BibleProject - Did Jesus’ Death Have to Be a Gruesome Crucifixion?

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Redemption Q+R (E12) — Is deliverance from evil spirits a redemption from the evil one over to God’s possession? Was God demanding a redemption payment through Jesus’ death? And are salvation and redemption basically the same thing? In this episode, Tim and Jon respond to your questions from our Redemption series. Thank you to our audience for your thoughtful contributions to this episode!View all of our resources for Redemption →CHAPTERSRevisiting the Conversation of Redemption and Tackling Your Questions! (0:00-2:50)How does payment relate to redemption, and why does God demand a payment? (2:50-24:15)Why did Jesus’ death have to be such an awful, gruesome crucifixion? (24:15-36:12)When Jesus delivers a person possessed by an evil spirit, is this a redemption from the evil one over to God’s possession? (36:12-42:50)What does it mean to be saved, and is it the same as redemption? (42:50-55:09)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode’s official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESWhen discussing Jesus’ redemption of people possessed by evil spirits, Tim references episode 7 of this series: How Does Jesus Redeem People?You can view annotations for this episode—plus our entire library of videos, podcasts, articles, and classes—in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Check out Tim’s extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSICBibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITSProduction of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who also edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, Tim. Hey, John Collins. Hello. Hello. Hi. We're doing a question and response episode. Yes, we are. Because we just finished the redemption series.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, we, our past selves did. Our past selves did. And the present podcast just released those episodes. We were just having a conversation, though. That's right. Maybe a peek behind the curtain. Because our animation studio,

and everyone who works on resources for every theme study, they need a lot of time to build everything. So we've had these conversations a year ago. Yeah, we had a hard time remembering quite how long ago. It was just that long ago. Yeah. So what that means is that it was such a great refresher to come back to all of your questions

that were being sent in over the last few weeks, and it was fun to read through them all. And also, I had to actually go back and re-listen to some of our conversations to remember. Great. So thank you. That's the peek behind the curtain. So we just finished releasing the podcast episodes on Redemption. The video is coming out soon-ish.

The video is releasing this week. It's wonderful. Yeah. So cool. With a bunch of other resources that the scholar team puts together, our editorial team puts together, all the wonderful people. So it's all ready. One thing about that I do remember, even though it was a year ago-ish, about these series of conversations on redemption in the story of the Bible, is that this topic and this theme in the Bible is one that I was part of why I assigned it to us was because I wanted to push for greater clarity, deeper understanding for myself. Yeah. So I think that happened.

Did you find some more clarity? I think so, yeah. And I think the video and the final episodes of the podcast kind of show. show where we achieved that. And so a number of the questions that came in, as always, I read them all, I look for repeated themes because we can't answer them all, but a number of the questions relate to the issues that I feel like we ended in. We ended in. So I'm excited to actually.

And that's where I feel like it got a little messier. And by messy, I mean just more complex and more mystical and more nuanced textured. Yeah. Yes. I agree. In one sense, though my memory is that it ended up feeling more simple. Okay. Great. And with more... Let's get there again. Clarity. So we're going to, I guess, redo the whole series right here in a Q&R episode by interacting with all of your thoughtful and insightful questions. So with all that said, shall we dive in? Yeah. Okay. Let's start with a question from David in Ontario, Canada.

Hi, John and Tim. My name is David, and I live in Timmons, Ontario, Canada. In my faith tradition, Jesus' death is often referred to as a payment for the penalty of sin. How does this payment relate to redemption? If there is no payment to the powers that hold humans as slaves, why does God demand a payment? Thanks for your fantastic work. Great question. Just hitting the nail on the head, I think. think for how many people experience the imagery in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, of Jesus dying for our sins.

That's a very common phrase used by the apostles. And then also the frequent use in Paul, Peter, the letters of the Hebrews, of Jesus' death as a redemption, a redemption payment. And then a handful of places where Paul will talk about the wages of sin is death. or sin as a debt in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us, sin as a debt. So you can take all those ideas and kind of wrap them together and make a story of sin as when we do wrong, then we're indebted to God. Somebody has to pay the debt. Somebody has to die because of wages to sin's death. So Jesus dies at the demand of God's justice to pay back.

what humanity owes to God. Yes. That's a very common way. Very common. That's how I was introduced to. That's how I was introduced to. And I think a reflection for me, after doing this series with you, was that is a very straightforward explanation of Jesus' death. Right.

It's kind of easy to understand. It's true. Right? And it relates to our normal day-to-day experiences of failing in some way. Now we owe somebody. You owe someone. They demand that we pay them back. maybe I can't pay them back.

