will fill this cell to the height that I can reach with gold. I'll fill this adjoining room twice with silver if you'll let me free.

Pizarro said, it's a great deal. King Atahualpa had those rooms filled with gold and with silver. The main room, the room that he was in, is known as the ransom room. It still stands in Peru. We can estimate the quantity of gold and silver that was in those rooms.

We can estimate the value. Now, it wasn't in gold bars or something, so there's some discrepancies depending on what it would have been like. But the estimates range today. The value would be between $500 million to $1 .5 billion worth of gold and silver.

It's the highest ransom ever paid. And what did that ransom achieve? Do you know the story?

Nothing.

Pizarro killed Atahualpa,.

And then he proceeded to kill most of the Incas and take over their land. So it was a king's ransom, a useless king's ransom in this case. But when we think of over $1 billion, I want you to understand for a minute how much $1 billion in gold and silver would be worth.

It's a lot of money. It's $1 ,000 million. $1 ,000, $1 ,000, $1 ,000 worth of gold and silver. Now, if you took $1 .1 billion bills and you laid them out on the ground, it would cover an area of 4 square miles or about 2 ,600 acres of land.

If you stacked it up, it would be 7 miles high. If you laid it end to end, it would extend around the earth 4 times. That's a lot of money. If you spent $5 ,000 every day, and some of you would like to try, it would take you 550 years to spend $1 billion.

If you were to save $100 a day, you put it under your mattress, it would take you 27 ,000 years to have $1 billion and an uncomfortable mattress. But you can see it's a massive ransom. It's a high price.

But today, if we understand our text, $1 billion, rooms full of gold and silver, it's going to seem like nothing, like trivial junk compared to the high price of our redemption. A real king's ransom, a ransom paid not for a king, but by a king.

Redemption as Release from a Futile Way of Life

So let's read together 1 Peter 1, 14 -19. As obedient children, not being conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct.

Because it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. And if you address this father, the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your sojourn, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your futile conduct inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

So verse 18, it starts out with knowing, or you might have for you know that. It's a participle knowing. It's a continuation of thought from verse 17. You look at verse 17, if you address this father, the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your sojourn, knowing that, and then we learn some facts there that would motivate us for obedience to the command in verse 17.

So conduct ourselves in fear because of what we know, the truth that we know in verses 18 and 19. So everything that we're going to learn and appreciate in verses 18 and 19, that is meant by Peter to serve as a motivation for obedience to the commands above, most closely the command in verse 17.

Conduct yourselves in fear. So we're going to make that connection and application more towards the end. There's a strong sense in which verses 18 and 19 stand alone as a very significant independent thought.

So the information in 18 and 19 is presented by Peter as motivation for command, and we will look at that, but dwelling on that truth itself, just knowing what we are knowing, it's going to accomplish Peter's objective to motivate us, but also serves to glorify God in maybe the most concentrated and effective way that I can imagine.

It accomplishes the purpose of all things, the glory of God, if we just can contemplate the truth that is in these two verses. So first we want to know what it is that we know, what it is that we are knowing.

Peter says we are knowing something, that we know something. What is it? Well, the passage, these two verses, you see they're about redemption. So what we're knowing are facts about redemption, our spiritual redemption.

So the plan for exposition of these two verses, I want to demonstrate the dimensions or elements of redemption. First we want to see what redemption is, get ourselves a working definition of what redemption is, as Peter would want us to understand it, and then go through the elements of it.

So what are we redeemed from? What are we redeemed to? What were we not redeemed by? What are we redeemed by? We're going to see the high price of our redemption. We're really going to dig down into that, that's the emphasis, that which we're redeemed by, the high price of our redemption.

Peter makes that contrast, we'll spend time in that. Having made the examination of the price of our redemption, again we'll come back and make the application. So, the two verses. Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your futile conduct, inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

So the passage is about redemption, so we're starting with that. What is redemption? I'm using the LSB, it translates a form of the verb lutrao, as redeemed. It's possible you have another good translation that might use ransomed for the word.

If you got a bulletin today, that verse is on here and it uses the word ransomed. So either one is fine. The Greek word has a very specific meaning. It means to pay a price to effect the release of a captive.

