To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
God sent His own divine Son, born of a woman and placed under the law, to pay the ransom price that frees those held under its condemnation and sentence of death. He sent Him at the appointed fullness of time, after long centuries of waiting when hope had grown dim, when the world lay under Satan's control and sin's deception had reached its height. He did not come to condemn but to save, gathering the penalty of the race upon Himself and dying as substitute, surety and atoning sacrifice, so that the law stands unchangeable while the repentant sinner is pardoned. That pardon is justification by faith, in which the rebel and child of Satan is forgiven, accepted as a child by adoption, clothed in Christ's imputed righteousness and made an heir and partaker of the divine nature. The gift is received by faith in Christ as personal Saviour and Advocate, and those so adopted live as obedient children, serving their Father and becoming His agents in delivering others.
Redeeming Those Under Law
The sending took place at the fixed, appointed fullness of time determined in heaven's council for the first advent. The promise of a Saviour given in Eden and repeated through patriarchs and prophets kept hope alive across century after century of waiting. Those who first heard it died without seeing its fulfillment, prophetic voices ceased, many did not comprehend the prophecies, and even Daniel's revelation of the exact time was not rightly interpreted by all. Faith grew dim, hope well-nigh ceased to illuminate the future, and oppressed Israel lying under heavy bondage was tempted to think the visions had failed.
He came when the world seemed wholly given into the enemy's control and under Satan's authority, at the very crisis when the deception of sin had reached its height and Satan seemed about to triumph. Men stood as suffering, corrupted captives chained toward eternal ruin and death with no hope of morning, their bodies made for God's dwelling become habitations of demons. Human teaching had eclipsed God while those who loved God longed for direct enlightenment from heaven. Moved by pity and compassion for that misery, God did not destroy the earth but sent His own Son as Instructor and Redeemer to dispute Satan's authority and save it. All heaven was interested in the event, pouring upon the world a flood of healing grace that will not be obstructed or withdrawn till the plan of salvation is fulfilled.
Those under the law are those held under its condemnation and death penalty brought on the human family by Adam's disobedience, whose end is eternal death for all who continue in transgression because they do not obey the Word of God. This included His chosen people, the nation redeemed from Egyptian bondage and entrusted with His oracles, who had left their allegiance and joined the forces of Satan. The Son came in flesh and dwelt among them full of grace and truth, but those He came to save would have none of Him and rejected Him.
The One sent is no less than the Son of God Himself, the eternal Word who made the world, born of a woman and born under the law. He left His high command in heaven and laid aside His honor, glory, royalty and position as Son of God, King of glory and commander. He came in flesh and dwelt among men full of grace and truth as the elder brother of the human race, because men could not have lived in the glory He had with the Father. He joined Himself to sinful people, took human nature and became subject to the law in obedience to all its requirements, entering the world in humility, poverty and obscurity while remaining connected to the throne of God.
To redeem them means He did not come to condemn the rebellious world but to reveal God's loving, merciful and compassionate character and offer believers hope and eternal life. He gathered the penalty resting on the sinful race into His own pure, sinless soul, gave His blood, tasted the bitterness of death, and died on their behalf as an atoning sacrifice. He gave Himself in self-denial as their ransom, substitute and surety to take their place, suffer for their sins and recover the lost. By that death He gives probation and opportunity to see the evil of sin, to return to loyalty, to be healed of spiritual maladies by looking to Him in faith, and to choose as leader either the apostate expelled from heaven or the Prince of Life. His coming rose as the star of hope whose brightness increased as He increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. This both reveals God's love and proves God's law immutable, that not a jot or tittle could be changed to meet man in his fallen condition, so that the divine law and government are maintained while the sinner is pardoned.
Receiving Adoption as Sons
That we might receive the adoption of sons means sinners are not left without hope to die in transgression under the death penalty, but are rescued from slavery to sin and freely granted pardon, sonship, regeneration and heirship with Christ. They are made members of the royal family and household of faith and partakers of the divine nature, given a second probation and every provision to know their Redeemer by experience. This rescue and adoption to heirship is ordained by sovereign grace, to which everything is owed, and is to be revealed to others.
