Kingdom of God

Redemption

You might be able to remember this story from your childhood days. It's one of those
childhood stories that have a way of sticking in your mind. It is a story about a little boy
and his little boat, which he had carved out of wood. First, he carved the little boat. And
then he carved out a little mast. And then he carved out a little beam and he made a little
sail. And he took his little boat, the pride of his craftsmanship and he sailed it on a lake. A
strong wind came and blew his little boat out of sight. It was so new the paint had hardly
dried on it. He was sad that he had lost his little boat. A number of days later, he was
surprised to see his boat in a toy-shop window. He rushed into the store to tell the owner
that that was his boat. The owner didn't believe the little boy, as you can imagine, and said,
“You're welcome to it, son, but you'll have to pay the full price.” You'll have to pay the full
price. He argued again that it was his boat but the man was unbending. And so he said,
"Sir, please don't sell it, I'll go home and I'll look to see if I have enough and I'll be back."
The little boy went home and scavenged all his belongings – his piggy bank, all of his
pockets, and the bottom of his drawers – for pennies and nickels and dimes, all the while
hoping that he would have enough to buy his boat back.

As it turned out, he did have enough. With the money he managed to find he bought the
boat, HIS boat. This story speaks to us about how God had to pay the full price to
purchase us even though He made us and we are HIS. This act of God is known as
REDEMPTION.

About God’s Redemption, Thomas Watson wrote,

"Great was the work of creation but greater the work of redemption. It costs more
to redeem us than to make us. In the one there was but the speaking of the Word, in
the other there was the shedding of blood. The creation was but the work of God's
fingers, (Psalm 8:3) but Redemption is the work of His arm (Luke 1:51)."

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Although it was the Father who wanted to redeem Mankind, it was ultimately the Son who
paid the price of redemption; He gave His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

In this chapter we will study the subject of Redemption. In a sense, Redemption belongs at
the front of the Process of Salvation since Jesus the Lamb was slain from the foundation of
the world; so it was done at about the same time as Election and Predestination. But for
our discussion, we will place it at fourth position.

Redemption always involves a price, and the price for the life of a man is the life of another.
We see this principle at work in the story about the children of Israel’s deliverance from
Egypt. Let’s recall how the story went.

The children of Israel had been in Egypt for nearly four hundred years since the time when
Joseph was the Prime Minister. But later, there arose a Pharaoh who did not know Joseph
and he began to oppress the children of Israel with bitter labor. The children of Israel cried
out to God and He heard them. By His sovereign will, He preserved a man by the name of
Moses and encountered him on a mountain. There, Moses received his marching orders:
Go, and tell Pharaoh, “Let My people go!” Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let
God’s people go. His rebellion invoked the wrath of God, which came in the form of
plagues that smote all of Egypt. There were ten in all.

But calling them ‘plagues’ is actually a misnomer because they were more than just plagues.
They were God’s answer to Pharaoh’s question, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his
voice and let Israel go?” (Ex 5:2). And what better way to answer the question “Who is the
LORD?” than through a demonstration of might. Hence, the Ten Plagues of Egypt. And
since Biblical Numerology says that the number ‘9’ is the number of Judgment, the first
nine plagues that God inflicted Egypt with were actually His acts of judgment upon Egypt,
in particular upon its gods26.

26
The Ten Plagues of Egypt by Russell Grigg http://creation.com/the-ten-plagues-of-egypt

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The tenth and last ‘plague’ was not a plague at all. Rather, it was God declaring what the
redemption price for His people would be (all the firstborn, of man and animal, Egyptian
and Israelite) and calling for it to be paid. Undoubtedly, God was not going to let the
firstborn of Israel pay the redemption price with their own lives, so He made a provision
whereby a lamb would die in their place. The night when the lamb was killed was known,
until today, as the Passover because death passed over the homes on which the blood of the
lamb was painted. In the end, only the firstborn of the Egyptians died. In the words of
Proverbs 21:18, “The wicked is a ransom for the righteous”.

