Redemption

My favorite commentary on Ruth is by a Jewish scholar, Tamara Cohn Eskanazi (who was completing work started by Tikva Frymer-Kensky). There are many beautiful themes in the commentary, which illuminates the ancient cultural issues in the love story of Boaz and Ruth. Boaz was a righteous Israelite, and he was righteous in a particularly unusual manner. Boaz viewed people graciously, even foreigners. Ruth, a foreigner who desired to come under the wings of the God of Israel, took her gamble one night on the threshing floor and inserted herself under the folds of sleeping Boaz’s cloak.

This scandalous scene in the Bible is of a foreign woman offering herself sexually to an Israelite man. The story goes that Boaz did not take advantage of her offer, but pledged to redeem her: “I will redeem you, as the Lord lives” (Ruth 3:13 NASB). And redeem her he did, being related to Ruth’s deceased husband. Boaz had to go to the Israelite in his family who had inheritance rights to Ruth and publicly claim her as redeemed.

Redemption is about a payment claiming something or someone. A common scenario in the ancient world was the redemption of a slave, paid for either by the slave themselves or a third party. The person is being reclaimed with a payment. Their status changes from a low one to a higher one. They come into a new identity, a free identity, post-redemption. In the Ruth story, a foreign widow was “redeemed.” She was claimed with a form of payment (a sandal). Her status changed from outsider, alien, immigrant, to citizen, native, permanent resident.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, 

the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, 

according to the riches of His grace 

which He lavished on us. 

–Ephesians 1:7-8 NASB

And not only [that,] but also we ourselves, 

having the first fruits of the Spirit, 

even we ourselves groan within ourselves, 

waiting eagerly for [our] adoption as sons [and daughters,] 

the redemption of our body.

–Romans 8:23 NASB

Speaking to his disciples, Jesus pointed to the temple in Jerusalem and said it would be destroyed and he also told them many other cataclysmic things would happen, but when they saw these things they should have hope: “when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28 NASB). Israel would be redeemed. The disciples would be redeemed. This was a reference to the future promises God had made to Israel. In Israel’s glorious future, its inhabitants would be elevated to a higher kind of life.

The two key ingredients of redemption are a payment and a new status.

That must be why the more theological statements about redemption found in Paul seem to have a present and future reality. In one sense Christ-followers have been redeemed. In another sense Christ-followers are eagerly looking forward to redemption.

Redemption has been secured. Past tense. But final redemption is something glorious and mysterious for which we wait.

The first ingredient of redemption has happened. Christ made the payment, also called a ransom (Ephesians 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:30). The church father Origen famously argued that Christ’s payment went to Satan to buy us back. Few people agreed with him and the more common belief is that Christ’s “payment” was a symbolic one, to the forces of Sin and Death. The idea of “payment” involving God can only be metaphorical, for God owns everything, lacks for nothing, is entirely complete in himself, and cannot be paid.

The second ingredient of redemption is both present and future. We are already delivered from bondage to Sin and Death. But we have not realized our full status as God’s children. That can only be at the great consummation to come, the end of all things (and the start of a New Reality). Therefore we have verses like Romans 8:23 which speak of our final redemption for which we—and all created things, animate and inanimate—await. 

It is also reflected in verses like Ephesians 4:30:

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, 

by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

–Ephesians 4:20 NASB

Paul’s expression “day of redemption” is clearly future. In an earlier verse, Ephesians 1:14, Paul speaks of God’s inheritance—something future—and the “redemption of God’s own possession.” We can imagine that God’s own possession includes us and all created things. Having been in rebellion against God, in the final state of things, all things will be in good relation to and with God.

Karl Barth divided his magisterial work of theology—with the boring name Church Dogmatics—according to a threefold timeline:

1. Creation

2. Reconciliation

3. Redemption

Creation is the past, the basis of our existence. Reconciliation is our present, the result of our deliverance through the Grace of God, the saving acts of Jesus, and the revealing power of the Spirit. Redemption is the metaphor Barth felt best described our ultimate end.

Some will say that future things are not worth thinking about, that they are mere speculation and a fertile ground for baseless arguments. So many foolish things have been said about anti-Christs and tribulations and times and seasons. Culturally, the church’s engagement with “end times” (eschatology) has created many embarrassments. 

But it only stands to reason that the Loving God who chose to create all things had a goal in mind from the beginning. A foolish approach to theology assumes that God reacted to a catastrophe and made a plan to redeem. Barth (and many others) assume rather that God fully expected the potentiality of evil—which is non-being—to play itself out and intended all along to redeem his creatures and creation from its bondage to decay and death.

Redemption is the goal. God’s goal. From the beginning Redemption has been paid for by God the Son. Redemption is at work in Christ-followers presently through the Spirit. And the presence of the Spirit in a person’s life is the assurance of final redemption. As Paul says, the Spirit seals us for the day of redemption. A seal was a mark of clay or wax placed on goods to mark ownership. 

Oddly enough, then, the mysterious, invisible, barely discernible influence of God the Spirit in the life of Christ-followers is the “proof” of their coming redemption. 

Redemption ultimately means an elevated status. Ruth the foreigner became Ruth the Israelite. A redeemed slave became a free person and perhaps a citizen. After the act of redemption has been completed, a redeemed person lives in a new reality.

God’s redemption is amazing. We live our present lives under the shadow of Sin and Death. These two forces hold us in bondage—so much so that we disappoint even ourselves at times. We had no way to free ourselves. We did nothing to free ourselves, or at least nothing that worked. God took it on himself to redeem. 

And when God redeems, he elevates us. We rise from slave status, to free. More than that, however, we become citizens of God’s New Reality. And, if that was not enough, we become his adopted children. God invites us ultimately to share in the divine life of the Trinity, but we will say more on that in the coming essays on Glorification and Adoption.

Ruth went from outsider to insider, from alien to native, from field worker to wife. Our redemption is something even greater, but we might still take the words of Naomi, mother-in-law to Ruth, to be a statement appropriate to us: “Blessed is the Lord who has not left you without a redeemer” (Ruth 4:14 NASB).