Do you
remember playing freeze tag when you were a kid? It was one of my favorite games. In case you need a refresher, it’s a
game where one person is “it” and that person tries to tag the other players
who are running around in a defined area.
If you get tagged, you’re frozen in place until you’re tagged by another
player who’s still free. The person who’s
“it” wins when he freezes every other player.
Now
imagine a game of freeze tag where everyone is frozen, including the person who's “it.” No one can move. No one can set you free. And no one wins. That doesn't sound like much fun, does
it? Well, that was the condition of the
world after the fall from grace. Satan was "it," the world was frozen by sin, and so was Satan. That might seem like a strange image for Satan, but in Canto XXXIV of Dante’s Inferno, we find Satan, not burning amid
the fires of hell as we might expect, but frozen up to his chest in an ice
field, unable to move. He’s so burdened
by sin that he can do nothing but cry.[1] Satan was “it” and everyone was frozen with
him. No one wins. That was the condition of the world . . . until Jesus Christ redeemed us from our sins.
So what
is redemption? The Judeo-Christian
understanding of redemption has its roots in a Jewish family practice of buying back lost goods or property
or a person who was enslaved.[2] Redemption
was a way to satisfy the demands of justice while returning things back to the way
they should be. We see examples of this
practice in Scripture in connection with the Jewish understanding that the
first-born male belonged to God. The
Jews presented their first-born sons to the Lord on the fortieth day after
birth and redeemed them by paying five silver shekels to the Temple
priest. (See Numbers 18: 16) A passage from the Book of Ruth illustrates
the practice of buying back one’s relative who is enslaved or indebted to
others. This passage suggests that a
redeemer must possess at least three qualifications: (1) the redeemer must be a close relative of
the person to be redeemed; (2) the redeemer must have the means (financial or
otherwise) to redeem; and (3) the redeemer must be willing to redeem. (See
Ruth 4: 1-11).
In a world enslaved by sin for millennia,
no person was capable of redeeming all of humankind; yet, justice still demanded
that the price for sins against God be paid.
So we were all frozen, unable to move, unable to free ourselves . . .
until the incarnation. By entering this
world and taking on our sins, God satisfied the qualifications of a redeemer. By becoming fully human, Jesus became our
brother, our close relative. As fully
divine, Christ had the means to bear the sins of all humanity for all
time. And by climbing Calvary to his
cross, Jesus willingly paid the ultimate price for our sinfulness. Through his selfless sacrifice on the cross, Jesus
unfroze us. Sin can still freeze us, but
now we always have a brother who can never be frozen himself. And by the grace of God, he is always willing and able to tag us and set us free.
Happy Easter!
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