Today’s Scripture: Ephesians 2:1

“You were dead.”

In the story of redemption, deliverance from the penal curse of the law is the major part of the story, but not the whole story. Peter told us, “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Peter 1:18). Without Christ we lived in futility and emptiness. Regardless of whether it was a decent life or a wicked life judged on a human scale of morality, it was a vain, futile, empty life.

We find a good description of this emptiness in Ephesians 2:1-3, where Paul described us as having followed the ways of the world and of Satan, and of having continually gratified the cravings of our sinful natures. Christ’s ransom, then, secured for us redemption not only from the law’s curse but also from bondage to sin. These two aspects of redemption always go together: redemption from the curse infallibly secures redemption from the bondage.

Paul addressed this absolute connection when he wrote that Jesus Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (Titus 2:14, NIV). The design of Christ’s redemptive work goes beyond salvation from God’s everlasting curse. Its purpose is to redeem us from sin to himself, to be a people desiring to please him.

Regarding this absolute connection between redemption from the guilt and consequent curse of sin and the release from the dominion or reign of sin in our lives, noted New Testament scholar Leon Morris wrote, “It is wrong to separate the legal status, gained by complete discharge of the law against us, from the resultant life. The only redemption Paul knew was one in which they lived as those who had been adopted into the family of God.” (Excerpt taken from The Gospel for Real Life)

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