If Christ is a Ransom, To Whom Was He Paid?

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Pastor Foley

With each month’s Work of Mercy, we begin by asking, “How did Christ first do this Work of Mercy to us?” Since we’re called to mirror his work into the world, we need to pay careful attention to what he did and do the same thing, so as to invite the world to grapple again with his grace and mercy.

In the case of ransoming the captive, a central verse is Mark 10:45:

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

This has raised for many inquiring minds the following question:

To whom did this ransom need to be paid? Satan? God? China? (They own most debt these days, after all. Who’s to say they’re not dabbling in the atonement market?)

As with any matter of what seems to be idle theological speculation, huge swaths of the Internet are filled with no shortage of (typically ill-formed or personal agenda-serving) answers. But as Rich on Faith and Life and Mark M. Mattison each point out:

a. Scripture doesn’t answer the question, and
b. It’s not because God forgot to tell us.

When Scripture doesn’t answer specific questions, the lack of an answer is usually, profoundly, the answer we may not be looking for but really need to hear. In the case of the question of to whom Christ is paid as a ransom, the silence is deeply instructive. The first thing it ought to prompt us to do is to ask, “Is there anywhere else in the Scripture that speaks to this same subject?”

And in this case, indeed there is. As both Rich and Mark point out, Scripture points to the Exodus. Says Rich:

The quintessential story for the writers of the New Testament was the Exodus. In the Exodus the Egyptians are the enemy and they walk away empty handed. They aren’t paid anything for the freedom of the Israelites.  This I believe is the single most informative understanding of what redemption and ransom is all about.  The story of the Exodus is the story of being set free from slavery.

Adds Mark:

Consider Deuteronomy 7:8, which says that the Lord “brought you [Israel] out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Did God literally “redeem” Israel from Pharaoh? Did he give Pharaoh (for example) the Hittites in exchange for the Israelites, substituting one race of people for another? Obviously not.

But why in the world does Scripture in neither case answer the question to whom ransom was paid? For the answer to this question, we turn to Pastor Foley’s second Heuristic Helper for the month:

When Scripture doesn’t tell us something, it’s because what it does tell us is so important that we have no need to look beyond it…and every need to look right at it, again and again.

In the case of Christ as ransom, the identity of the ransom is infinitely more important than the identity of the captor and even the identity of the captive. This makes no sense to us, because in the human equation the identity of the captor and the captive are the consequential elements. The only question anyone ever asks about the ransom is: Can we afford to pay it? But when your ransom is GOD–well, you now know everything you need to know. End of story.

As we begin to think through how to carry out the Work of Mercy of ransoming the captive, then, we are now faced with an uncomfortable truth:

The gravity of that work will be found in neither the one bound nor the one who binds, but in the ransom itself–i.e., you, in your work of mirroring and thus re-presenting for the world’s reckoning the greatest Ransom ever paid.

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Here’s The Darndest Thing About Sin: When Forgiven, It Still Does Not Disappear

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Pastor Foley

There’s one particular Scriptural insight about sin that will prove to be crucial in our understanding and carrying out the Work of Mercy of ransoming the captive:

Sin, even when forgiven, does not disappear.

This is a subject about which we’ve written before, so please take a quick second to click over to this previous post and read it through before continuing on. (Go ahead. I’ll wait.)

OK, done? Then let’s continue.

Here’s the relevance of this whole idea to the subject of ransoming the captive:

Ransoming the captive isn’t just a metaphor for setting people free from whatever binds them. The reason why is that what binds people doesn’t just disappear–*poof!*–into thin air when people are set free. It has to go somewhere and be borne by someone.

No modern author has illustrated this truth better than Walter Wangerin in his achingly beautiful short story, The Ragman. Please make sure to click that link, too. It’ll be worth your quick read.

