THE RANSOM
1 Timothy 2:5,6; Exodus 13:13; Mark 11:1-6
I have in mind to say a few words about the ransom. It comes into these first two scriptures. The verse in Timothy is very remarkable: it says that the Man Christ Jesus, the One who is Himself “the mediator of God and men one”, also “gave himself a ransom for all”. No one is outside the scope of that. That is not to say that everyone will get the benefit of it, but they are within the scope of it, they could get the benefit of it. That would tell us something as to the value and vastness of the ransom that God has found.
My thought is not simply to give an exposition about what a ransom means, but to leave us with an appeal as to whether we might commit ourselves freshly to Someone who has offered Himself in this way. It should appeal to us that the call for committal that is made in ministry is made in the name of the very One who showed us what committal involved, One who gave more than any of us could ever give.
Before I say more about the ransom, I would like to say something about redemption. We sometimes speak of these two things as if they are the same, or are interchangeable. In some translations of the Bible the translators were not as careful as Mr Darby was to make the distinction. I would say first of all that there is no redemption without a ransom, but they can be viewed as distinct things, and it is the ransom that I wanted specially to draw attention to. But first as to redemption: we should consider how Scripture speaks about it. We may be accustomed to the way that the word is used in our ordinary affairs. Some of us here no doubt are paying off mortgages and so on, but we need to look at the way Scripture speaks about redemption. Not every reference to redemption in the Scriptures gives the full thought, which we get especially in the New Testament. Redemption in God’s mind is to bring people to Himself in a way that is fit for the place into which they come. We may be accustomed to think of redemption simply as the discharge of liabilities. That is included, but it is not the object. Someone might be able to pay off debts, and you hear of people paying off debts, and then they run up new debts. That is not the idea with God; God’s thought is to bring us to Himself.
Redemption is introduced in Scripture in relation to the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt (see Exod.6:6): He redeemed a people to Himself. The scripture says, “I have borne you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself”, Exod.19:4. What a wonderful matter that is, that man having strayed off into the distance of sin and the far away coldness of a world away from God, it should be in God’s heart to bring such people to Himself. Paul says “ye who once were afar off are become nigh by the blood of the Christ”, Eph.2:13. Think of God’s longings that the distance that has come in should be removed, not as a bridge, as we often say, and not simply that He has come out to where we were, although He has, but that He should bring us to Himself.
What we see with the children of Israel was that they were brought somewhere they had never been before. Their ancestors had been there: they had not had title to the land they lived in; they were “strangers and foreigners” in the land of promise (Eph.2:19, Heb.11:9). But God fulfilled His promise: He not only brought them out of Egypt, but He brought them into the land of His inheritance, and there He had prepared a sanctuary that He might dwell among them (Exod.15:17). They had not earned the right to that; it was not any entitlement they had; it was God’s sovereign grace that brought His people out from all the bondage under which they laboured. God not only brought them away from the brick kilns and the bondage and the habits of Egypt, but He brought them to Himself. And when He spoke to them about bringing them to Himself, He said they were to come out to serve Him; and He entices them away from the land of bondage by speaking of the bounty of richness and sweetness of the land of His possession. What a God He is! Every time He spoke to the Israelites about the land, it got better and better. You read the different accounts, and He adds more and more to draw them away in their spirits so as to answer to His desire that they should come out of Egypt.
God also brings the thought of redemption into the law. We see in the law that redemption usually related to the recovery by an Israelite of his possessions, things he had had to let go, things he had allowed other people to gain a charge over. They exercised the rights of redemption in those cases by buying out the person who had their inheritance, or got their property. They would do that out of their own means if God had prospered them sufficiently to enable them to recover what was once theirs. There is no suggestion that an offering was made, or that, to recover your animals or your plot of land, a sacrifice had to be made in which a life was given up; you simply paid a price.
Redemption is also spoken of in the book of Ruth. That book is very interesting because it deals with a young widow who had no rights at all. She was disqualified, and the things that she desired were by law out of her reach. The man who had the right of redemption points out that she was not entitled to what she received (see Ruth 4:6), but there was a mighty man of wealth who was able to secure for her the right of redemption (vv.9,10). There is a remarkable transition in that book: Ruth starts off gleaning in the fields and at the end by virtue of her union with Boaz she comes to own them. That is a remarkable transformation; she comes into something that she had never known before. She was not like Naomi, who would have had memories of Bethlehem and the surrounding country; Ruth had never lived there before; she had no right to be there, but that is what redemption does. It does not simply put you back where you were, it is not like going down to the pawnbrokers and paying to get your watch back, and you put it back on your wrist and things go on as before. No, Ruth was brought into something to which she had no previous right, from which she was actually by law disqualified, and on the principle of grace and truth seen in the law of redemption, she came to have the title to it.
