Biblical Themes - Redemption in the Bible

Introduction

The Bible is a book about redemption. It is about how God communicates this story to us through His Word. He breaks this larger story into many smaller ones to demonstrate His redemption delivered to his people via Jesus Christ. The Biblical definition of the word "redeemed" is "to be purchased from the slave-market of sin". There are three Greek words for redemption: "agorazo" meaning "to buy", "exagorazo" meaning "to buy out of or remove from sale" and "lutroo" meaning "to release on receipt of ransom payment" (Puett, 2014: 159). This paper will examine the concept of Biblical redemption by using examples found throughout the Bible and accompanying research.

Noah

The story of Noah, Genesis 6-8, is one of the best examples of redemption in the Old Testament. The Bible indicates that the time of Noah was an evil time. God saw the evil of man’s heart were directing him away from God. The times were so evil that God said He would destroy man from the earth. But then God thought about Noah. Because Noah loved God and tried to obey Him, God knew that Noah could be used to speak about repentance to the people and to build an ark to save those who would trust God. Genesis 6:8 says that Noah found grace in the sight of God. After 120 years of preaching the only people who stepped onto the ark were Noah and his family. Though there was room for many more people in the ark, only eight were saved. The story of Noah's survival emerges as an almost exact parallel to the original creation of the world except for one, very significant, difference. Noah and his descendants are a species never to be destroyed. The Lord promised Noah and his children that there would never again be a deluge destroying all life (Gen. 9:11). Adam and his world only lasted a limited time; it was destroyed after ten generations (Blumenthal 2012: 91). Redemption was offered to all who were willing to believe but only eight accepted the offer.

Abraham and Isaac

In Genesis...