Someone else pays them back for us. And we're like, oh, that's probably happened to all of us in some way, big or small before. So you presented a big wrinkle in that, which from the very beginning, which was, in what way does God owe death or the Satan anything really? So redemption language all the way back to the beginning of series is about something that ought to be in my possession or in rightful possession by somebody has wrongfully gone out of their possession, or maybe tragically. And the reclaiming, the process of reclaiming, restoring that person or thing to rightful possession, that's what the word redemption refers to in the Bible. And often there is an item of value of exchange given.

Yeah. Because redemption is a marketplace metaphor. It's a metaphor that comes, yeah, from the economic world of buying and exchanging. Yeah. That's right. So if you're going to use a marketplace metaphor to talk about the death of Jesus, then you can tell this kind of straightforward story that we just told. That's right. It is possible to get that straightforward story out of a whole variety of passages in the New Testament. But the question is, if you look at each of those passages in context, if you look at the roots of redemption language in the story of the Bible, does that story really accurately reflect? how Jesus would talk about it, how Paul talks about it. And I think what we discovered what I tried to point out is that it doesn't. That actually doesn't match.

God isn't demanding a payment. God isn't demanding a payment. You won't find that language anywhere in the New Testament. That's one thing. In fact, not only is God not the one demanding a payment, God is the one who gives the payment. God is giving the payment. Okay, and so you're still using the payment metaphor. Right, yeah.

So in which way are you using it then? Okay, so David, you're referencing this phrase, G.S.'s death pays the penalty for our sins. So that language is primarily rooted in a handful of lines in Paul's letter to the Romans. And it comes specifically from the end of Romans chapter 6 where Paul has this line, the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life in Messiah, Jesus, our Lord. Word redemption doesn't appear here, but the economic ideas are here. Yeah, that you owe a wage or compensation.

Well, what's interesting, because wages is what we think of, it's what you get paid for as a result of your labor. Oh, yeah. And that is the word, Paul is using that word. Okay. But in the sense of an outcome, like if you work and do a whole bunch of things, there is an expected exchange of value. There's an expected consequence. There's an expected result that's coming your way. Yeah.

If I work eight hours for an employer, the outcome, the expected outcome is that I'll get, you know, the wage. So you're saying the wage is just talking about an expected outcome. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So if I fail to love God and others, that way of existing in the world will produce a very predictable outcome, like a bunch of broken relationships, and I'm going to die because I'm not connected to God's eternal life. Okay. If I fail to love God and love others, I'm disconnected from God and from others.

Now, I'm sure there is a more generic word for consequence that's not a marketplace term. You're saying this term is more of an economic term? It is, yeah. Wage, pay, compensation. But the idea is that a life of sin, and the word means failure, moral failure, a life of failing to love God and others, as it were, produces a whole bunch of effects and consequences that become my wage. It's what I get in return for a life of failing to love God and others. And that is dying. And death is the ultimate cutting off of all my relationships and its separation from God's infinite life that he wanted to give me and wants to offer me, but that I refuse. Yeah, to the death you return.

Yeah, so that's the point. That's like, Exhibit A, human history. Yeah. Like the wages of sin is death. Ah, okay. It's actually a really straightforward observation about human life in history. Yeah, okay.

But God's really not satisfied with his human image-bearing partners having that fate. And so what God is given is a gift that is eternal life. And how did that eternal life

make its way to human beings through the Messiah, Jesus, our Lord? So my whole point, in summer, this little commentary on Rome 623, is even to say the idea that Jesus died

as a payment for the penalty of sin doesn't quite I think accurately even state what Paul's trying to say in Roman 623. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll get to redemption in a moment. Got it. What he's saying is that,

not that Jesus' death and resurrection paid off God for what I owe God, it's rather that we are all getting the outcome of our choices, of moral failure to love God and others. And outside of reciprocity and exchange,

God didn't pay anything. He gave a gift, just straight up gave a gift that breaks the whole economics of exchange. And that gift is the opposite of death. Exactly. It's life. Who it breaks the economics of exchange. God doesn't give us what we owe.

God doesn't pay off God. Right. That's not in there. It's we're dying. as the outcome of our choices. And God is so generous that he just gives this amazing gift of infinite eternal life. Okay. Yeah.

So Jesus' death is never talked about as a payment specifically. It is talked about as a ransom. It's talked about as the redemption price. Yeah, the cofer. The price of redemption. And I think there was a moment where that landed for me when we were talking about Jesus going through death, death did cost him. It cost him his life.

Cost him is life, and all the suffering and all the anguish. And so to think of that as an exchange of value or some sort of a costly thing that he offered. That's right. So, Mark 1045, the son of man, son of Adam, which Jesus was referring to himself, didn't come to be served, but to be a servant. And to give his life as a, and the Greek words Lutron, which we talked about, it's the item of exchange. It's the dollar bill that you give to the corner store owner to

get the lollipop or whatever. Lollipops is a dollar. No, that might be cheap for a lollipop. Anyway. So, right, the lollipops owned by the store? Yeah. I want it to be in my possession. I give a price of redemption to transfer it from the store's possession.

