What does it mean to be redeemed in the Bible?
In Scripture, to be redeemed means to be bought back with a price paid by someone. Adam’s fall lost the human race, and God redeemed it by paying the required price—not silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ, because without shed blood there is no remission or redemption.
Les explains redemption as the next great term of salvation after being justified freely by grace. To be redeemed means we are bought, bought with a price that someone else has paid. He illustrates it with something hawked and sitting in the hawk shop: to get it back, you must redeem it, buy it back. That pictures the human race. Adam fell, God lost the human race, so He had to redeem it, and the only way He could redeem it was to pay the price. Peter’s epistle says believers were not redeemed with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, and that blood is the price of redemption. Les stresses you cannot go by without it. If you do not like the blood, do not expect to be redeemed, because that is the way God has put it. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission; without recognizing the shed blood of Christ, there is no redemption, and we have to believe it. God is not a Santa Claus to be manipulated. He is absolute, sovereign, holy, and just, and it will be done His way or no way at all. He has laid down these basic truths, and even if liberals throw them out, we should hang on to the fundamentals.