This week on Things Unseen, we've been thinking about the work of Jesus, and some of the

big words the New Testament uses to help us understand what he's done for us. We've

already considered words from the temple sacrifices and the law courts, propitiation and justification.

Here's a third familiar word, redemption. It's a word from the world of slavery, really.

Slavery was commonplace in the Roman Empire, which Jesus and the Apostles lived. Some scholars

actually suggest that maybe a third of the population of Rome were slaves. The empire

virtually depended for its efficiency on them. And some were treated very harshly, but others

were more like employees. And slavery also existed among the people of God and the Old Testament,

in some instances it was the way to get out of debt. But unlike in our society, in which a person

for all practical purposes, maybe sells 35 hours in the week to someone else, and that personal

company kind of owns those hours of their lives. In essence, every hour of every day of a

slave's life belonged to his or her master. The master's will was the law that governed the

slave's life. It was possible, both in Rome and in Judaism, for a slave to purchase his or her

freedom, and be set free by the payment of a price, the redemption price. And the New Testament

uses that language to describe what Jesus has done for us. Through his death, he has redeemed us.

He's paid the redemption price needed to set us free.

Sis Paul, in that great passage in Romans 3, 21 to 26, we're justified by his grace as a gift

through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Remember how Jesus put it in one of his great

truly truly sayings? In John 834, truly truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

But if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Now true, most people don't think of themselves as being slaves to sin.

But that's partly because they're a very selective and superficial view of what sin is.

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