Okay, now as soon as you're in that marketplace kind of metaphorical world, when you're there, it's so easy because the trail is so worn for me to then take that marketplace metaphor and then tell the simple, clean story. Right. Yeah. I owe God my life because of the things I did. That's right. Oh, God demands. And he's demanding some sort of payment. That somebody die. And so, yes, I need to die. Maybe the way through this is God could punish someone else. Right. And that's what Jesus did. Right. And that's not how

this language works in the New Testament. So when Jesus is using a word that clearly means the item of exchange. That's right. Like, what am I supposed to be imagining? Yes. So, and this is why the Exodus story is the foundation for all of this language. And that's why we spent so much time in the Exodus story. It's about redeeming someone from slavery.

It's primarily where this language is rooted in. And the foundation story for that is Israel's slavery to Pharaoh and Egypt. And the redeem is first used in the story of the Bible. to talk about God transferring Israel out of wrongful possession of Pharaoh and slavery into God's covenant relationship and family. And we talked about in that story, there were a couple different ways to think about the Kofor or the Lutron. Yeah. On one level, God doesn't ever pay Pharaoh.

Right. Pharaoh never gets an item of exchange. God just takes his people. Yeah. And the way you could think of that as him exerting his power and showing his power over creation was the lutron or like item of exchange. That's right. Because it's wrongful possession, right?

Pharaoh wrongfully possesses Israel. Right. So God doesn't owe anybody. And that's why in that passage in Exodus 6, God says, I'm going to redeem them, but there's all these other verbs connected. I'm going to snatch them out. I'm going to rescue them. It's just another way of saying, I just go into the store and say, hey, store, that's

actually my law. pop you don't know it it's actually mine i'm gonna take it i'm just gonna take it that's right and i'm gonna show you proof that i can take it and that's showing proof which god did with the plagues that's right is all pharaoh really should have needed so that counts for the word redeem okay but yeah what you're flagging now is oh but what up what's the item exchange what why would jesus use this word for item of exchange yeah yeah that's right so here then the primary location of this language that seems to be located in the Passover and the role of the Passover lamb, which the word in context of, like you won't read, you can go read the Exodus account of Passover

in Exodus 12 and 13. You won't see this word redemption price, but you will find that every generation after the Exodus, whose ancestors, the firstborn son's life was spared, on the night of Passover, that every generation was to replay that night, as it were, every time a firstborn son is born, and there is an item of exchange that gives that son back to the family because that son belongs to God. So the basic storyline is that Pharaoh had been taking the sons of Israel and killing them. And Passover is God's claim that actually all life belongs to me and at this point

all of human life as outside of Eden sorry this is getting complicated right this is the point this is the point the point is I could tell you a really clear story

I owe God a payment God is going to take it from Jesus instead that's simple it is simple The problem is you actually don't find that simple story if you sit down and read sections of the Bible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did, and you kind of feel that.

Yeah. But then it's so hard because that's such an ingrained story. And it is so simple. Yeah. But then I want to replace it with something that feels equally simple. Equally simple. Sure. And I think the reality is it's not.

There's a bigger story. It's an ancient story. You've got a slavery in Egypt You've got a Passover lamb You've got all this stuff That you need to think about You got the blood is the life And somehow the blood is protecting us

You've got all this stuff Yeah, that's right And it's like Not so simple Yeah, that's right So thank you for that meta moment On the night of Passover God hands all of Egypt

And all of its inhabitants Egyptian and Israel and anybody else over to the consequences of human failure up to that point in the story, which is death, and it's this plague. So God is the one allowing the plague, right, to spread, but God is also the one giving the gift. Who gives the gift of this blameless Passover lambs,

lifeblood is painted on the door of the house, and it's not that God's paying off God, God's not even paying off death, rather, and this was the clarity we achieved. Okay. is that when the death plague comes to that house, it sees a life that doesn't belong to it. A blameless life that is fully surrendered over to God,

which is what that blood symbolizes, is a life over which death has no authority, it can't possess it. So it's not like death comes up to the door and sees the blood. It's like, yeah, finally somebody died. It's the opposite. It's death comes up to the door. comes to the door and says, that doesn't belong to me.

Even though it was surrendered over to death as a gift, it cost the lamb something. Yeah, it cost the lamb something, but it doesn't belong to death and just death has to move along. And that is the complex story. So within there is the mystery, though, is why did the lamb have to die, right? Oh, sure, sure. So the simple story is, well, had to die because someone had to die. Or you could say it this way.