Jesus the Lamb of God

The lamb that died in the place of the Israelite firstborn on the night of the first Passover in
Egypt was really a picture, as you know, of Jesus the Lamb that God would eventually
provide as a ransom for His Elect. In what way was Jesus like the Passover lamb? To
answer this question, we will have to first study the Passover lamb used by the Israelites in
the book of Exodus.

The Passover lamb that every Israelite firstborn was to choose for himself had to be an
unblemished one-year old male lamb (Ex 12:5). Alternatively, it could also be either a
sheep or goat. Which ever the case might be, it had to be a MALE animal. It had to be
UNBLEMISHED: meaning it should be healthy, vibrant, uninjured, unscarred. It also
must be at least A YEAR OLD. In other words, we are not talking about some cute, fuzzy
little baby creature taken from its mother; this is not an animal that your kindergartner
could carry around. A one-year-old male sheep is called a Ram. They have horns, they’ve
developed a certain amount of aggression (for a sheep), and they’re pretty big……50 lbs
perhaps. More, they are maturing, approaching their prime. Depending on the variety, even
though a male sheep will continue growing for about 5 years, the vast majority of the
growth has already occurred by the 1st year. A one-year-old male sheep is an adult, fully
capable of reproducing, and likely has already been used to sire lambs. Though the firstborn
of Israel was instructed to select the lamb on the tenth of the month (4 days before
Passover), he only sacrificed it on the fourteeth (on Passover). And finally, one of the

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requirements of the Passover is that the lamb was to be roasted over a fire. Why over a fire?
Probably because it was simulating a burnt offering on the Altar;

Jesus is similar to the Passover lamb offered by the Israelite firstborn in that He was Male;
He was unblemished both physically and spiritually (Jesus was without physical defects or
sin); He was mature (Jesus was over the age of 30 when He was crucified); and though He
entered Jerusalem on the 10th of Nisan, He was not ‘executed’ until the 14th, on the day of
Passover itself.

Were they Saved?

When the firstborn of Israel had obeyed the Lord’s instruction and sacrificed the Passover
lamb as a means of paying the redemption price for their own live, they were redeemed.
Were they saved as well? They were in the sense that they were saved from certain death
that came upon all of Egypt that night. But it would be more accurate to refer to this event
Redemption rather than as Salvation. But the fact is that Christians almost always use these
two terms interchangeably. Though redemption and salvation are not mutually exclusive in
that one affects the other (a result of God’s redemption of the firstborn of Israel they were
‘saved’ from death and slavery) but they are really not the same thing. In any case, they
were not totally safe from the Egyptians until they had crossed the Red Sea since up till that
point of time they were still in Egyptian territory. This helps us to understand why the
apostles, such as Peter, often spoke of baptism as a key element in the Process of Salvation.

Conversion

In the same way that the firstborn of Israel were redeemed when they trusted in the
provision of God and sacrificed the Passover lamb and appropriated its blood as the Lord
had instructed them, New Testament believers are also redeemed as a result of their faith in

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the Lamb of God. New Testament believers, however, are not required to express their
faith by painting the doorposts of their homes with blood but by an act of faith.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that
God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes
and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” (Rom 10:9, 10).

What did Paul mean by ‘saved’ here? The best way to understand what Paul meant by
‘saved’ here is to look at its context. In the fifth chapter, for example, Paul wrote about
being ‘saved’ from the wrath of God. And the idea Paul was trying to communicate
through the 6th, 7th, and 8th chapters is that we have been ‘saved’ from sin, and therefore we
ought not present our bodies to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present
ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness (Rom 6:13).

Let me reiterate: What we have been saved from when we believed in Christ is the bondage
to sin. Besides this initial salvation (if I may put it that way), there is another salvation, one
that is “ready to be revealed in the last time” (as Peter puts it in 1 Peter 1:5). That salvation
is reserved only for those who have endured to the end (Matt 10:22; 24:13). I hope I have
made this sufficiently clear because it is a very important point.

Another common misconception that is prevalent among Christians is connected to the

phrase “calling on the name of the Lord” found in many places throughout the New
Testament of which one of them is Romans 10:13. Based on these words, Christians have
concluded that so long as a person prays to receive Jesus into his or her heart, that person is
saved and will go to heaven when he dies.