In the first century it would have been understood mainly in two ways. To effect the release of a slave, to buy a slave, and I say effect the release, it could be bought to release, bought to free, or bought to make your slave.

Or it could refer to a prisoner of war. Prisoners of war were treated as slaves, you could ransom them, effect their release. It would generally mean one of those two things, or it could mean even more generally just the freeing of a captive.

Freeing or purchase someone from any form of captivity. Slaves could even buy their own freedom. That would be redemption. They could buy their own freedom. So that's the analogy. Whether you have the word ransomed or redeemed, that's the first century analogy.

Now here, of course, Peter's not talking about redemption from physical slavery, from physical imprisonment, or institutional slavery, or economic slavery, to freedom or to some slavery to some other master.

That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about spiritual redemption. The work of Christ accomplishes this aspect of our salvation. Now Jim read the first 21 verses, and in the beginning of chapter 1, you see other elements of our salvation.

Peter talks about our being chosen. Much of 1 Peter is about our sanctification, our glorification, regeneration. Isn't there? He's caused us to be born again. So it's about our salvation, and here Peter is focused on the redemption analogy for our salvation.

So now we're going to ask redemption from what? It's referring to an aspect of our salvation called redemption. From what did Christ redeem us? If redemption is paying the price to purchase a slave or a captive, then we have to ask by what or by whom were we held captive?

From whom were we redeemed or from what? So if you were asked this, someone said, are you a redeemed person? And you would say, yes, I sang a song about it today, I know that. And they said, well, what are you redeemed from?

That's the release of a person from being in captivity. What were you in captivity to? How would you answer that? Well, I probably wouldn't say from conduct, from a type of conduct, but that's what Peter tells us.

It's the same word that's used in verse 15, if you look up. But like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct. You see, futile conduct in verse 18, that's a contrast to holy reverential conduct in verse 15.

So you're redeemed from one type of conduct and to another type of conduct. It's very interesting. I don't think I would have said it that way, unless God says it that way. I need that correction. Would you have said you were redeemed from sin and its consequences, death and hell?

Doesn't Scripture say that before our redemption we were dead in sin, we're slaves to sin?

Yeah.

This is Peter's way, this use of the word for conduct, it's Peter's way of referring to sin. It's an emphasis here on outward behavior. But the word conduct, it's an interesting word. It may be translated ways or way of life, depending on your...

The old King James is that word conversation, which doesn't really fit with modern language today, but for them it meant your general way of living. It is a reference to outward behavior, conduct, but it's outward behavior that's informed from inner beliefs.

It's that which demonstrates your central beliefs. It's the outworking of the inner person.

That's conduct.

And here we're redeemed from one type of conduct to another. Let's see how our pre-redemption conduct is described. First, it's futile. And the word means aimless or purposeless, without any meaning.

It's a thing that doesn't have a reason for being. It's unproductive. It's translated as futile or empty or vain, sometimes aimless or useless. It's just nothing. Peter has described our former conduct back in verse 14.

You see that? The former lusts which were yours in your ignorance. So prior to our regeneration, redemption, we were engaged in satisfaction of our sinful desires. That's us in our natural selves. We're completely ignorant of the person and work of Christ.

We're enemies of God, lawless rebels. We're just unrepentantly satisfying the desires of the mind and of the flesh. That's who we are apart from Christ. We get a description of this life in 1 Peter 4.

You can flip over there if you want.

It's up to you.

I don't know why I say stuff like that when I'm up here, because you do what you want. 1 Peter 4, 1 through 4. Your past is sufficient for you to have worked out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lust, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.

In all this, they're surprised that you do not run with them in the same excesses of dissipation, maligning you. But they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. It's futile.

It's empty. It's meaningless life. Abominable idolatries. Sinful nothing. It's just intent on the worship of the worthless almighty self. Getting what makes you happy just before it makes you miserable.

Getting what relieves you just before it makes you more anxious. That's the life of the flesh. Hope that ends in despair. Fun and happiness that ends in shame, guilt, emptiness. It's characterized in scripture as just sinful, ignorant, futile, empty.