But there’s another aspect of the Ragman tale and, more importantly, another set of Scriptures related to the subject of sin not disappearing that is awfully central to this Work of Mercy of ransoming the captive. You can see it in Scriptures like 2 Corinthians 4:10 and Colossians 1:24. (Yep, more clicking. Please–by all means–click away. I’ve got all day. Really.) They remind us that while only Christ’s suffering is salvific, our suffering–our serving as a ransom–is one of the key ways Christ draws the world’s attention back to the only suffering that ultimately changes anything, i.e., his own. In his masterful Blood of the Martyrs (yep, please click on that one, too), theologian Nathan Pitchford puts it like this:

Christ had to suffer in order to purchase our eternal life; and now we as his witnesses have to suffer in order to spread the effects of that fully-accomplished redemption…  By God’s design, the blood of his Son is the only source of life for the Church; but… [i]t is the blood of the martyrs that gives an undeniably powerful testimony of the truth of Christ’s life, joy, and peace, operative no matter how adverse the circumstances.

That’s why ransoming the captive can’t simply be about helping people stop smoking or chewing their nails (or smoking their nails, for that matter):

Because it is in our serving as a  ransom–our willingness to bear the cost, pain, and loss racked up by others or on others, in Jesus’ name–that Christ’s serving as a ransom is mirrored into the world, and people are forced to reckon with it again. 

Consider, for example, Stephen in Acts 6 and 7. (Clickety click. Linkety link. We have a lot of ground to cover. Don’t skip over the links or we’ll fall in holes of misunderstanding.)

Ransoming the captive, in other words, is going to cost more than Christ.

It’s going to cost you, too.

Better scroll back up and click on that Ragman link so you can see what you’re getting into.

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Our New Book on North Korean Christian Persecution Is Now Available!

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Pastor Foley

We’re punctuating this month’s study of ransoming the captives with the release of our new book, These are the Generations: The Story of How One Christian Family Lived Out The Great Commission for More than Fifty Years in the Most Christian-Hostile Nation in Human History.

Mr. and Mrs. Bae and their children once enjoyed a prosperous existence in North Korea, but their life was decimated following the North Korean government’s investigation of Mr. Bae on suspicion of Christian activity. Mr. Bae was held without charge in a North Korean jail for more than a year, but during that time his faith grew even as his health faltered. Mr. Bae is the first 3rd-generation North Korean Christian known to have defected to South Korea. He carries a wealth of previously unknown historical information about the unique ways the North Korean underground church lives, worships, and evangelizes in the most Christian-hostile conditions in human history.

Mrs. Bae is a former North Korean schoolteacher who met and married Mr. Bae during his university studies. She unknowingly inherited the family’s faith. During her marriage she came across puzzling clues about her husband’s outlawed beliefs, until his imprisonment led to her own costly journey of faith with her mother-in-law.

Though Mr. Bae was ultimately miraculously released from prison without being charged, the Baes were reduced to the life of vagabonds by the stigma of his imprisonment. They lost their home, job, friends, and health but gained something infinitely more valuable: deep, unshakable faith in Christ. While continually on the move ahead of the authorities, they raised their children in the faith and led other family members and former friends to Christ.

They eventually responded to God’s call to leave North Korea in order to share their family story with the world. The Baes cautiously tell all they can about this previously unknown part of the body of Christ. Their identities are protected so as not to further endanger those they left behind, including Mr. Bae’s parents who are currently imprisoned in a North Korean concentration camp because of their own evangelistic activity.

I wrote something in the conclusion of the book that is particularly germane to our discipleship about ransoming captives. It goes like this:

An estimated thirty thousand of today’s North Korean Christians—Mr. Bae’s mother and father among them—are living out their faith in concentration camps. Our first instinct is to work tirelessly to free them. But our second instinct ought to be to remember that God does not look at freedom the same way we do. An estimated one hundred fifty thousand to two hundred thousand North Koreans are prisoners in those camps. Many will end their days there. How could a God of boundless love not reach out personally to comfort those people, assuring them that they are not forgotten? And, if he did reach out, why wouldn’t he do it the way he always has—through people he has specially trained for the task, in barren fields and temporary exiles, whom he has walked with daily and who he speaks to as his friends?

I am humbled by all I learned about ransoming captives while writing this book with the Baes. I hope reading the book can convey some of that same learning process for you. You can purchase These Are The Generations today through amazon.com.

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