The lamb died because we are all dying. The lamb joined us in our death. Yeah, we're all dying here outside of Eden. And the whole story of what Pharaoh is doing to Israel and Egypt is in a very powerful image of what humans do to other when they failed to love God and neighbor and we're all dying and the death plague is the natural outcome as it were in the story the wages of the whole human train wreck up to that point but God gives a gift in the form of a blameless life over which death has no authority or possession and the

blameless life then you're saying joins us in our death yeah yeah and then we can join Jesus in his life which means then when we go through death we can then also have Jesus' life

yeah if I'm as it were covered by the blood that is with the blameless life of the Messiah who loved me and gave himself for me as Paul will say in Galatians then all of a sudden my death is no longer

an ultimate end it's a passageway into the resurrection life that God gave to me as a gift. Yeah. The gift of God is eternal life. Okay. Can I try on then maybe this simple alternative? Please. Which still has, I think, some texture to it.

I love how you said the natural consequences or the wages of just the way we exist is leading everything to death. And God is allowing that. And there's a sense of independence that he gave us. Yeah. Yeah, because it's our choice. Adam and Eve chose and, right? That's what every generation has been choosing since then.

But God's not happy with that. We don't belong to death. He wants to snatch us out of death, bring us back into life. And the way that he did that was to come and be with us in a form of human and divine connected in which death has no claim at all. over the life of the son of God. Yeah. Nope. And will not descend into death.

But Jesus, that human and divine, joins us in our death and goes through death with us. And that cost him. Cost him his life. Yeah. And in a way, it was him surrendering and giving something a value. And you can think of that as a payment. but not if you're thinking he's paying someone off. That's right.

But a payment if you're thinking and cost him something. That's right. In human interactions, paying someone is because I owe. Yeah. But now with the son of God giving his life as a redemption price, for God to redeem something is just completely different because God doesn't owe anybody anything. Right. But the metaphor is still useful, I think.

Okay. Yeah. And then by joining us in his death, we can join him in his life and somehow get pulled through death. Yeah. The son of God offers as a gift his own surrender to the father as a representative life into which we can be what wrapped in, unfolded. Covered by the blood. Covered by the blood. Yeah, there's so many metaphors for it.

I think it's after we finished the series, because we kept talking about. talking about it, I remember, for a week or month or so afterwards. Yeah. You know, we would have come into the office and be like, you know, I was thinking this, try this one. And it was either in my head, I don't know if I said it out loud to you, but there is this perennial way, common way that we think of asking the question, why did Jesus have to die? Yes. And usually that have to implies that there's something between Jesus, the Son, and God the Father, and that God demanded or had to make something happen. implied in that have to.

And I think a way to honor the way the biblical authors of the apostles talk about it is that Jesus had to die because we are dying. And we are the ones that God loves and wants to recover and restore to life. So Jesus dies because we are dying. That's the best way I can find in English

to reflect what the apostles are trying to say in these passages that we covered in the series. Yeah, and this gets back to my question, which was, why can't Jesus pull us out of death without going through death with us? And we had a really interesting conversation about that. Yeah, in fact, the language you're using is the exact language of the next question.

Perfect. That was sent into us from Cairo in the country of Turkey across the planet from us. Wonderful. Yeah, let's hear Kairder's question. Hi, Tim and John. This is Kaira from Istanbul, Turkey. I've really enjoyed wrestling

through this theme with you guys. I have two questions. One is you talked about Jesus pulling us through death from the other side. My question is, why did it have to be such an awful, gruesome death

of the crucifixion? Couldn't any death have accomplished the same thing? My second question is, you talked about a redemption and release or forgiveness, almost as if it was two sides of the same coin, rather than a prerequisite of the price has been paid on the cross of redemption. So now God can forgive us. I would love to hear

more of your thoughts on how forgiveness fits around this topic. Thank you so much. God bless. Yeah, wonderful. On point. Yeah, these are great questions. Really great questions. So there's two. There's two questions. First is this idea of Jesus pulling us through death from the other side. He can go through death because death has no rightful claim on him. Yeah. So as he says in John,

no one takes my life from me. I lay it down and I'll pick it right back up again. Okay. Before we get to her question, I think my question was, why did Jesus have to go through death? Why can you pull us out on this side? And I think when we talked about that,