Nothing. Vain. Useless. All we do in our natural state is futile. It's just done out of lustful ignorance. It can't have any eternal, truly valuable aim or purpose. Calvin puts it this way in his commentary.

The whole life of man, until he is converted to Christ, is a ruinous labyrinth of wanderings. You might object to that. There are non-Christians out there that are doing great things. They have great value and meaning.

There's great inventions, advances in medicine and science. And there's great art. There's great music, philosophy, and literature.

There are great acts of heroism.

There's daily acts of love and kindness and bravery. Done by unbelievers. And that's all true. We're grateful that God gives common grace to everybody. To all people. All of his image-bearers. He uses all of that to be good to his image-bearers.

We're grateful for that. We appreciate beauty, kindness, and love. All that's good, wherever it comes from. Knowing that it comes from God. But here's the point. The deeds of the unregenerate person cannot have eternal value.

They can't. They're not done for the only good that remains after this place is burned up, which is the glory of God. They can't have that as their motivation. So they're not capable of a single truly good deed.

They're incapable of the motivation that it would require. The unredeemed person is not capable of accomplishing the chief end of man. What is the chief end of man? The glory of God and enjoyment forever.

They can't do that. So the things that they do are ultimately vanity, emptiness, nothingness. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? That's the point. It's just futile conduct.

It's just striving after abominable idolatry, sinful nothing, a ruinous labyrinth of wanderings. Now there's another adjective that's applied to our pre-redemption conduct, the way that we live before regeneration.

You see it there. It's patraparaditas. There's no real reason at all that you or I would have to know the Greek word patraparaditas. But if you try to say it a few times, it's fun to say. So that's why I'm saying it.

I almost made it the word of the day, patraparaditas. It's only used here in all of Scripture. An interesting word. It means passed along to you from your father or fathers or forefathers, from your ancestors.

We might just think of it as traditional. So this conduct is traditional with the emphasis being that it comes from our relatives, from our fathers, our ancestors. King James translates this as received by tradition from your fathers.

It's a good translation. So there's some conduct, some way of living that's said to be passed on to us from our forefathers. To me, it's a little bit curious. What is Peter criticizing here as futile?

What kind of tradition? Is he talking about Jewish tradition? Or is he talking about Gentile tradition? Maybe the tradition of the Romans at the time. I don't think that we need to answer that question because both fit the bill.

The worship of Yahweh at the time that Peter wrote this was completely corrupt, would not have been praised by Peter, and the behavior, the conduct of the Roman Gentiles certainly wouldn't have been praised either.

So I think he is generally condemning any tradition that contradicts the Word of God, particularly with reference to ethics here, morals. Tradition leads you to disobey a command of Christ. That's something that needs to be rejected.

Now for us, tradition may mean something different than it would have meant to Peter's first readers. I know there's a lot of different backgrounds here. You may have come from a Mormon background or a charismatic background or a more fundamentalist background.

There's all kinds. Sometimes we may struggle with the exercise of freedoms among one another in terms of ethics. You know what I mean. Now I've got to be clear. You may have biblical convictions on those things and we can disagree about those things, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Those sorts of disagreements are sincere disagreements among people who are trying to obey the Lord. They're done out of reverent fear, the desire to live in obedience to the Word of God. It's a difference in interpretation.

That's okay and we work together on those things. What I'm talking about instead is kind of a fear of man, of going against the family, a fear of taking out from under you some plank of doctrine or ethics that you've held dear that has given you a sense of safety and correctness, and being confronted with the Word of God and kind of refusing to drop that tradition, whatever it is, whatever you thought was okay, and you're confronted with a scripture that says otherwise.

Any tradition that's futile, that's contradictory to God's Word needs to be abandoned. Our identity is in Christ and Christ alone. We owe our obedience to Him and Him alone and not to anything that's been passed on to us from our forefathers.

Now there may be in this notion of tradition an echo of the fall. If you think about it, the futility of our unredeemed conduct, it's ultimately received from our first father, right, from Adam. It's a tradition received from our fathers in that sense, that conduct.

