Our Redeemer

We are free from punishment because Jesus Christ fulfilled the law for us.

He did what it requires and he suffered the penalty that the law required from the hand of sinners like us. We're so glad you've joined us on the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, I'm Bill Wright and today Don continues in his ministry of teaching God's people God's Word. You know, if the only benefit, so to speak, of being redeemed by Jesus Christ was having your sins forgiven, it would be far more than any of us could ever ask or hope for or deserve. Today Don is going to give us the complete picture of what it means to be redeemed and how knowing this will forever change your relationship with God for the better. Turn now to Titus chapter 2 as we get started with a message called Our Redeemer here on the Truth Pulpit. Scripture gives us a sense of appreciation and gratitude for the text that we are going to focus on here in Titus chapter 2 verse 14.

You can turn back there with me now. Titus chapter 2 verse 14, building on the reference to our great God and Savior Christ Jesus at the end of verse 13. Paul describes what Christ did for us and he says in verse 14, He gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works. And we see in this text how it was that Christ delivered us from our spiritual slavery. We see how one greater than us, one outside of ourselves, how he acted for us at his own prompting in order to save us from our spiritual slavery. I just want to give you three simple points from this text to help you to refresh your mind and for some perhaps to understand for the first time the fullness of the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. So how does Christ deliver us from our spiritual slavery? How was it that at the cross he made secure and certain our redemption? Well, number one, he took your place.

Point number one, he took your place. And as a slave to sin, as a slave to Satan, you did not have the ability to save yourself or to free yourself. I like to say, although I don't say it all that often, when you were a non-Christian, you were a slave to sin. And not only were you a slave, you kissed the chains that held you bound. You loved your sin. You liked it that way. You had no internal desire for God's word, for Christ, for holiness. You were not like that by nature. Scripture makes it plain.

You were completely oriented in the other direction. And so it is just so crucial for us to have that perspective when we look at what it says there in verse 14. That Christ gave himself for us. Christ gave himself for us. And what was it that motivated Christ to do this? What was it that motivated this self-sacrificial act by our Lord?

We'll look down at chapter 3, verse 4. It was when the kindness of God, our Savior, and his love for mankind appeared. There is kindness in Christ toward sinners. There is love from God toward sinners that is expressed in the cross. In verse 5 it says that he saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness. It should be obvious from the brief text that we looked at that salvation could never have been on the basis of anything that we did that was righteous. There is nothing that we did that prompted God to respond with mercy. Mercy was extended to us in the midst of our sin while we were dead in our transgressions.

It was while we were guilty slaves and unworthy that Christ did this. It was his kindness. It was his love.

Keep reading. But it was in verse 5 there. But according to his mercy, the kindness that he had on people in their miserable condition. It was in kindness, in love, in mercy. And in verse 7, that we are justified by his grace and thereby made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Do you see it, beloved? Do you see the towering mountain of guilt that was on our souls? And by contrast, to see salvation brought to us according to the kindness of God, according to the love of God, according to the mercy of God, according to the grace of God. All of these attributes of God shining in multifaceted splendor showing us how it is that we have a salvation that we can remember in gratitude here. And so it was in mercy that Jesus Christ intervened. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. And when Scripture says that he gave himself for us, those simple words tell the magnitude of what Christ has done. What did Christ do for us at the cross? He stood in our place.

He acted as our substitute. He took the punishment of death for everyone who would believe in him. You see, it's important for us to remember that the law of God had been violated and justice cried out for satisfaction. Justice cried out to be satisfied that the crime would be punished. The criminal would endure the punishment that was due for his sins. And when the Bible says that Christ gave himself for us, it is telling us that Christ stepped into our place, acted as our substitute, and received that punishment in his own body that we ourselves deserved.

He did that so that we could go free. Look over at the Old Testament book of Isaiah 53. In the book of Isaiah chapter 53, we see how clearly it was set forth 700 years before the time of Christ, what the significance of his crucifixion would be and what it was that he was doing. Chapter 53 verses 4 through 6, saying, Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. This great, eternal Son of God, innocent, holy, blameless, undefiled, perfect as measured by the law of God, sharing the full essence of undivided deity, that one stepped into our stead and acted as our substitute.

I know that this is familiar truth, but we can never say it enough because we're all so prone to forget, and even if we don't forget, we lose perspective and start to take for granted things like this and marginalize them over at the side rather than letting them be at the center of everything that defines the way that we view the world. Jesus Christ was not suffering for his own sins on the cross because he had none to pay for. He was suffering a penalty that was not his.