I think we just talked about how we have to go through death. At this point, there's no other choice. We kind of have to have. have to. Like, God can't grant us eternal life in the state that we're in, or he doesn't want to. There's something about, you know, we talked about how Jesus could heal people or even resurrect people, but then they're going to die again. And so, so really it's like there's no other way to eternal life but through death at this point. Yeah, I think I would want to back away

from the language of God can't. Okay, right. And just say, because of, and here I'm just trying to reflect on the way the Eden story works. Because of the genuine partnership that God wants to engage with in creation and with human images as God's partners, the arena of freedom that God's given to humans allowed us a choice into how we would partner with God or not. And we mostly choose not. That's how the story goes. And so that not partnering with God creates a set of wages and outcome and creates a whole world that is in the biblical story life outside of Eden. And so life outside of Eden is life characterized by mortality of coming from the dust and we go back to the dust. And even like our material mode of existence is all dustbound. So this mode of

existence is actually too weak and frail to actually inherit the full reality of infinite life. So no matter what, we have to go through death. Yes. So death is the reentry back into the garden means passing by the cherubim and the fire and the sword. It's a form of death. And it means a giving up of what we are accustomed to is calling reality or life. And we've got to give up a whole bunch of this to transcend into the next level, whatever, of what God has in store. And what we'll find on the other side is the apostle is so insistent. So is Peter that it's not a disembodied non-physical existence. It's some form of an embodied existence, but it's a transformed like Jesus' resurrection body.

And so in that sense, we have to die, but that death is a rebirth. Well, thank you, and I want to have five more hours of conversation about that. Yeah. But that is good enough for now. Yeah. Now then to the question, to Kyra's question. Why'd it have to be so gruesome? Okay, that's right.

So Jesus pulled us through death so that death for us now, like for him becomes a reserve. So let's take for granted. Jesus went through death for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get that. But why? Isn't this a great little mental exercise? Why? Yeah.

What's the deal with the like, oh, because I think the story, the simple story will say, well, it's gruesome. because, oh, you know, like, that's what you deserved. You deserve worse, you know? Yeah, sure. Think of all the fiery torment that you're getting escaped out of. Sure. Got it. In other words, the awfulness of G.S.'s death becomes an image of what would happen to me had God not done that.

Right. Fascinating. Yeah. Haven't you heard that preached? Probably. I think the problem with that is. that you just wouldn't find Jesus or the apostles ever saying anything like that. Yeah, it's an inference in the New Testament.

When you do find the awfulness of Jesus' death being focused and reflected on, as you do in the gospel narratives, but then the Apostle Paul in his letters to the Corinthians, specifically talks about the foolishness, the scandal of the crucifixion. Yeah. What he's talking about is that the way that God chose to love. and rescue the world was so counter and opposite of how humans would ever think to solve a problem. Yeah. That it's actually God's wisdom to do something that looks weak and foolish and despicable. Yeah. It's God's wisdom so that no one could look and say, ah, see? Like, I knew God would do it that way.

Or that no one could look and say, hey, look how good. God saved the world. That's pretty close to how I would save the world. It's just counter. That's how Paul talks about it. That's cool. It is cool. And maybe underneath that, there is this portrait in the Hebrew Bible about the snake crusher from Genesis 3 that he'd get bitten by the snake as he crushes the snake.

And that metaphor becomes a way to describe how God consistently uses people who are in place. of weakness, suffering, and that he loves to exalt and use those people to accomplish his purposes in the world. And Joseph is the first kind of suffering deliverer character in Genesis. And then Moses becomes a rejected

kind of suffering leader. The people constantly oppose him. You talk about Job as... Job? That kind of character. Yeah. He suffers enormously, but then he's able to pray for and play this priestly role

for his friends at the end of the story. So it's also this image of that God wants to show to us that the ways that we think are normal to be human and create societies and are actually so destructive that even when he comes among us to give us a gift, we destroy God.

And that itself shows us the reality of our needs. need for the gift of God in Messiah Jesus, something like that. It highlights our foolishness, but then there's also something which it gives us a peek into the upside-down wisdom of God. Right. Yes. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Which is what Paul is trying to name in 1st Corinthians. Chapter 2, especially if anyone wants to follow up. But it's such a great question, Kider. Why couldn't Jesus have gone to a peaceful death and just do? joined us in mortality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something about, and Jesus appealed to the scriptures.

He said, it had to be this way. And he quotes from, write the prophets, he quotes from the Psalms. Yeah. Which are all building up this portrait of the messianic deliverer as somebody who dies as a rejected one. Hmm. Hmm. It's really interesting.

Yeah. And then I'm picking up on something new for me, which is, while it is gruesome and gory. And you get things like the Passion of the Christ movie, which really highlights that. What I think I heard you saying is more so it's humiliating.

It was a humiliating death. Yes, the purpose of crucifixion wasn't just to kill somebody. It wasn't to be gory. No. But it was to like make that person look like a fool and humiliate them. Yeah. And

to subjugate them, to show that they are dominated by the one doing the crucifixion, which is the, you know, the Roman Empire. Yeah. Yeah. So having said all that, Kyra, it's a really important question. Yeah. I'm just so glad you asked it.