We receive from Adam that inherited corruption. And so in some sense we've inherited this futile way of life from him, from our first father, from Adam. Okay, so I think we have what redemption is, a purchase from captivity.

We've seen what we've been redeemed from, from this sin, from futile way of life inherited from our forefathers. We've unavoidably touched on what we're redeemed to, holy conduct, reverent conduct. We'll come back to that at the end.

The High Price of Redemption: Not Silver or Gold, but the Blood of Christ

Now I want to spend some time, most of our time, on what we are not redeemed by and what we are redeemed by. There's an important contrast here. We're going to see what could never accomplish our redemption.

Then we're going to see the only thing that could and did, the high price of our redemption, a true king's ransom. That's what we'll dwell on. Verse 18 first tells us, You were not redeemed with corruptible things.

Then it gives us a couple of very strange examples of corruptible things. Silver and gold. Peter, well first of all, the word corruptible, maybe perishable, it has the idea of wasting away or decomposing, degenerating.

Peter tells us we can't be redeemed by anything that has that character. Anything that is perishable in that sense. If you go back to the first century, think of anything that would have been used to redeem a person in the first century, it has to be something of value that is sufficient to cause another person who's an owner of a slave to give up ownership of that slave or that captive.

It's a transaction and it was generally done in money. Money at that time was gold and silver coins. This is most likely what Peter has in mind here. He's saying that gold and silver money would not redeem us.

It wasn't what was used to redeem us and it couldn't because it's perishable.

But if you think about it,.

If you thought of anything that is not perishable, you think of silver and gold. That's why they're used as money. If you tried to use something else, I tried to think of some examples, soap bubbles. That wouldn't be very effective money.

You couldn't store, you couldn't save bananas. Bananas we all know are good for about three hours. You can't, that wouldn't, ice. So gold and silver, they're not terribly perishable. They're held up as kind of ultimately non-perishable thing.

Hmm, what is he doing? Why is he choosing silver and gold as example of perishable items? And it's not the first time he did it. He used gold as a perishable item early on in the chapter. These are probably the best examples of something incorruptible, imperishable in all of creation and yet Peter uses them as examples of something that is perishable.

So it's true, silver and gold are elements they don't perish over a person's lifetime, anything like that. But they do cease to have value at the end of one's lifetime, don't they? Ownership of any physical asset, gold and silver, real estate, digital assets, you know, your mutual funds, your bank accounts, all of that, they can't be transferred from this realm to the next.

We're talking about a country song. I don't know the song, but there's no trailer hitches on a hearse. You've never seen a trailer hitch on a hearse. I don't know the song, but it's true, right? You literally cannot take it with you.

Ownership of silver and gold, the value of it is certainly perishable. It ends with you, with your earthly life. Even these are not enough. Now, they have very high value. They have very high apparent permanence.

Peter's using them now by contrast. Even these are not enough to redeem a soul from slavery to sin. They're nowhere near adequate. It would be as effective as Atahualpa's ransom. It achieves nothing. Why is that so?

Why couldn't some worldly wealth, some extreme amount of worldly wealth be sufficient to redeem us? Remember what's happening in redemption. It's a price that's being paid to gain the freedom of a sinner from their captivity to sin.

The debt for sin has to be paid to accomplish that freedom. The price paid has to be equal to the debt incurred by the sinner. What is the magnitude of the sin debt of a sinner? What's its measure? What fine could be paid to legally, justly satisfy the debt owed by a sinner?

Well, sin is lawlessness. Sin is disobedience of the laws of God. The sinner's guilty of multiple charges of disobedience to the laws of God himself, his creator and sustainer. So it's not the nature of the sin itself.

It's not your lies. It's not your fornications and your adulteries and your blasphemies. That in and of itself doesn't measure the depth of your sin debt. What matters is the one you've offended. You've offended God.

That's what matters. The God of the universe. You and me, vile creatures of dust, we shake our fist at Almighty God. We willingly, openly disobey His laws. He's told us what we can have and what we cannot have, and we tell Him He is wrong.

