Quotes about Redemption

have argued that the early Christian view of Jesus's death was focused on Passover and hence on the Exodus story, now to be experienced as the new liberating event that was also the great one-off "sin-forgiving" event. Though the language here is unique to this passage, the outline meaning—Passover and atonement, in fulfillment of the covenant and to forgive sins and cleanse from impurity—is the same.

Suffering and dying is the way by which the world is changed. This is how the revolution continues.

The passage has regularly been read as the vital move in the wrong story— the story, once again, of a "works contract" in which, to put it crudely, humans sin, God punishes Jesus, and humans are let off. This omits elements that were vital for Paul

Christianity is, simply, good news. It is the news that something has happened as a result of which the world is a different place

Jesus, the Son of God, the truly human one, is leading his people to their promised land, and is available for all people and for all time as the totally sympathetic one, the priest through whom they can come to God. Following Jesus is the only way to go.

We are no longer slaves, and must not dream of going back to Egypt. Rather, because we are those who cry 'Abba, father!' we are not only children but heirs, heirs of the true promised land.

God's covenant with Abraham and through Israel for the world was there precisely in order to deal with sin, as "the Jew" in 2:17—20 knows and claims.

The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth was a one-off event, the one on behalf of the many, the one moment in history on behalf of all others through which sins would be forgiven, the powers robbed of their power, and humans redeemed to take their place as worshippers and stewards, celebrating the powerful victory of God in his Messiah and so gaining the Spirit's power to make his kingdom effective in the world.

The New Testament insists, in book after book, that when Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, something happened as a result of which the world is a different place. And the early Christians insisted that when people are caught up in the meaning of the cross, they become part of this difference.

When we learn to read the story of Jesus and see it as the story of the love of God, doing for us what we could not do for ourselves--that insight produces, again and again, a sense of astonished gratitude which is very near the heart of authentic Christian experience.

the work of salvation, in its full sense, is (1) about whole human beings, not merely souls; (2) about the present, not simply the future; and (3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.

God's plan is not to abandon this world, the world which he said was "very good." Rather, he intends to remake it. And when he does he will raise all his people to new bodily life to live in it. That is the promise of the Christian gospel.