So glad you asked that. I found myself feeling like, hmm, there's some questions in life that you, in Christian faith. They're not like meant to just get answered. Yeah. The question itself is meant to take you something. an entry in. That you're really never supposed to leave.

And this feels like one of those types of questions for me. And that's just her first question. I told me. Yeah, so many great questions. Okay, second is, are redemption and forgiveness or release two sides of the same coin? Yeah. This was such an aha for me as we talked, that the word forgiveness is the word release. The word release, which is the idea behind a redemption.

That's right. The Greek word is... I'm being redeemed from my sins. I'm being released from my sins. I'm being forgiven of my sins. I'm being rescued, snatched out of death, which is the sin, the failure. Yep, that's right.

So we focused on specifically the gospel of Luke, how Jesus talked about, he appealed to the language of the Isaiah Scroll in Luke chapter 4 to describe his mission. He's the anointed one to bring good news to the suffering and the poor and the hurting and the blind and to announce release for the captive. And that word release is the word then in Luke, he goes on, teach in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our sins as we forgive.

Release us from the consequences of our sins as we release others from the consequences of their sins. So release and redemption are different ways of talking about the same thing. I love that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so in a similar way, you can forgive somebody without them. giving you a payment for what they owed you. You can release them.

Yeah. And in a way, that is what God has done. That's what Paul's point, all the way back to Paul's point, is that we... You deserve death. Yeah, you deserve death. And it's what you're getting. It's what every human generation is getting when they die. But God wants you release.

Yeah, but God just gave a gift in the life and death and resurrection of the sun. So I guess it's just an affirmation, Kyra, that redemption and release are two sides of the same coin. Release is another synonym for forgiveness. And so, in that sense, God does just choose to forgive humans. But the way that he forgives humans is in the person of the son of God to become human, to live and die with us, though death has no rightful claim on his life. Okay. Great.

I love how the questions are kind of feeding along with our actual just conversation that we're having right now. We're kind of summarizing it again. So the next question that I think fits in at this point is from Nathan in Indiana. Understanding Jesus' death in the model of the Passover lamb and understanding redemption is a transfer of possession is echoing through my understanding of. many different spiritual concepts. And one of those that keeps coming to mind is how Jesus delivers those who are possessed by evil spirits. Is it appropriate to view these individuals as undergoing a redemption of sorts and transitioning

from being under the possession of sin and death and the evil one and then into the possession of God? Or are these events better understood as I've always in the past understood them as Jesus just simply removing these entities? from those who are being controlled by them. Thank you. Thanks, Nathan. It's a good question.

Yeah, really, really thoughtful question. And we did actually talk about this. I think it was in our episode on Luke. So I just thought it's great to bring it up again. So I agree with you, Nathan. I think you're what you call it. Redemption is echoing and having this effect on all kinds of other ideas

that you've had. as a Christian and thinking about the Bible. So I agree with you that redemption language is an appropriate way to think about Jesus's healings of people or his, you know, exorcisms of evil spirits, and often those are connected. Connected to each other. In fact, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus calls it that.

Like, that's actually what he calls it. He calls a healing, a redemption. Yeah, so there's the story we went to it, but I'll just recall it again. is in Luke chapter 13, where Jesus comes across a woman who has something wrong with her back, but she's like permanently bent over or like hunched over. She can't straighten up. And so Jesus just says to her, this is Luke chapter 13, verse 12,

woman, you are released from your sickness, from your infirmity. He put his hands on her, and she all of a sudden stood straight up and started praising God. And then Jesus... That's the word redeem? It's a synonym. It's a synonym. To redeem, but it means to release out of possession. Okay.

They were trapped, were enslaved in a bad situation. To her infirmity. They're set free, liberated. Then when Jesus describes it in verse 16 of Luke chapter 13, he says, this woman is the daughter of Abraham, and the Satan has bound her. Like tied ropes around her. is the metaphor, for 18 long years, and she has been set free,

and what day of the week is it? It's the seventh day. It's the Sabbath day from the thing that bound her. So this is both a release from a physical infirmity. But the physical infirmity is itself a sign of her living outside of Eden under the influence of the snake. Yeah. That it's a sign of her dying body.

So he healed. her. Yeah. But, you know, she eventually died again. Yeah. So in that sense, he didn't completely liberate her. Right. But on this side of his death and resurrection, it was a redemption.

Yeah. From authority into the snake. And I guess you could say what Jesus did in his whole life and death and resurrection was due for all of creation and permanently what he did for that woman temporarily on that Sabbath day, something like that. But he calls it a release. Yeah. So what does that do?

How does that, other than just being cool? Right. Well, I think it just keeps us in this world of we are captive by death. And then also captive by this evil. And mortality, right? I mean, having mortal bodies that break down and parts don't work. Yeah, it's part of being captive to death. That's right.