Redemption involves new ground and a new place. But we do not see in the book of Ruth that a sacrifice was made. Presumably a price was paid, but we do not read of any sacrifice. The first reference to redemption is in relation to the people of Israel coming out of Egypt, and it is perhaps greater than the later ones because their redemption involved the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. It is a very precious thing that when God came to redeem His people and to deliver them from the burdens of the Egyptians (Exod.6:6), it is a lamb that is to be given as a sacrifice. I want to come back to that, because the lamb is the means of the ransom as well.
We have been secured on the same principle, and that is how it is spoken of in the New Testament. Paul twice connects redemption with the blood: “we have redemption through his blood” (Eph.1:7), and the reference in Romans is to “the redemption which is in Christ Jesus … through faith in his blood” (chap.3:24,25). A sacrifice has been made to accomplish the work of redemption. The connection of redemption with the matter of sins is not as direct as we might think. Paul says, “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences”. He does not say offences are redeemed. That is not an intelligent expression at all. There is not a cure for the sins: they must be dealt with, and God in His grace forgives them, but that sets Him free to have us for Himself. What we understand by this is that those whom God goes to redeem (that is an expression in scripture, “the one nation in the earth that God went to redeem to be a people to himself” (1 Chron.17:21)), He finds as guilty sinners encumbered with other claims over us. We have come under the bondage of sin; we have come under the bondage of the world. You might not like that idea, but it is true: we do get in bondage to the world, we adopt its values, we seek to fit in; it is bondage, and it is hard to get free of it. Also, we are in bondage to death, and to the law, because there is something that we know we ought to be, and we cannot be. All those things make a claim. God has a claim, He always has had a claim, and He has rights too, and that includes the right of redemption. What God has done is to find a way to annul every other claim so that His own claim is unencumbered. Once there is no other claim, God can do for you what He will, and what He wants to do is to bring you to Himself. In coming to Him you will come into the richest eternal blessing. What a wonderful thing that is!
Now, as I said, there is no redemption without a ransom. Redemption has those two parts: a ransom has been given, and then God is free to bring us to Himself. I want to speak about the ransom, and I want to keep to the way that Scripture speaks about it. We may use ordinary language; even with hymns we do that; we may sing about a price being paid, while Scripture does not actually say the ransom is a price paid – that is not the way it puts it. Peter says that we have not been redeemed by silver or gold (1 Pet.1:18,19); that is, it is not an ordinary transaction, whatever the value or the currency might be. But what we have in this verse in 1 Timothy 2:6 is that He “gave himself a ransom”. We often sing,
‘Christ is the Saviour of sinners’ (Hymn 122)
and the hymn writer wrote the chorus like this:
‘Shedding His blood for my ransom’.
This was changed so that now we sing:
‘Giving Himself as a ransom’.
We sing it like that because that is what this scripture says, “who gave himself a ransom for all”. I would like you to think about that. When we buy something, we pay the money due and we get the goods in exchange. But it is not exactly right to suggest that the Lord Jesus parted with something as a price; no, He “gave himself”. That is, that the holy claims of God, the meeting of which has set Him free to bless and to fulfil His will and purpose, required that a Person – and only a particular Person – should put Himself in our place.
When I was at school we read about a king, Richard the Lionheart. He used to go on crusades – in fact he died on a crusade – and when returning from one of these crusades he was kidnapped in Europe by his enemies. They demanded a ransom and the country of England was impoverished by taxes that were levied to buy his freedom. This money was given to the captors and the king came home. But that is not the idea of a ransom in scripture. It is not that a sum has been put down, but “Christ Jesus, who gave himself”; He gave Himself. I love to think of that, He is someone I know and love, but He “gave himself”. Think of what that meant to God, the “man Christ Jesus”, a Man that God had always had in His mind, a Man who fulfilled and answered to every thought of God, One in whom God found infinite and eternal complacency. He knew how much He satisfied the heart of God; He knew what it meant for God that there would be a Man who would obey Him, cost what it would, and obey out of love. The Lord said, “but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has commanded me, thus I do”, John 14:31. He “gave himself”. What that conveys is that nothing could possibly be held back. The whole of what He was, not only His body, but all that He was in that blessed condition of manhood here was offered in my place. Someone took my place, and it was He who did it, and He did it in love.