When God gave Jesus He gave all heaven, and Christ paid a ransom for each person to free those under the law, so that the gift has secured adoption into God's family. The promise is Yea and Amen in Christ, immutable, certain, never falsified and never altered. It is received by faith through Christ's mediation as High Priest and Advocate in the heavenly courts, which secures all things, by those who receive Him as Saviour and accept Jesus as personal Saviour. Even apparently hopeless material debased by Satan He will take to be molded, make subjects of grace, and deliver from suffering and from wrath, and those who so believe find their way back through His own merits to the place of sons and daughters and children of the heavenly King, honored as God's free sons by the angelic universe, while God's mercy reaches to the deepest depths to lift the repenting soul into that adoption.
To redeem is pardon and justification by faith, which are one and the same thing. When the penitent sinner discerns Christ's atonement in his behalf and accepts it as his only hope, his sins are pardoned and borne by his Substitute and Surety, who takes his place and suffers for his sins. Through faith he passes from the position of a rebel, a child of sin and Satan, to the position of a loyal subject of Christ, not because of inherent goodness but because Christ receives him as His child by adoption, reprieves him from the condemnation of death and gives him eternal life. Christ claims the pardoned one before the Father as His child, even His beloved son, and imputes His own righteousness to him, so that clothed with Christ's righteousness he stands faultless before God. Justification is the opposite of condemnation, God's boundless mercy to the wholly undeserving, forgiving transgressions for the sake of Jesus who became the propitiation, bringing the guilty transgressor into favor with God and into strong hope of eternal life, while the divine law and government are maintained. Pardon comes through repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus, yet the law stands immutable, eternal as His throne, holy, just and good, honored by Christ's implicit obedience, and for those who refuse heaven's expensive offering and will not show gratitude and love by keeping His commandments, Christ can do no more.
Adopted sons become like their Master, obedient not to the enemy of God but to their Father in heaven, engaging in the service God requires of each obedient child. Jesus loves and blesses those who are obedient, and this identity as sons of God and children of the heavenly King is to be felt and lived out. When His suffering in their behalf to make them children by adoption is seen, worldly pride and self-love no longer satisfy, worship of self ends and God becomes the object of supreme regard. He makes His children His agents in accomplishing deliverance from suffering and wrath, in whose success they find precious reward even in this life. Their adoption into the household of faith must be attested by laying aside planning and scheming, taking up the work all around, doing one's best and carrying unmistakable evidence that God has given a work to do, for sin brings only shame and loss and unbelief means failure.
God sent His own divine Son, born of a woman and placed under the law, to pay the ransom price that frees those held under its condemnation and sentence of death. He sent Him at the appointed fullness of time, after long centuries of waiting when hope had grown dim, when the world lay under Satan's control and sin's deception had reached its height. He did not come to condemn but to save, gathering the penalty of the race upon Himself and dying as substitute, surety and atoning sacrifice, so that the law stands unchangeable while the repentant sinner is pardoned. That pardon is justification by faith, in which the rebel and child of Satan is forgiven, accepted as a child by adoption, clothed in Christ's imputed righteousness and made an heir and partaker of the divine nature. The gift is received by faith in Christ as personal Saviour and Advocate, and those so adopted live as obedient children, serving their Father and becoming His agents in delivering others.
Redeeming Those Under Law
The sending took place at the fixed, appointed fullness of time determined in heaven's council for the first advent. The promise of a Saviour given in Eden and repeated through patriarchs and prophets kept hope alive across century after century of waiting. Those who first heard it died without seeing its fulfillment, prophetic voices ceased, many did not comprehend the prophecies, and even Daniel's revelation of the exact time was not rightly interpreted by all. Faith grew dim, hope well-nigh ceased to illuminate the future, and oppressed Israel lying under heavy bondage was tempted to think the visions had failed.
He came when the world seemed wholly given into the enemy's control and under Satan's authority, at the very crisis when the deception of sin had reached its height and Satan seemed about to triumph. Men stood as suffering, corrupted captives chained toward eternal ruin and death with no hope of morning, their bodies made for God's dwelling become habitations of demons. Human teaching had eclipsed God while those who loved God longed for direct enlightenment from heaven. Moved by pity and compassion for that misery, God did not destroy the earth but sent His own Son as Instructor and Redeemer to dispute Satan's authority and save it. All heaven was interested in the event, pouring upon the world a flood of healing grace that will not be obstructed or withdrawn till the plan of salvation is fulfilled.
Those under the law are those held under its condemnation and death penalty brought on the human family by Adam's disobedience, whose end is eternal death for all who continue in transgression because they do not obey the Word of God. This included His chosen people, the nation redeemed from Egyptian bondage and entrusted with His oracles, who had left their allegiance and joined the forces of Satan. The Son came in flesh and dwelt among them full of grace and truth, but those He came to save would have none of Him and rejected Him.