Eric Lyons27 has written a very comprehensive article on this matter. And instead of
‘reinventing the wheel’ I will simply share what he has written with you.

27
Eric Lyons, M.Min. "Calling on the Name of the Lord" [Online] URL:
http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=775#.

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He wrote,

The key to correctly understanding the phrase “calling on the name of the Lord” is
to recognize that more is involved in this action than a mere verbal petition
directed toward God. The “call” mentioned in Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13, and Acts
22:16 (where Paul was “calling on the name of the Lord”), is not equated with the
“call” (“Lord, Lord”) Jesus spoke of in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:21).

Then he went on to illustrate using the analogy of a doctor making his rounds in a
hospital ward. When he ‘calls on’ some of his patients, he does not merely walk into the
room and say, “I just wanted to come by and say, ‘Hello.’ I wish you the best. Now pay
me” On the contrary, he involves himself in a service. He examines the patient, listens
to the patient’s concerns, gives further instructions regarding the patient’s hopeful
recovery, and then oftentimes prescribes medication. All of these elements may be
involved in a doctor ‘calling upon’ a patient.

Historically, in the mid-twentieth century, it was common for young men to “call on”
young ladies. Again, this expression meant something different than just “making a
request”. Still deeper is the meaning of “calling on” in Bible times. Take for instance,
Paul’s statement recorded in Acts 25:11: “I appeal unto Ceasar.” The word “appeal”
(epikaloumai) is the same word translated “call” (or “calling”) in Acts 2:21, 22:16 and
Romans 10:13. But, Paul was not simply saying, “I’m calling on Caesar to save me.” As
James Bales noted:

Paul, in appealing to Caesar, was claiming the right of a Roman citizen to have his
case judged by Caesar. He was asking that his case be transferred to Caesar’s court
and that Caesar hear and pass judgment on his case. In so doing, he indicated that
he was resting his case on Caesar’s judgment. In order for this to be done Paul had
to submit to whatever was necessary in order for his case to be brought before
Caesar. He had to submit to the Roman soldiers who conveyed him to Rome. He

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had to submit to whatever formalities or procedure Caesar demanded of those

who came before him. All of this was involved in his appeal to Caesar (1960, pp.
81-82, emp. added)28.

Paul’s “calling” to Caesar involved his submission to him. “That, in a nutshell,” wrote
T. Pierce Brown, “is what ‘calling on the Lord’ involves”—obedience (1976, p. 5)29. It
is not a mere verbal recognition of God, or a verbal petition to Him.

Zephaniah 3:9 links one’s “calling” with his “service”: “For then I will restore to the
peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him
with one accord”. When a person submits to the will of God, he accurately can be
described as “calling on the Lord.” Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13 (among other
passages) do not contradict Matthew 7:21, because to “call on the Lord” entails more
than just pleading for salvation; it involves submitting to God’s will. In order to obtain
salvation, a person must submit to the Lord’s authority. This is what the passages in
Acts 2:21 and Romans 10:13 are teaching; it is up to us to go elsewhere in the New
Testament to learn how to call upon the name of the Lord.

After Peter quoted the prophecy of Joel and told those in Jerusalem on Pentecost that
“whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21), he told them how
to go about “calling on the name of the Lord.” The people in the audience in Acts 2
did not understand Peter’s quotation of Joel to mean that an alien sinner must pray to
God for salvation. [Their question in Acts 2:37 (“Men and brethren, what shall we
do?”) indicates such.] Furthermore, when Peter responded to their question and told
them what to do to be saved, he did not say, “I’ve already told you what to do. You can
be saved by petitioning God for salvation through prayer. Just call on His name.” On
the contrary, Peter had to explain to them what it meant to “call on the name of the
Lord.” Instead of repeating this statement when the crowd sought further guidance
from the apostles, Peter commanded them, saying, “Repent, and let every one of you

28
Bales, James (1960), The Hub of the Bible—Or—Acts Two Analyzed (Shreveport, LA: Lambert Book
House).
29
Brown, T. Pierce (1976), “Calling on His Name,” Firm Foundation, 93:5, July 20.

