Right of redemption

“ He has yielded himself to be the servant of sin. He obeys it, and he does its work. If he wishes to get free he cannot. He may long for liberty, but he cannot attain it. He may think with bitter regret of past folly that has led to his ruin. But regret cannot restore. Remorse p. 44cannot set him free. A slave he is, and a slave, unless saved by redemption, he must remain.
How, then, can such an one be redeemed? That is the question. It must clearly be by a redemption price. There was no redemption under the law without a ransom. ”

“ But there can be no such freedom without redemption from the curse of sin. You remember that when a man had sold himself to be a slave, the only way in which he could obtain his liberty was by his kinsman legally redeeming him from his master. So it seems to be here. Christ our kinsman has paid the ransom p. 148in order that we, being redeemed, may be freemen unto God, and may now as freemen have the joy of serving Him. ”

“ Perhaps a hearing would show that they continue to be people dangerous and hostile to us. But the principle of forgiveness and the doctrine of redemption are too deep in our philosophy to admit that there is no return for those who have once erred. ”

“ The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin. You have believed that what crime and iniquity have defiled and deformed, another crime and another iniquity can purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything but monsters and crime criminals! Love alone realizes wonderful works, virtue alone can save! No, if our country has ever to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and bribing others, no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue sacrifice, and sacrifice love! ”

“ We are free from both the imputation and dominion of sin. From the imputation, because the curse is gone; and from the dominion, for we are not under the law but under grace. This part of redemption is not a future thing which we should be always seeking, and never finding; always praying for, and never enjoying; always aiming at, but never reaching. It is the present, blessed, sacred gift of every one of you that is in Christ Jesus. You are not like Israel in bondage in Egypt, nor even like Israel shut in by the rocks at Pi-hahiroth ”

“ But there is more than that taught here, for redemption goes far beyond atonement, and includes the actual deliverance which is the result of that atonement, when applied to the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is not merely the payment of the ransom, but the liberation of the ransomed slave. Thus the sealed servants are said to have been “redeemed from among men.” Not merely was an atonement made for them, but, through the power of that atonement, they were delivered from the bondage of corruption unto the glorious liberty of the children of God. An atonement was made on their behalf ”

“ It is true that a tendency has often asserted itself to think of redemption as an act of grace, in which not only the victims, but also sinners, may participate; but the Church has always recognised the immorality of such a conception, and has expressly taught that, in order to receive redemption, the guilty must himself strive for it, through repentance and penance, and not passively await it as a completely unmerited gift. ”

“ These in all lands, all times, all causes, these
⁠That law by innocence appease;
By their sublime attractiveness they win
The world from its fatality of sin,
⁠And from the common lot
⁠Desiring no exemption,
Their blamelessness with mighty power is fraught
⁠When joined with pain,
⁠For so Redemption,
Redemption lifts its mighty cross again! ”

“ Secondly: their consideration is demanded from the fact that society has produced the evil plight of very many of them. In the great advance, they have fallen and been trampled on. Their right to fall may be denied, but whose right was it to trample on them? To declare it to have been inevitable that they should be trampled on, simply excuses guilt but not obligation. And the obligation is to make reparation as far as possible. ”

“ You were bondsmen once; sold under sin: sold by the act of Adam, and sold by your own conduct afterwards. As St. Paul says, Rom. vi. 17, ‘Ye were the servants’ or the slaves ‘of sin.’ But what are you now? Are you still slaves? No. Those only who are strangers to salvation in Christ Jesus are slaves. But you are not, for you are free. Your kinsman has appeared and paid the redemption price; so you are free: as completely free as if you had never been in bondage. The moment that the kinsman paid the ransom, the slave was free. ”

“ Unconditional redemption is a gift forced upon mankind, which they cannot reject, though they were disposed. Not so with conditional redemption; it can be received or rejected according to the will of the creature.
Redemption from the original sin is without faith or works; redemption from our own sins is given through faith and works. ”

“ There was a transfer of the imputation of guilt, and thus by God’s marvellous grace, blessed be God, in Christ Jesus we are free.
Now all this is done, and done for ever. Nothing can add to it, and nothing can take from it. We have nothing to do with any fresh sacrifice for sin. We want no masses for either the living or the dead, and we know we cannot make up any fresh sacrifice by penance or self-denial. In all such matters the one question is, Is the one redemption by the one substitute sufficient, or is it not? If it is, we want no further sacrifice, for the work is done. ”

“ In order to understand judicial forgiveness we must consider the judicial condemnation of the unforgiven man, and we must carefully remember God’s offices as King, as Lawgiver, and as Judge. He is a Saviour, but He is a ruler likewise, and He rules the world in righteousness. But if we think of Him as the great executive of a perfectly righteous and holy law, acting on principles of strict and unvarying righteousness, we must see in a moment that we have all been brought under judicial condemnation, for the law condemns us all. ”

“ As the penalties are different, so also is the redemption. Redemption from the first penalty is unconditional on the part of man; redemption from the second penalty is conditional. Unconditional redemption is universal; it takes within its scope all mankind; it is as unlimited as the fall; it redeems men from all its effects; it restores to them their bodies; it restores them to the presence of God.
The children of Adam had no agency in the transgression of their first parents, and therefore they are not required to exercise any agency in their redemption from its penalty. ”

