1 Timothy 2:5-6 – Paying the Price
I read about a small boy who was consistently late coming home from school. His parents warned him one day that he must be home on time that afternoon, but nevertheless he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing.
At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There was a slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father’s full plate and then at his father, but his father remained silent. The boy was crushed.
The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son. When that boy grew to be a man, he said, “All my life I’ve known what God is like by what my father did that night.”
The Great Exchange. To trade something undesirable for something purely wonderful. That is what God did for us. We are continuing in our series, look at Christ as our King. We’ve seen He’s our sovereign King, He’s our prophesied King, He’s our royal King with a pretty shady family tree. Today we see that he’s our redeemer King – the king who exchanges our worst for His best. Turn with me to 1 Timothy 2:5-6.
Now, this passage tells a few simple truths. 1) There is a God. 2) There is a separation between God and man. 3) God wanted that separation to be done away with. 4) Jesus is the only way to overcome that separation. I know that those 4 statements separate Christianity from every other religion in the world. And, realistically, even a lot of people who call themselves Christians would disagree with it. But neither majority nor minority make a thing right or wrong. Truth does. And the truth is: we have been separated from God. And actions were taken to bring us back.
Now, salvation is a multi-faced work. No one image can be used to describe what Jesus did for us. The Bible uses different word pictures to illustrate salvation. There is the picture of a court of law in Romans. We were condemned criminals before the judgment seat of God and Jesus bore our penalty in order to set us free. There is the religious language used in Ephesians. We were unclean Gentiles, excluded by our defilement of sin from the presence of God in the temple, and Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice to consecrate for us a way to the throne of mercy. Jesus Himself in Luke 16 used the picture of a family. We were children in disgrace far from home and Jesus brought us back to the family circle. And I love the battlefield language of Colossians. We were captives confined to the fortress of Satan and Jesus broke in to deliver us.
But the image I want to look at today is the picture of redemption – to buy back. Luke 7 says we were in hopeless debt and Jesus paid the debt for us. And Ephesians 1 says we were slaves and Jesus came to the marketplace to redeem us from bondage. Jesus bought us back. Which is of course what redemption means. To purchase something worthless so it can be used for good again. To redeem means to find something valuable in something fit for the garbage. We say someone has redeeming qualities – that is to say, normally the person isn’t worth much, but he has some qualities that make him OK.
In fact, the Bible uses one word in particular to describe this redemption: ransom. Jesus said in Matthew 20:28 that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Now, what is a ransom? It’s the price paid for someone who is in bondage to another. It’s the cost to set someone else free from captivity.
In his little book On Christian Truth, Harry Blamires suggests that we think of the human race aboard a hijacked jet-liner flying through time. “God himself directed its takeoff from the divine control-tower. The initiator of all evil, whom we call the Devil, managed to get a boarding pass.” When the plane reached its cruising altitude, the Devil produced his weapons, threatened the pilot, and took control of the aircraft and all its passengers. Thus the plane hopped on fearfully through history from airport to airport till, quote, “it was caught on the tarmac at Jerusalem, an outpost of the Roman empire, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, where the Son of God offered himself as sole hostage in exchange for the passengers and crew.”
This is a neat picture of ransom. Unfortunately, it falls short. Most scholars have a hard time believing that God owed something to Satan. Yes, the idea of ransom is to pay off the bad guy to get the innocent victims, but what could the Creator of the universe possibly owe to Satan?
Besides, we are not innocent victims. We didn’t just happen to end up on that plane. We are guilty of the crimes we are charged with. Every single one of us at some point said, “I know what I am supposed to do, but I am going to do just the opposite.” Whether it was an issue of truth-telling or anger towards others or indulging lustful thoughts or drunkenness or selfishness or theft or gossip or complaining or greed, at some point each of us chose to do what we wanted instead of what we knew God wanted. The devil did not make us do it – we chose to. And, in the language of Romans, we became slaves – not to Satan, but to sin. We became connected to doing things that displeased God. At first we controlled sin – how much, how often… but soon it controlled us. And we became the people we never really wanted to be. Sin took us farther than we ever wanted to go.
And like any other slave, we could not free ourselves. We needed outside help. God, not content with our being slaves to such a cruel taskmaster as sin, chose to do something about it. He chose a redeemer – someone who would pay the price to set us free. But what could that price be? I mean, how much is one person worth, let alone the price of every single person ever to live?
After World War 1, 900 German soldiers who had violated international law were summoned to appear before the World Court. Their condemnation was certain. In a dramatic move, however, the former crown prince of Germany volunteered to be their substitute. His offer included taking upon himself both the accusation against them and their penalty. This act, though most noble, was impractical. Although he was royalty, he did not have in his own person the value of the 900.
And we have the same problem. What could possibly be paid to spring us out of the prison we put ourselves in? If our sins are looked at as a debt to God, which they are, what could possibly pay that debt off? Our good intentions are never good enough. And we can’t set ourselves free from slavery to sin. What could be done?
Jesus paid that debt. He took our sins upon his own back. He took our punishment. He accepted our beating. His life became the payment needed to spring us. His blood became the bail money to get us out of jail. His life bought us and brought us out of having to repay God for all the multitude of sins we have committed against Him. Jesus became the bridge that crossed the divide between God and man. He became the mediator – the go-between. He became the ransom – the payment needed to release us.
It’s as if God calculated up the debt of all the people in the world, and passed that figure to His Son Jesus. Jesus looked at the figure and pulled out His checkbook and pen. And after making the check out to God the Father, for the amount Jesus wrote in the blank: MY LIFE. He handed the check back to the Father, who looked at it and said: “Yes, that will do.” Jesus came to earth and lived and died and set us free from our deserved punishment. Jesus is our Redeemer.
So what do we do about it? Let me close off with one last story. On the southern border of the empire of Cyrus, there lived a great chieftain named Cagular who tore to shreds and completely defeated the various detachments of Cyrus’ army sent to subdue him. Finally the emperor, amassing his whole army, marched down, surrounded Cagular, captured him, and brought him to the capital for execution. On the day of the trial, he and his family were brought to the judgment chamber - Cagular, a fine looking man of more than 6 feet, with a noble manner about him - a magnificent specimen of a man. So impressed was Cyrus with his appearance that he said to Cagular: "What would you do should I spare your life?"
"Your Majesty, if you spared my life, I would return to my home and remain your obedient servant as long as I lived."
"What would you do if I spared the life of your wife?"
"Your Majesty, if you spared the life of my wife, I would die for you."
So moved was the emperor that he freed them both and returned Cagular to his province to act as governor thereof. Upon arriving at home, Cagular reminisced about the trip with his wife. "Did you notice," he said to his wife, "the marble at the entrance of the palace? Did you notice the tapestry on the wall as we went down the corridor into the throne room? And did you see the chair on which the emperor sat? It must have been carved from one lump of pure gold."
His wife could appreciate his excitement and how impressed he was with it all, but she only replied: "I really didn’t notice any of that."
"Well," said Cagular in amazement, "What did you see?"
His wife looked seriously into his eyes and said, "I beheld only the face of the man who said he would die for me."
Today, as we celebrate communion, we have a chance to look into the face of the One who was willing to die for us. We take a moment to ignore the marble floors and the tapestry, the hectic week or the cares of our lives and look into the eyes of the Man who was willing to sacrifice his own life to save us from our sin. We reflect. We remember. We live our lives out of thankfulness for the ransom He paid.