He instead was suffering a penalty that was ours. It was our suffering that he took on to himself, the penalty that was rightly ours to suffer. Christ voluntarily submitted himself to in order that we might go free. And beloved, what I want you to see as we contemplate the wonders of this love and this kindness and this mercy and this grace, this patience of God, when we contemplate the magnitude of the Son of God bearing the infinite penalty that was due to his people for their sins, we can rightly say, you and I who believe in Christ, we can rightly say, you know what, he did that for me.

He did that for me. Galatians 2.20, he loved me and gave himself up for me. And so we can rightly say that the Son of God did that for me. Somehow, someway, while he was bearing the punishment of God, somehow, in a manner that I won't claim to be able to explain to you, somehow Christ thought of you on the cross. Somehow Christ bore and tasted the penalty for your specific sins, the ones that you yourself have committed. Somehow Christ tasted the penalty, the wrath of God that was due to you. He tasted it personally on your behalf. And we step back in utter humility.

We say, he did that for me. The gospel is profoundly humbling. The truth of Scripture is profoundly humbling to the carnal pride of man.

And we can see it in a double aspect here as we're contemplating these things. First of all, it's greatly humbling to realize what our former condition was like. All of that guilt and all of that lust and disobedience and hatred and malice and envy, all of that is what we were like.

It may have manifested itself a little differently from you to me, but at the core, the rebellion and the guilt and the darkness of it all was true of us all. So it humbles us in our pride, and we realize that there is nothing in which we could possibly boast when we understand the scriptural diagnosis of the condition of our prior souls. And then the gospel humbles us even further when we realize that our brother in heaven loved us while we were like that. He loved us and voluntarily acted this way on our behalf. And we realize that compared to our prior guilt, we see the majesty of his love for sinners displayed in a way, and it humbles us all over again. It humbles us even more deeply to see such undeserved love being so freely given to sinners like us.

We are free from punishment because Jesus Christ fulfilled the law for us. He did what it requires, and he suffered the penalty that the law required from the hand of sinners like us. And so he took our place.

Christian friend, he took your place at the cross. Now secondly, he paid your price. He paid your price.

We said that he took your place, and now we're saying that he paid your price. And there were many slaves, literal slaves, in the first century. A slave could be set free if someone paid a ransom price for him. If someone paid the price that was necessary, that slave could get his own freedom. But obviously the slave didn't have that price in his own hand with which to pay, certainly not at the beginning of his enslavement. Well, the payment of that price that would release a slave was called redemption.

It was the redemption price. You could think of it, it was the price of his freedom would be paid, and that would be called his redemption. Well, this is where all of the things that we said about our prior slavery to sin come into a picture and give us some clarity about the nature of what Jesus Christ did.

Look at it there in verse 14. Titus chapter 2, verse 14, it says, He gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed. When Jesus Christ died, he was paying the price that God required for us to be released from our slavery to sin. He was paying a price that God required.

He was not making a payment to Satan to deliver us. God was the offended party, and God was the one who required the price. And so Christ, when he died on the cross, was paying a price that God required in order for you to be set free. It was in nature, it was an infinite price that had to be paid, because the violation of God's eternal law calls forth eternal punishment, unending punishment, infinite punishment.

And when you think about it in those terms, you realize it's a price that you never could have paid. You are a finite creature, a sinful one at that. What God's law required for your release was something that was utterly beyond your ability to pay. And it's in that condition that the infinite Son of God steps in and redeems us thoroughly and pays the price that enables you to be set free from your slavery to sin. And he did it thoroughly. Notice there's so much packed into this verse.

Notice that next clause. He gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, from every lawless deed. Every sin that you committed has been covered in the blood of Jesus Christ. My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. You are no longer subject to the penalty of sin and you are no longer bound to the power of sin as you were before you became a Christian.

Jesus Christ has set you free from all of that. The penalty is fully paid. That's why he said it is finished. In other words, and the language can literally be understood as paid in full. It's like a stamped receipt saying this is paid for. And when we say that they have been forgiven, what we mean by that is that God has promised, based on the work of Jesus Christ, God has promised never to hold your sins against you again. Because your sins have been covered, they have been paid for, you have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. And when you think about the remnants of the struggles with sin that you have, understand that as we speak about redemption, understand that Christ has paid the price to set you free from those.

