Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Redemption

Being bought back or set free from bondage — to sin, death, the law, and the powers — at the cost of Christ's blood.

Latin redimere, 'to buy back'; renders Greek lytroō / apolytrōsis and agorazō ('purchase in the marketplace').

Mark 10:45; Romans 3:24; 1 Corinthians 6:20; Galatians 3:13; 4:5; Ephesians 1:7; Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 1:18–19; Revelation 5:9.

The patristic 'ransom' theories developed the payment metaphor, sometimes past its warrant (a price paid to the devil), which Gregory of Nazianzus rejected.

The NT stresses the cost and the liberation; it does not name a recipient of the price.

Whether 'ransom' language implies a transaction with a party (God or the devil) or is simply a metaphor of costly liberation.

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.