The One sent is no less than the Son of God Himself, the eternal Word who made the world, born of a woman and born under the law. He left His high command in heaven and laid aside His honor, glory, royalty and position as Son of God, King of glory and commander. He came in flesh and dwelt among men full of grace and truth as the elder brother of the human race, because men could not have lived in the glory He had with the Father. He joined Himself to sinful people, took human nature and became subject to the law in obedience to all its requirements, entering the world in humility, poverty and obscurity while remaining connected to the throne of God.
To redeem them means He did not come to condemn the rebellious world but to reveal God's loving, merciful and compassionate character and offer believers hope and eternal life. He gathered the penalty resting on the sinful race into His own pure, sinless soul, gave His blood, tasted the bitterness of death, and died on their behalf as an atoning sacrifice. He gave Himself in self-denial as their ransom, substitute and surety to take their place, suffer for their sins and recover the lost. By that death He gives probation and opportunity to see the evil of sin, to return to loyalty, to be healed of spiritual maladies by looking to Him in faith, and to choose as leader either the apostate expelled from heaven or the Prince of Life. His coming rose as the star of hope whose brightness increased as He increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. This both reveals God's love and proves God's law immutable, that not a jot or tittle could be changed to meet man in his fallen condition, so that the divine law and government are maintained while the sinner is pardoned.
Receiving Adoption as Sons
That we might receive the adoption of sons means sinners are not left without hope to die in transgression under the death penalty, but are rescued from slavery to sin and freely granted pardon, sonship, regeneration and heirship with Christ. They are made members of the royal family and household of faith and partakers of the divine nature, given a second probation and every provision to know their Redeemer by experience. This rescue and adoption to heirship is ordained by sovereign grace, to which everything is owed, and is to be revealed to others.
When God gave Jesus He gave all heaven, and Christ paid a ransom for each person to free those under the law, so that the gift has secured adoption into God's family. The promise is Yea and Amen in Christ, immutable, certain, never falsified and never altered. It is received by faith through Christ's mediation as High Priest and Advocate in the heavenly courts, which secures all things, by those who receive Him as Saviour and accept Jesus as personal Saviour. Even apparently hopeless material debased by Satan He will take to be molded, make subjects of grace, and deliver from suffering and from wrath, and those who so believe find their way back through His own merits to the place of sons and daughters and children of the heavenly King, honored as God's free sons by the angelic universe, while God's mercy reaches to the deepest depths to lift the repenting soul into that adoption.
To redeem is pardon and justification by faith, which are one and the same thing. When the penitent sinner discerns Christ's atonement in his behalf and accepts it as his only hope, his sins are pardoned and borne by his Substitute and Surety, who takes his place and suffers for his sins. Through faith he passes from the position of a rebel, a child of sin and Satan, to the position of a loyal subject of Christ, not because of inherent goodness but because Christ receives him as His child by adoption, reprieves him from the condemnation of death and gives him eternal life. Christ claims the pardoned one before the Father as His child, even His beloved son, and imputes His own righteousness to him, so that clothed with Christ's righteousness he stands faultless before God. Justification is the opposite of condemnation, God's boundless mercy to the wholly undeserving, forgiving transgressions for the sake of Jesus who became the propitiation, bringing the guilty transgressor into favor with God and into strong hope of eternal life, while the divine law and government are maintained. Pardon comes through repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus, yet the law stands immutable, eternal as His throne, holy, just and good, honored by Christ's implicit obedience, and for those who refuse heaven's expensive offering and will not show gratitude and love by keeping His commandments, Christ can do no more.
Adopted sons become like their Master, obedient not to the enemy of God but to their Father in heaven, engaging in the service God requires of each obedient child. Jesus loves and blesses those who are obedient, and this identity as sons of God and children of the heavenly King is to be felt and lived out. When His suffering in their behalf to make them children by adoption is seen, worldly pride and self-love no longer satisfy, worship of self ends and God becomes the object of supreme regard. He makes His children His agents in accomplishing deliverance from suffering and wrath, in whose success they find precious reward even in this life. Their adoption into the household of faith must be attested by laying aside planning and scheming, taking up the work all around, doing one's best and carrying unmistakable evidence that God has given a work to do, for sin brings only shame and loss and unbelief means failure.