We deserve this or that. That's what we're doing. So apart from Christ, the work of Christ, you are the avowed enemy of God. You are subject to His wrath, and it's reasonable. It's just. It's accurate.

You have no right to do those things. That's your debt, or was your debt. I hope it was your debt. It was mine. But for those of you that repented of your sins and put your faith in Christ Jesus for your salvation, and only you, for you there's redemption, a price that's been paid.

It's the only price that could be paid. It's the only one to propitiate the wrath of God, the only equal to the ransom required for your redemption. And here it is. Okay, if you haven't been listening, listen now.

Here it is.

Behold the price of your redemption. Precious blood as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

Don't worry. I'll be all right.

Happens to me every time I read that. This is the point. We are here at the heart of the matter. We have to behold this. You are redeemed by the only one, the only being that could redeem you. You're redeemed by the only act that could have accomplished your redemption.

Can you see this? See the depth of your sin. See the height of the love of God in this. He paid the ransom.

He paid it.

The price of your redemption, the precious infinite price, the blood of Christ. So let's look at that in its full dimensions and detail. We'll see five truths about this ransom price. We'll see that it's blood.

Don't worry if you're squeamish. We're not getting into that. We'll see that it's precious. We'll see that it's the blood of a lamb, that the lamb who gave his blood is unblemished and spotless,.

As he had to be.

And lastly, we'll see that the source of the blood, the payer of the redemption price in his own blood, is our Savior. It's our Lord and Master, our King, Jesus Christ. So first of all, it's blood. The price is blood.

Your redemption and mine was accomplished by a price of blood. Now, blood is a reference to his death. It's really not talking about the literal fluid that flowed in his veins. There's lots of weirdness that comes from people taking it hyperliterally.

I'm going to ignore all of that because you should too. For Christ also suffered four sins, once for all the righteous, for the unrighteous, so that he might bring you to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.

That's the point. He was put to death for you, for your redemption. So the term blood refers to the death of Christ. It's also true that due to the manner of his torture and death, it did involve the shedding of much literal blood, and I believe that was necessary.

It was an aspect of his death that was necessary. The blood sacrifices of the Old Testament were intended to foreshadow his death, and so there was always in his death the shedding of blood. Without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness.

Now think about blood for a second. Again, we're not going to get gory, but blood is shocking, isn't it? It's alarming.

It's bright red.

And when you see it, something's wrong. You tell somebody, hey, you're bleeding. It's not a casual thing. Why is that? Have you ever thought about that? Why is all this true of blood? Why did God make blood like that?

Why isn't it clear, something less disgusting? I believe it's because we must understand that the price of our redemption is paid in the blood of Christ. We have to understand how serious that is. Blood should shock us.

It should disgust us, because it is the price of our sin. It is what our Savior had to shed for our sake. So the blood here refers to the death of Christ. It also includes the imagery of the violent nature of it.

It's not dying in your sleep or lethal injection or something you might think of less brutal. It was the most brutal form of torture and death that the ancient world understood. All of it was applied to our Savior and King.

Now when we see the term the blood of Christ, we can think of all that He endured for our sake. We have to always include in that the death of Christ, but we can think about everything else that went along with it.

The torturous death, the torturous nature of His death, but also the embarrassment, the humiliation of all that was applied to Him, the mocking and the crowning and the robing and the disrobing. You think about the constant snide smugness of all those that were coming up to Him all the time with their really super wise way to trick the God of the universe into a contradiction.

He had to deal with that. All the false believers who came around to get their bellies filled and quick to betray Him, abandon Him. Even think about His incarnation. What humiliation, degradation this is for a divine person to be born as a human being.

And all of it was necessary for our redemption, all of it, culminating in the most terrible and magnificent event of all history. The death and the corresponding resurrection of Christ, our Savior and our King.

It was a sacrifice of blood. Second, the blood was precious. Precious. This translates to Greek word probably as well as we can say it. Almost every translation that I've seen uses the word precious. It does seem that that's a little bit of an understatement, the way we use the word precious today.