I want now to speak about the ass, and before speaking about Exodus I am going to refer to Job. Paul says that nature teaches us (1 Cor.11:14), and I want to draw your attention to something that God taught Job. God spoke of many things to Job, about the weather, about the ostrich, and also about wild asses. He said to him, “Who hath sent out the wild ass free? and who hath loosed the bands of the onager, Whose house I made the wilderness, and the salt plain his dwellings? He laugheth at the tumult of the city, and heareth not the shouts of the driver; The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing”, Job 39:5-8. It is clear from Mr Darby’s translation that God is talking to Job about two different kinds of ass: a wild ass, which is now extinct, and the onager, which is not. It is interesting that God should do that, because Job was very keen to make fine distinctions, especially between different kinds of people. Job was certainly very keen to distinguish himself from everybody else, and he did that by pointing to his own virtue and history which he thought set him apart from other people. What God is saying to Job is that it might be possible to make those fine distinctions if he wished, but actually underneath, everyone is the same. Although God makes this distinction between these two kinds of animal, the way He describes their behaviour puts them together.
That reminds me of the epistle to the Romans. In the beginning of the epistle, Paul is talking about different cultures and civilisations, and he is talking about the approaches that these different cultures have taken to the question of morality. There were people who had no law, there were people who have a kind of natural law, and there were the Jews who thought they were superior because they had God’s law. Then Paul says, as it were, yes, there may be different kinds of people but “there is no difference; for all have sinned” (chap.3:22,23). That is the point that God is making to Job.
That is not the only reference Paul makes to there being “no difference” between different kinds of people. Later on in the epistle he says, “For there is no difference of Jew and Greek; for the same Lord of all is rich towards all that call upon him” (chap.10:12). Now those riches have found expression in the ransom, the “ransom for all”. There is no ground on which God could distinguish one person from another. God is showing Job that there are creatures that are untameable; you cannot herd them or drive them; they are wild and will do as they want. God is really hinting to Job that that is what the fallen nature of man is like, it obeys no other law ultimately but its own will. Paul says, “youthful lusts flee”, 2 Tim.2:22. I remember a brother saying about “youthful lusts” that these are not things that only mark young people. They mark everybody, and they find their expression like this, that ‘No one is going to tell me what to do’. That is what these creatures were like.
We now come to the passage in Exodus. The ass here has been domesticated: it belongs to somebody. If I could apply that, in a sense this has happened to us all; we have come under the influences of the world and society and culture in our families in which we live and grow up and go to school. All these things bring their influences to bear, moderating our natures so that they fit into a certain pattern that makes us useful. But the point that God is making here is that none of that process has changed the nature of the ass. And however polite and civilised we may be, we have a sinful nature; the only cure for that sinful nature is a ransom.
You could say that the ass has virtues, or assets: it is hardy, can tolerate poor conditions, can withstand the cold, is not too concerned about how often it drinks and feeds, is strong and has lots of stamina. These are things in which the animal is good and virtuous. We might think we have got some of those virtues as well: an employer values them, or a school values them. But underneath it is a wild, sinful nature, and that is what God sees. He is looking past the civilisation and the culture, and He sees a wild nature. There are only two possible outcomes for that nature. It stands condemned, which is what Paul says to the Romans, He “has condemned sin in the flesh” (chap.8:3), meaning it cannot be forgiven and has to be condemned and judged. The only other outcome depends on a ransom being given; and for believers, the ransom is given, One able to bear the condemnation instead of us. What was in God’s mind was that the ass could only live if another creature could be offered that did not share that ass’s nature at all: a lamb. I have listed all those features that an ass might have, and you would not look for them in a lamb; the lamb is different. And that is what God has proposed. He says “None can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him”, Ps.49:7. It would be like for like, but God has found in the Person of the Lord Jesus someone in whom that sinful nature did not exist, it was not found: “in him sin is not”, 1 John 3:5.
There was only one Man of whom that could be said, only one Man in the whole history of time, over against the billions who have lived, who all share the same fallen nature; there is only one Man, “the mediator of God and men”. God has taken that One so pleasing to Himself, so eternally answering to His dearest thoughts, with all those virtues that satisfied and gratified the heart of God and drew out His love, He has taken that One, the Lamb of God, and He has put Him in the place of guilty sinners so that we can go free! Is that not affecting? It was not a question of money having to be found. No, a life had to be given up, a life had to be surrendered, and it was a life in which none of the things that displeased God and are suggested in the ass were to be found.