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be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (2:38). Peter’s non-
Christian listeners learned that “calling on the name of the Lord for salvation” was
equal to obeying the Gospel, which approximately 3,000 did that very day by repenting
of their sins and being baptized into Christ (2:38,41).

But what about Romans 10:13? What is the “call” mentioned in this verse? Notice
Romans 10:11-15:

For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For
there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to
all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be
saved.” How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And
how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is
written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who
bring glad tidings of good things!”

Although this passage does not define precisely what is meant by one “calling on the
name of the Lord,” it does indicate that an alien sinner cannot “call” until after he has
heard the Word of God and believed it. Such was meant by Paul’s rhetorical questions:
“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they
believe in Him of whom they have not heard?” Paul’s statements in this passage are
consistent with Peter’s proclamations in Acts 2.

Perhaps the clearest description of what it means for an alien sinner to “call on the
name of the Lord” is found in Acts 22. As the apostle Paul addressed the mob in
Jerusalem, he spoke of his encounter with the Lord, Whom he asked, “What shall I
do?” (22:10; cf. 9:6). The answer Jesus gave Him at that time was not “call on the
name of the Lord.” Instead, Jesus instructed him to “arise and go into Damascus, and
there you will be told all things which are appointed for you to do” (22:10). Paul (or
Saul—Acts 13:9) demonstrated his belief in Jesus as he went into the city and waited

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for further instructions. In Acts 9, we learn that during the next three days, while
waiting to meet with Ananias, Paul fasted and prayed (vss. 9,11). Although some today
might consider what Paul was doing at this point as “calling on the name of the Lord,”
Ananias, God’s chosen messenger to Paul, did not think so. He did not tell Paul, “I see
you have already called on God. Your sins are forgiven.” After three days of fasting and
praying, Paul still was lost in his sins. Even though he obviously believed at this point,
and had prayed to God, he had yet to “call on the name of the Lord” for salvation.
When Ananias finally came to Paul, he told him: “Arise and be baptized, and wash
away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (22:16). Ananias knew that Paul had
not yet “called on the name of the Lord,” just as Peter knew that those on Pentecost
had not done so before his command to “repent and be baptized.” Thus, Ananias
instructed Paul to “be baptized, and wash away your sins.” The participle phrase,
“calling on the name of the Lord,” describes what Paul was doing when he was
baptized for the remission of his sins. Every non-Christian who desires to “call on the
name of the Lord” to be saved, does so, not simply by saying, “Lord, Lord” (cf.
Matthew 7:21), or just by wording a prayer to God (e.g., Paul—Acts 9; 22; cf.
Romans 10:13-14), but by obeying God’s instructions to “repent and be baptized…in
the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins” (Acts 2:38).

This is not to say that repentance and baptism have always been (or are always today)
synonymous with “calling on the name of the Lord.” Abraham was not baptized when
he “called upon the name of the Lord” (Genesis 12:8; cf. 4:26), because baptism was
not demanded of God before New Testament times. And, as I mentioned earlier, when
the New Testament describes people who are already Christians as “calling on the name
of the Lord” (Acts 9:14,21; 1 Corinthians 1:2), it certainly does not mean that
Christians continually were being baptized for the remission of their sins after having
been baptized to become a Christian (cf. 1 John 1:5-10). Depending on when and
where the phrase is used, “calling on the name of the Lord” includes: (1) obedience to
the gospel plan of salvation; (2) worshiping God; and (3) faithful service to the Lord
(Bates, 1979, p. 5). However, it never is used in the sense that all the alien sinner must
do in order to be saved is to cry out and say, “Lord, Lord, save me.”

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I hope this has helped you understand what “calling on the name of the Lord” actually
means. I also hope that you can see from this that discipleship is indispensible for every
‘new believer’. He, or she, needs to be taught to obey all that Christ has commanded, in
accordance to Christ’s Great Commission in Matthew 28:19.

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