And there is this agent. of chaos, the Satan, that is using the power of death to like bind us, I suppose. There's something there.

And that the ultimate redemption is to be completely pulled through that. But when Jesus comes and heals this woman, he is in some way enacting that kind of freedom from death,

even though it isn't a completed final redemption. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, in one of the Apostle Peter's speeches and Acts, in the early chapters of Acts, you know, when after Pentecost happened, when he retells the story of Jesus more than once, he talks about Jesus' healings and exorcisms. He uses a phrase from the Hebrew Bible. He calls them signs and wonders that Jesus performed.

And the word sign means exactly what it means in English, which is one thing. It's pointing to another thing. It points to a bigger thing, but that is itself a little mini-instance of the ultimate thing. So the healings of Jesus are a sign of the arrival of the healed, restored creation. Yeah, the ultimate Sabbath day. That's right. But it was just a little foretaste of that sign of the coming kingdom of. of God, I think, which is why he did these healings as a little foretastes and pointers forward,

as opposed to just, you know, magic tricks that demonstrated that he's God. Yeah. I think they do demonstrate his identity, you know, as the Son of God, but they do a lot more alongside that. That's good. So, yeah, redemption is a way to imagine the healings and exorcism power of Jesus that we see in the Gospels. And that enriches the bigger story of redemption in the whole of the Bible. So that was a significant insight for me in the course of our conversations that I think it's cool to think about. Great. Thank you, Nathan.

Let's go skip down to Cody's question. I think this will spark something interesting. Hello, Tim and John. This is Cody from Wilsonville, Oregon. Thank you for your rich exploration of redemption. as a transfer of possession back to the rightful owner. I'd love your insight on a related and foundational question. What does it mean to be saved? Is being saved simply another way of saying being redeemed?

Or are there meaningful distinctions between the two? Does seeing salvation primarily as redemption shift how we interpret verses about being saved? And does it challenge the common assumption that salvation only means avoiding hell someday? I would absolutely eat up hearing you two riff on what does it mean to truly be saved. Thank you for all you do. You guys mean more to me than you'll ever know. Oh, thanks, Cody. And thanks, Cody.

Wilsonville, I was just there for a soccer tournament. Oh, yes. We had a final there. It's a suburb of Portland, Oregon. Severn Portland. Really big stadium. Yeah. Cody, also, maybe just, we've never met, but you may already have a career in radio.

Oh, right, right. Or something. He's got the mic. But, man, you have a very. Oh, the voice, too. Yeah, you have a great announcer voice, something like that. Anyway, thank you. That was both a well-worded question and well-pronounced.

Well-delivered. Well-delivered. Okay. What does it mean to be saved? Salvation in redemption. We also touched on this at different points in the conversation, but I thought it would be good to bring it around again. You often just retranslate salvation to the word rescued.

Yes. And I think you do that to help us maybe take away any baggage we have of what salvation might mean and just to put us in the world of being rescued from slavery or being rescued from something snatched out of danger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes to recover what the biblical authors mean by their words,

we have to adapt our own English words to help us, you know, shake off the shackles of familiarity. And so the word save has all so many layers, so many people in religious communities, that I have found the word rescue. It's both just an accurate synonym, right? In English, if I was saved from drowning, I was rescued from drowning, right? I mean, it's great. But rescue, I think, helps us remember what we're talking about is being rescued from danger. Yeah.

And the first time that redeem is used in the Bible in God's speech to Moses at the Burning Bush and in Exodus, it puts both words together, redeem and a rescue. So Exodus 6,6, we looked at this at length earlier in the series. God says to Moses, hey Moses, tell the Israelites, I am Yahweh, and I am going to bring you out. So that's just, you're inside somewhere, God's going to make you go out. So that's a metaphor for you're in Egypt and slavery. You're going to go out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. The next word is, I am going to, and the verb in Hebrew, Hebrew is Hitziel, which means to literally send out your hand and grab something and then bring it out to snatch.

Towards yourself. To snatch. Yeah. It's used in lots of different ways. So it gets translated. Here, I have a whole bunch of English translations open. NIV says I'm going to free you from being slaves. I'm going to snatch you from being enslaved to them. I'm going to free you. ESV, English standard version has I'm going to deliver you Deliver's the interesting English word, isn't it? Deliver you from slavery. From slavery to them. And the new American standard and the NRSV

all go with deliver. Yeah, that's not how you use deliver in normal English. Like you deliver a pizza. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah, right. Delivery. You don't...

Yeah, or a package. Yeah, or a package. You get a package. The delivery is here. But what that does mean is it was in the truck. If I say, yeah, somebody delivered a package. What I mean is they brought it out of the truck. They snatched it out of the truck. Yeah.