“ For in cases of natural redemption the price must be paid to him who holds the captive in his power. If (as the doctrine admits) mankind was in bondage to Satan, then the price of redemption was due to him, and not to God the Father as the doctrine teaches. 4. It mars the beauty and perfection of God's character, representing Him as a monster of injustice and cruelty. For what could be more unjust or cruel than to release sinners from the penalty due to their transgressions, and accept the sufferings of a perfectly innocent being as the price of their redemption? ”

“ If man was never lost, kidnapped or stolen from God, he needed no redeemer, to buy him back with a price. If man never "fell" from the favor of God by disobedience, and thereby incurred his anger, illwill and wrath that sought vengeance on his life, he needed no one to mediate, propitiate or atone for him by shedding his own blood as a substitute. The whole doctrine of redemption and atonement falls flat when the doctrine of the fall of man is removed from under it. ”

“ But it is very seldom that such full reparation can be made. The consequences of our wrong acts cannot usually be removed or effaced. Wrong-doing is like the gate of hell—easy to open, but difficult, if not impossible, to close again. “She opened, but to shut excelled her power.” Instead of reparation, therefore, the conscience substitutes retribution—either reparation or the penalty; and the natural form of the penalty is an equivalent. Natural justice says, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This the conscience thinks right; this is justice. ”

“ Perhaps, after they have suffered in the eternal worlds, there may be a possibility of some of those murderers who were not enlightened to find redemption at a certain period, and some degree of glory. This applies not only to those who put forth their hands to shed the blood of the servants of God, but to those who have sanctioned the deed: they are guilty also. ”

“ And our insight into the need of redemption will largely depend upon our knowledge of the terrible nature of the power that has entered our being. ”

“ The Redemption cannot be for a political purpose—to pull down rulers and powers, and vacate their places merely that others may take and enjoy them. If that were all of it, the wisdom of God would cease to be surpassing. ”

“ The work of redemption did not, as is too generally supposed, consist in the Son's offering himself as a sacrifice in the room of mankind, with a view to appease the wrath of the Father, to satisfy his vindictive justice, and thereby to atone for the sins of the world: for in the first place, there is no such odious passion as wrath in the Divine Being, nor is he possessed of any such attribute as vindictive justice; and in the next place, it is contrary to every principle of justice, both human and divine, that the innocent should suffer for the crimes of the guilty. ”

“ All those, and those only, who, finding themselves “dead in trespasses and sins,” under the power and dominion of sin, and likewise under the sentence of death and condemnation, begin to lift up their heads upon the hope of a Saviour, and to look unto their Redeemer as poor prisoners, whose eyes and looks are strong entreaties, and instead of many requests;—such as give an entire renounce unto their former ways and prevailing lusts, and give up themselves, in testimony of their sense of his unspeakable favour of redemption, to be wholly his, and not their own. ”

“ They are under guilt, under “the curse of the law,” the servants of sin, under the power and dominion of the devil, and “taken captive by him at his will,” liable to the death of the body and to eternal punishment. To the whole of this case, the redemption, the purchased deliverance of man, as proclaimed in the Gospel, applies itself. Hence, in the 810above cited and other passages, it is said, “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,” in opposition to guilt; redemption from “the curse of the law;” deliverance from sin, that “we should be set free from sin;” ”

“ So understood, redemption presupposes three things. Firstly, we must assume a dualism in nature, most distinctly developed in the Zend religion; the existence of a first principle of good and one of evil, between which mankind is placed, and becomes the cause of their strife. Secondly, the one who is to be redeemed must be free from all conscious and wilful fault; he must be the victim of superior forces which he is himself incapable of warding off. ”

“ Justice that has failed to protect a man's right becomes restitution when the deed of wrong is done. Restitution therefore that is based on the natural right every man has to have and to hold what is his, to recover it, its value or equivalent, when unduly dispossessed, supposes an act of injustice, that is, the violation of a strict right. ”

“ It is redemption that is to deliver, redemption that is to raise us from the dead, redemption that removes the difficulty, how then can we ever hope to rise until redemption is applied and realised? If redemption is not sufficient to reach down to one in a state of utter hopelessness, it is insufficient for the conscience-stricken sinner. Remember, therefore, the case of Jeremiah. ”

“ For the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral justice.
If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. ”

“ Therefore for a man to follow such fashions, after that he is come to the knowledge of redemption, is nothing else, but to oppose himselfe against his owne redemption, and as much as in him lies, to make it void and of none effect. ”

“ Who—God or man—had the right to take from him the right to destroy himself, not for fear, not through despair, but for others' sake? Had he not the right to make restitution to Kathleen for having given her nothing but himself, whom she had learned to despise? ”

“ The Laws wil by Gods blessing, revive, with the love and Loyaltie of my Subjects; if I bury them not by my Consent, and cover them in that grave of dishonor and injustice, which some mens violence hath digged for them.
If my Captivity or Death must be the price of their redemption, I grudge not to pay it.
No condition can make a King miserable, which carries not with it, his Souls, his Peoples, and Posterities thraldom. ”

“ Then why should it be considered a strange thing for the Latter-day Saints to believe that the children have the privilege to stand vicariously for their dead fathers, and by proxy perform these ordinances, that belong to this life, in their behalf?
[Footnote P: Leviticus 16:20-22. See also Leviticus chapters 4 and 5.]
The fact is, the whole plan of redemption is based on vicarious salvation, One without sin standing for the whole human family, all of whom were under the curse. It is most natural and just that he who commits the wrong should pay the penalty—atone for his wrong doing. ”