And that means that even in the midst of the struggle, even in the midst of the weighty feelings of how could I do this again, and you wonder, am I even a Christian or not? Because of this repeated struggle with sin you have, we come back to the cross, we come back to the certainty that Christ paid that price, and we can ask him freely, we can ask him with confidence, Lord have mercy on me, help me to overcome this sin. Ask him repeatedly because he is willing to hear your cry for deliverance. You don't have to persuade him.

You don't have to talk him into being kind to you. You don't have to talk Christ into being merciful to you, or to love you, or to be patient with you. Beloved, don't you see it? Don't you see that the cross shows that Christ has already manifested all of those attributes in utter perfection to you? Don't you see it?

Don't you see what the consequence of that is? Is that when we come in humble confession of sin, that Christ is freely, graciously, righteously. In 1 John 1-9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You see, the work that Christ did in the cross, all of that love, kindness, mercy, the promise that is embedded that everyone who comes, everyone who believes in him will be forgiven, understand that now as you live as a Christian, and you confess those recurring sins in your life, understand that as you're confessing them, we are appealing to Christ to be faithful to that work that he has already done. And if he has already done the work, then certainly he's going to be faithful to apply it afresh to you as you come to him.

Turn toward the back of your Bible in 1 Peter 1, verse 18 and 19, knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life, inherited from your forefathers, but, in other words, but you were redeemed with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. We can rightly say he did this for us. You can say as a Christian, he did this for me.

And that is what Scripture is saying there in verse 20. He appeared in these last times for your sake, on your behalf, for your benefit. Christ redeemed you. Christ shed his blood for you. Christ paid a price for you, and he did it gladly. He did it voluntarily.

He did it in love. And if he did that at the cross, nothing's changed since then. If he did this and the Spirit came and has applied this to your heart at that first moment of your conversion, beloved, do you think anything's changed? What has changed since the cross in the attitude of Christ toward his people? What has changed in the attitude of God from that time when the Spirit gave you life and opened up your eyes and brought Christ to life to you? What has changed since then about his love, his mercy, his kindness, his goodness, his patience, his grace? What has changed?

To ask the question is to answer it, isn't it? You say to yourself, nothing has changed. The doors to heaven have been flung open to you, and God has, and I'm speaking metaphorically here, God has commanded that those doors never be shut again.

And that therefore, in the language of Ephesians chapter 3, verse 12, we have bold and confident access through faith in him. We've said that he took your place, he paid your price. Point number three, it should be obvious and it should be glorious and it should be something that you love to hear. Point number three now, he owns your life. He owns your life. You see, Christ paid for you so that he could own you himself. He delivered you from your prior master of sin and Satan, and he paid the redemption price on your behalf, and he did that so that you would belong to him. We are no longer slaves to sin, now we are slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. We call him savior, yes, and we call him Lord, we call him master. We call him master because we are his slave. Now, look back at Titus chapter 2, verse 14 with me. He gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself that this people would belong to him.

It's for his sake. He would purify for himself a people for his own possession. Jesus Christ owns the church. The church belongs to him by right of creation and by right of redemption. He has paid the price for his people and now his people belong to him.

They are his own possession. The goal of that, the outcome of that is that we would be zealous for good deeds, zealous to proclaim the majesties of his glory, zealous to obey him, zealous to love him, zealous to fellowship with his people. And the fact that Christ has redeemed us, redemption defines who you are.

This tells us who a Christian is. We have a past from which we have been delivered. We have a present where we are now belonging to Christ.

We are not our own. We belong to him and we have a future in which we will be with him throughout all of eternity. That understanding of salvation informs what we celebrate at the table and that understanding helps us understand why we exist as believers. Preeminently, the priority of our lives is to maximize the glory of this one who has redeemed us. In 1 Corinthians 6, verse 20, it says that you have been bought with a price. You've been redeemed.

Therefore, the consequence of that is glorify God with your body. And we can say with the Apostle Paul from 2 Corinthians 9, verse 15, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. That's Don Green bringing his message titled, Our Redeemer, to a close.

And we pray you've been blessed by our time together. If you'd like to find out more about Don and his teaching ministry, just click on TheTruthPulpit.com. Once there, you'll find all of his teaching resources and much more. That's all at TheTruthPulpit.com. Well, that's all the time we have for today on The Truth Pulpit. I'm Bill Wright, looking forward to being with you next time as Don Green continues teaching God's people God's Word.