By hand and took it to my front porch or something. It got delivered. But I think we use the word deliver in terms of the process of the carrying. Yes. Whereas you could say the package was delivered from the truck. It was bound by the truck. Contained within the truck. Yeah.

So this word that's translated as free or deliver Hitsil is one of the common Hebrew words that's connected with acts of salvation. But it is not yet the Hebrew word that's underneath Jesus' name for salvation. Yeshua. Right. That belongs to later in the Exodus story when after the Israelites went out of Egypt, but Pharaoh's chasing after them, This is the night at the Sea of Reeds, right? And Pharaoh and his army is like charging down the hill. The Israelites are right at the shore, and they've got an army behind them, death on one side, body water in front of them, death on the other side.

What are you going to do? And the Israelites say to Moses, Exodus 1411, is it because there weren't enough graves in Egypt that you just brought us out here to die in the wilderness? Why did you bring us out of Egypt? And what Moses says is, don't be afraid, stand right here and see the, and there's our word. It's Jesus' name, Yeshua, in Hebrew, the Yeshua of Yahweh that he's going to accomplish. So this is the foundational salvation moment of its first appearance in the story of the Bible. Okay. So going out of Egypt is being delivered.

Being snatched. Snatched out. That's one way of thinking about a deliverance or a rescue. And a synonym to that is here they're just stuck in a moment that they can't get out of, and it's dangerous. They're going to die. And Yahweh is going to deliver or rescue them, Yeshua. So these are our words for rescue. So redeem is focusing on that you're owned or possessed by somebody, and you go out of possession into another. Redeem is.

redeem is. Yeah, redeems focused on the transfer of possession. That's right. Rescue seems to be focused on just the like the action or the movement out of death and danger. Yeah. So slavery in the Bible is a non-ideal death environment. That's why God's foundational act of revealing himself is to liberate from slavery. But you can also be in danger of dying in all kinds of other terrible ways. Yeah. In this night at the sea in Exodus 14 is a great example. So there are two ways of describing the same thing, just with different storylines or different

emphasis attached. Yeah. And as soon as you ask, what have I been rescued from? Mm-hmm. Right? Oh, right. Then you're talking about slavery to death. Yes.

What am I being rescued for? Now you're talking about being the image of God. Right. And so underneath this word of rescue is all the other stories, but it's really just this very concrete, actionable, like, of you're in danger and now you're no longer in danger. Yeah. But then the questions become like, okay, danger from what? What for? Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. So, Cody, your point is this common assumption that salvation is equated with avoiding hell in the afterlife. All right. And so you're right. That's not how the apostles use the language of salvation. They use the language of salvation to describe how God rescued us out of slavery to dying. And also, like Romans 6, which we meditated on, slavery to patterns of thinking and behaving that are just destructive. Destroying ourselves and our communities and we're saved into a whole new kind of life.

that he describes in Roman 6 is righteousness that is doing right by God and neighbor being an image of God. So we're saved from slavery to death and patterns of sin that lead to death, and we are saved into being images of God. I like to how you put that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So I guess we just riffed on what it means to be saved. Okay. I hope that's helpful, Cody. It was at least helpful to us. Yeah, thanks, Cody.

well that was great to go back through think about redemption again right with all those questions yeah I agree and there's many more wonderful questions thank you for sending them all in yeah yeah this was a really fun series actually I knew that we were recording this question response episode a couple weeks ago

so I re-listened on 1.5 to our past selves so that I could have it top of mind for the Q&R but I really enjoyed this conversation with you, John. It was really helpful. For me and the video that summarizes... Let's talk about that real quick. So that video's coming out. That video's coming out. It went through the script. Probably on the higher end of number of drafts. When we produce videos, sometimes it's three drafts, sometimes it's five. I think this was creeping up to like draft seven or eight. We spent a lot of time rewriting this video. And a number of re-storyboarding

many scenes. Yeah, there was a lot to figure out with this video. Yes. We hope that for those of you who see it and who followed this long conversation about redemption, we will be very curious just to hear your feedback and how you experience all of it coming together in the video. And we don't just have the video. We have a lot of other resources. There's a lot of content to help you to explore this by yourself or in a community, kind of keep thinking about reading the Bible in light of redemption. Yes. So as always, thank you, everybody, for both your enthusiasm and support and sending in your questions and just for getting behind this project. Yeah. Why do we do any of this? Our goal, John, as a non-profit media studio, is to help people understand the Bible, experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus and everything we make is just trying to help people. both not just understand the Bible but then to understand and live in the world understand ourselves in understand ourselves in light of understanding the Bible I think that's the whole point so that we mean by experience yeah I think so we're

experiencing the Bible and then you start to experience your own life yeah as a part in light of the Bible biblical story so that's at least been happening to me because we've talked over the years and we trust that that's happening for you all too so thank you for being part of this with us.