Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, Part 13.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've surveyed a number of New Testament motifs for characterizing Christ's atonement.

Sacrifice, the suffering servant of the Lord,

divine justice, representation.

And today we come to a final motif, redemption.

Now, although there are many other elements or motifs in the New Testament used to characterize the atonement, our time permits us to deal with just one last

motif, and that is the motif of redemption. What do we mean by redemption? In the ancient world, the notion

of redemption had to do with the buying back of prisoners of war or with the buying of slaves

out of slavery.

And the payment that was given to redeem these persons to liberate them was called a ransom.

Now, already in the Old Testament you have this ransom motif present.

Certain Old Testament sacrifices might have a ransom substituted for them

so that instead of offering an animal in sacrifice, one might bring a ransom payment that could serve as a means of atonement.

Similarly, in the Old Testament, God is referred to as Israel's redeemer because he redeems Israel out of bondage and liberates his people.

The difference here is that God doesn't need to pay a ransom in order to redeem people.

Now God's great redemptive act in the Old Testament would be the Exodus, which is signaled

by the Passover, sacrifice and feast.

Now, when we move to the New Testament, we've already seen in Mark 1045 that Jesus

characterizes his mission as giving his life as a ransom for many. Mark 1045. His life served as a payment for our liberation from the

captivity of sin. Similarly, other New Testament authors did not think that Christ's redeeming act was costless.

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