In a little over two weeks followers of Jesus all over the world will stop to ponder again the meaning of His crucifixion and celebrate His resurrection. Most of us refer to this as Easter, although I believe “Resurrection Sunday” is a better term. Some think the word “easter’ has its roots in Eostrae, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. Perhaps not, but “Resurrection Sunday” tells more clearly what the day is all about.

As I ponder the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, I can think of many things that we are privileged to know and experience because of our faith in the Risen Lord. I thought it might be a worthwhile exercise to write about some of those things over the next couple of weeks, using RESURRECTION as a prompt.

Here’s the first one that jumps to mind. We are grateful for the resurrection of Jesus because it means we can be redeemed.

1 Peter 1:17-21 – If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Redeemed is translated from the Greek lytroō, which means to release on receipt of ransom, to deliver, to liberate, to cause to be released to oneself by payment of a ransom.

Because of the original sin in the Garden, we are all born separated from God. We need to be ransomed or bought back. The payment required by God for sin was death, just as He warned Adam and Eve.

Genesis 2:16-17 – The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

They disobeyed, and they died. Immediately, they suffered a spiritual death, and eventually died physically, just as every person does. No human person can overcome death. We were condemned, without hope.

God instituted all the sacrifices in the Old Testament as a picture of the sacrifice Jesus would one day make on the cross for the sins of the world. It would be the perfect blood sacrifice; Jesus would die in our place. The fact of Jesus’ resurrection shows that God accepted His sacrifice and that death no longer has power over us.

Hebrews 9:11-12 – But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

Jesus poured out His own perfect, sinless blood on the altar of heaven and it satisfied the wrath of God against sin. Now, in Him, we are redeemed. Our ransom has been paid, and we have been purchased by God, brought back into fellowship and communion with God, and members of the kingdom of Christ and the family of God.

Galatians 4:4-6 – But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

Colossians 1:13-14 – For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

We celebrate the resurrection because we are redeemed. Our physical bodies will die, but our spirit and soul will go directly into the presence of Jesus. We will receive a new, glorified body just like His. Because we are redeemed, we really get to go!