It is a simple picture, but it might appeal to you: that is what God has done. Sometimes you come across things in your own behaviour: you go to bed at night, you think over the day, you think of something that I did that was not very nice. There was an unpleasant side there; and you ask, why did you do that, why did you think that? You cannot hide from what your nature is. And then you turn to pray, and you speak to Somebody who was never like that, never! Perhaps then you remember that on that day on the cross He gave Himself for you. You, a guilty sinner; He a precious, spotless victim: and He gave Himself a ransom for you! The scripture says, “For also the Son of man did not come to be ministered to, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for many”, Mark 10:45. Are you among the many?
This passage in Mark presents another ass. All four gospels speak of this occasion, and they all have something different to contribute. It is interesting to go over these differences. In Matthew, Mark and Luke the Lord sends the disciples to find the ass, and in John’s gospel He finds it Himself. That is typical of John. Maybe the Lord has found you. He might use someone preaching the gospel to find you, but I would like to think He has found you Himself: that is John’s gospel. In Matthew’s gospel, there is an ass and a colt – we should not aim ministry only at young people because we all need it, we all need these appeals. If in tender love for the young people we express the desire that they might realise how blessed these things are, we have the same desires for all those present. Here in Mark’s gospel, it says the colt was tied “at the crossway”. In Luke, when the disciples come, they are questioned by the masters of the colt (Luke 19:33). It seems that those men, or that man, that Luke writes about knew the Lord. That is an advantage. It is like the man who had the upper room (Luke 22:7-13): the disciples are not told to say to him, ‘Jesus wants this room’ nor, to extend that to this scene, are they to say, ‘Jesus wants this colt’. They say, “the Lord has need of it" (chap.19:34), or “The Teacher says to thee, Where is the guest-chamber” (chap.22:11). And the man to whom that was said must have known who the disciples meant. I am just applying this scripture in that way, that the colt had the advantage that its master knew the Lord. We can be thankful that perhaps all of us here have grown up in that environment, we have been under the influence of those who knew the Lord. What a blessing it is! It only takes us so far, but it does take us some way.
What we also find in the passage in Mark’s gospel is that there is “the crossway”. Houses in those days were built round courtyards, with a wall and a door in it, and a path round the outside. If there were four houses together, where they met there would be a crossway. As I say, it is likely that the man in one of the houses knew the Lord, but we do not know about the people in the other houses – maybe they did not. I say to the young people, and to us all, that we are surrounded by different influences: right influences, but also other influences. They may include influences from school, suggesting that you have the assets and the talents to progress in this world, and people will say that we would like you to get on, and we can help to carve out a place for you here, we can help you in this or that direction. But these are influences that come from the other quarters, and they illustrate the critical nature of this moment that these verses in Mark tell us about.
The colt was not out in the main street, but it was in an environment where there were different influences. Mark says here, “upon which no child of man has ever sat”. The colt was domesticated, so to some extent the influences of society and culture and that kind of thing had had their way. Also, it was tied, so these influences had begun to work. But the claims of the world had yet to be made. And the Lord puts in His claim first! That is what I would like you to think about. Dear young brother or sister, I appeal to you in all affection – you hear other claims and other calls; you hear advice that there is a way for you to progress here or there – I know you do, because these things were said to me in my youth. It did not stop when I ceased to be young, either. Those voices keep calling. But the Lord is also calling, and He wants you to put His claim first. The basis of His claim is that He “gave himself a ransom”.
If you were to meet Him, He would not talk to you about some transaction that He had entered into. No, Jesus is not talking in a detached way like that. If you speak to Him and listen to the appeal He makes, an appeal to give your life direction in relation to His interests and for His own glory, you will hear Him say that He “gave himself a ransom” for you. Now we do not know the position of this colt. If the law had been applied, we would have to assume it had been ransomed, otherwise it would not be there. But now we are at that point, at the crossroads. Maybe someone here today is at that crossroads; they may not be young, they may be a more senior person, maybe even as old as me. The Lord is concerned that, if things go on as they are, you will find yourself directed out into this world, under the influence of who knows who; but He is making His claim now. He makes it as One who gave Himself for your ransom.
May He bless the word.
Address at Sidcup
16 November 2024
Andrew Burr