If you look up the word “redeem” in the dictionary, you will see that it says “to buy or pay off, to recover, to convert, to fulfill.” If you look up the word “redeemer”, it will say, “One who redeems,” and then it says, “Jesus Christ.”

Even the google dictionary knows who our redeemer is…so what does that mean? What do we mean when we say that Jesus is our redeemer? Simply put, whether you know it or not, you have a debt that needs to be paid and the debt is called sin. If you’ve ever done anything wrong, which of course we all have, then your books are in the red and you are responsible to pay that debt off, your debt to the God who created you. Here’s the problem - you have no way to do that by yourself because you’re going to keep making mistakes, keep falling short, keep needing to make amends, sacrifices, payments to clear your debt with God who is good and perfect and unattainable. It can’t be done.

Here’s the good news. Jesus can pay your debt. In fact, he already has. Jesus never sinned, not once ever, he’s perfect and yet he agreed to live and die to pay the debt that was rightfully ours, to redeem it, to redeem us.

If you’ve read much of the Old Testament, which is that first chunk of the Bible, the part before Jesus is born, then you might have read about how the Hebrew people had to make sacrifices to God for their sins - it could have been a lamb or a goat or something like that - gross! And those sacrifices didn’t work very well, it wasn’t a great system because how can a lamb pay for my sin? - its just an animal.

But Jesus - the perfect and holy son of God - he can pay for my sin once and for all, forever. He’s a perfect sacrifice. He’s the redeemer. He’s the lamb of God and here’s the best part. When Jesus - that perfect, holy God who was so good to die to redeem us from our sins, to pay the price we should have paid, when he suffered and died on the cross for all that - He didn’t stay dead. Death couldn’t keep him. Our sin couldn’t hold him down. After he died for the sins of the world, the Bible says he uttered three words - it is finished. And it was.

Three days later Jesus rose from the dead, having redeemed anyone who would ask him to forgive their sins and follow him.

1 Corinthians 1:30b says, “Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. “ Or another translation is , “ It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.”

For further reading, check out A.W. Tozer's The Attributes of God