Maybe the word priceless would be a better way to think of it. It has inestimable value. There's no way to measure its value. This is from Ephesians 3, Paul's prayer, that we would be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

That's what we're doing. We're contemplating the love of God and the price of our redemption, a love that can't be understood, a love of God which surpasses knowledge. It surpasses our ability to measure it.

The price of our redemption was blood, precious blood, priceless, infinitely valuable blood. Again, not red fluid, but his death on our behalf. You have to see in that the depravity of your sin and his love for his church.

Of course, we already know, but we can ask, who paid the price, who redeemed us?

The scripture says,.

A lamb unblemished and without spot. We see, thirdly, the precious blood of our ransom was that of a lamb. We know the identity of the lamb that's given to us, but we can ask about the imagery. You can spend time on, which lamb is this?

Is this the Passover lamb, which was sometimes not a lamb, but was also a goat, a kid? Was it the lambs of the daily sacrifice, as you're referring to? Is it Isaiah 53, the suffering servant? Some other lamb?

I believe the reference to Christ is the lamb who redeems us with his blood here. It's a general reference to the sacrificial lambs and kids of the Old Testament. I think it includes the imagery of the Passover animal, if you think that through.

I don't have time for that, but you know the imagery of the Passover, the lambs of the daily sacrifice, the suffering servant of Isaiah, even the scapegoat, which was a goat, the ram that was Isaac's substitute.

I think all of that idea, it's not specific to any one of them. It's Christ as sin-bearer, Christ as sacrifice, Christ as substitute. That's who died for the sake of his elect. So we see, fourthly, the lamb is unblemished and spotless.

So that's interesting. That's a reflection back to the lambs of the sacrifice. They had to be unblemished and spotless. But that in itself was only a reflection of the perfect morality, the perfectness of Christ, the sinlessness of Christ.

He is the only one that is truly unblemished and spotless. You know, Diane Carlson is here. There's never been an unblemished and spotless lamb.

Really?

There's only one. Only one who's ever been perfectly holy. Holy as only God is holy. And he is our Savior. He is our perfect Savior. And so he had to be. Consider, if he weren't perfect, if he had his own sin to deal with, he couldn't deal with yours.

He wouldn't have had sufficient value in him to deal even with his own sin debt, let alone yours.

But he is perfect.

He is. And so he's able to give us his perfect righteousness. Now, you'll note in some of your translations the words, the blood of, at the end of verse 19 are in italics. It means the words aren't there in the original language.

They're added for clarity in English, which is good. The original speaks of the precious blood that is of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

Christ.

Giving us the identity of this lamb. Christ, Jesus, our Messiah. It's more of an emphasis. So then, a little side note here, because this always comes up, we may be curious about the concept of redemption and ransom.

We may ask the question, to whom was the ransom paid? If the price of our redemption is the blood of Christ, to whom was the price of redemption paid? Who did Christ's payment of his life's blood compensate for the freedom of the believer?

Who are we bought from? Who's the recipient? We're bought from the power of sin and death and hell and Satan. You might say, well, it must be Satan. It must be Satan. That's the answer to the question.

Satan must receive the payment of the ransom. You see, it makes absolutely zero sense. He has no right to a ransom. His consent to your liberty was never requested. It was never given. He's the ultimate captive of God.

The devil is God's devil. He has no claim to God. So, that's not it. So, I think there's two reasonable ways to think of this. I'll do these briefly.

They both have some biblical support.

So, Christ is said to be our redeemer and our propitiation. Now, Adventure Club kids, you learned on Friday about propitiation. Remember that? It was probably said different ways in different classrooms, but that's what you learned about.

It's a satisfaction. That was what we learned on Friday. And somebody who asked not to be named, and so I won't name him, used the word, I asked, what is propitiation? He said, it's a satisfaction. I'm like, you know, that's pretty good.

It's something to satisfy something. It's a satisfaction. It's an offering that satisfies an offense, appeases a wrath. And so, Christ is said to be that. The wrath that is appeased is the wrath of God toward our sins.

So, in that sense, the ransom price is paid by God and to God. You could say that. Actually, last Friday in Adventure Club, lesson 22, Jesus gave his life as a ransom. Remember that? One of the questions was this, who did Jesus pay a ransom to?