Revelation 5:9–10 presents the third of five songs in the vision that began in Revelation 4. It contains the praise given to Christ by the twenty-four elders, who represent the redeemed church. They sing the new song: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” Christ is glorified for his sacrificial death to redeem his people from their sins.
First, Christ is praised for being “slain.” He did not die from an unavoidable tragedy, but died as a voluntary act of sacrificial love for his people. Jesus said in John 10:15, 18, “I lay down my life for the sheep.… No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” Therefore, when people ask who killed Jesus Christ, the best answer is that Jesus willed his own death for the sake of the people he loves.
Second, Christ is worthy because of what he achieved by his death: “By your blood you ransomed people for God,” Revelation 5:9 says. Different English translations render ransomed as “purchased” (NIV) or “redeemed” (nkjv). The Greek word (agorazo) has the general meaning of purchasing, but often had the specific connotation of ransoming a prisoner or slave out of bondage. Here we see the essence of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross: at the cost of his own blood, which evidenced his death, Jesus delivered his people from the bondage and condemnation of sin.
Jesus made payment to the justice of God, which demanded death as the penalty for sin (Gen. 2:17; Rom. 6:23). He foretold in Matthew 20:28 that, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Therefore, Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.”
Significantly, the adoration of the church in heaven centers on the redemptive sacrifice of Christ’s cross. Similarly, when true Christians explain the substance of their faith, they always focus on his sacrificial death to purchase us from the debt of sin.
In 1915, Benjamin B. Warfield made this point to incoming students at Princeton Theological Seminary, asserting that to Christ’s people, his most precious title is “Redeemer.” The reason is, he said, that “it gives expression not merely to our sense that we have received salvation from [Jesus], but also to our appreciation of what it cost him to procure this salvation for us.”
Warfield proved this claim not from the tomes of theology but from the volumes of the church’s hymnody, listing song after song extolling Christ as Redeemer: “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise;” “All hail, Redeemer, hail, for thou hast died for me;” “I will sing of my Redeemer, and his wondrous love for me: on the cruel cross he suffered, from the curse to set me free.” Warfield listed twenty-eight such hymns and twenty-five more that used the word ransom to celebrate Christ’s sacrifice. Warfield might have added the new song of the twenty-four elders to prove the centrality of redemption in believers’ worship of Christ.
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