Well, the gospel of Jesus Christ is of first importance, Paul tells us, so few things are

more important than rehearsing the glories of Calvary over and over again.

And that leads us to today's question from a regular listener to the podcast named

Frank.

Pastor John, hello, and thank you for investing so much time and thought into this podcast

over the years.

I'm a regular listener and my question for you is about Jesus who, quote, gave himself

as a ransom for all, first Timothy, 26.

But who did Jesus pay the ransom to?

Is he making the payment to Satan to free us from Satan's captivity or is he giving his

payment to God to free us from our penalty?

So does the New Testament tell us anywhere who Jesus' ransom paid?

The New Testament, it seems to me, never says in just so many words that the ransom Jesus

paid was paid to God.

But there is a hint in the Old Testament and I sink the pictures of the death of Christ

in the New Testament as a sacrifice made to God for the obtaining of a redemption if not

explicit or implicit in that the payment was made by God to God.

But it's important here to remember that all these descriptions in the New Testament,

redemption, justification, propitiation, reconciliation, and so on.

All these things are analogies taken over from human experience, some of them metaphors

and like all analogies, some aspects apply, some don't, and we have to ask in every case which

ones do and which ones don't.

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