Ransomed - Easter 3

In February of 2024, a Russian ransomware group was able to get into the systems of Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of United Healthcare, that processes 15 billion healthcare transactions every year. The Russians encrypted Change Healthcare’s system, affecting over 1000 hospitals, patients, and healthcare workers. The Russians demanded a $22 million ransom, which was paid by Change Healthcare, but even then it took as much as months to clean up the system so that operations were back to pre-attack normal.

The idea behind a ransom is pretty straightforward. Someone takes something from someone else and secures it so that the only way for the original owner to get the item back is to pay a usually high price. Of course, this means that you have to trust that a person who was untrustworthy enough to steal from you will be trustworthy enough to return it to you upon payment.

In our reading today, Peter compares the story of our salvation to paying a ransom, and he says that because Jesus paid the ransom to redeem us, we should live with fear – that is, with awe and faith – throughout the time of our exile. Because Jesus ransomed you, you should live differently. You should live in a way that reflects your redeemer’s values.

Why? Because you know what you were ransomed from. You know what you were ransomed with. You also know what you were ransomed for and who you were ransomed by. Let me run through that again. You were ransomed – from … with ... for … and by. (From, with, for, and by.)

What were you ransomed from? St. Peter says, “You were ransomed from the futile ways of your forefathers.” Now, remember, he is talking to the first generation of Christians. We are blessed to have families of believers stretching back several generations. There was no such thing at Peter’s time, and this was especially true among the pagans. The Jews had worshiped the true God. The other nations worshiped idols and false gods. As he speaks to them, Peter is basically saying, “Remember where you came from. Remember the sinful behaviors, the false beliefs, and the consequences these things brought into your life.” Some of you have experienced something like this. You know what your life was like before you came to believe in Jesus, or you had a turning point in your life where you were confronted with your sin, and you came to believe the good news of God’s salvation in Christ much more deeply. There are others of you who have to think about this a little more hypothetically. You know you were dead in your trespasses and sins, but you’ve never had a crisis moment and have just always known Jesus’ grace and forgiveness. In every case, however, there is a before and an after. Once you were separated from God, now you’ve been ransomed, bought at a price. But what was the cost?

What were you ransomed with? (From … with … for … and by.) Peter says you were not ransomed with perishable things like silver or gold. It wasn’t money that was the ransom price. Nor was it anything that you offered. You could not ransom yourself at this high of a price. Peter says that you were ransomed with the precious blood of Christ. Only the blood of a completely sinless sacrifice could atone for the sins of the world, and that’s what Jesus gave. This is the point (no pun intended) of the thorns, the whips, the nails, and the spear. It was all to shed his blood so that by that blood we might be cleansed of all our sins. (This, by the way, is one of the reasons we hold the Lord’s Supper with such reverence! Here is Jesus’ body and blood given and shed for you! To what end? Because this is what it cost to ransom you and win your forgiveness.)  

And friends, this was the plan from the beginning. Check out what Peter wrote: “He (Jesus) was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the 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.” From the foundation of the world, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, was going to be crucified to ransom us from our sins. Not only that, even then God’s plan was that He would be raised to glory so that from first to last our salvation belongs to God. This is His work: saving and forgiving sinners. And Peter, this eyewitness of Jesus’ resurrection, testifies that our living Savior paid the price for our ransom with His own blood! What an awful and awe-inspiring thing to know! No wonder he says we should conduct ourselves with fear throughout our time of exile – until we ourselves are finally home in glory!

And why would Jesus do this, ransom you from your futile past by his blood? He ransomed you for this purpose – to restore you to what he intended from the beginning, and that is that we would live in love with Him and with one another. Remember, Jesus was once asked what the greatest commandment was. He replied that the first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord, and the second was to love our neighbors. This was God’s design for us. Peter writes this, “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, ²³ since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God …” He is saying the way our souls are purified is by believing Jesus death and resurrection are our salvation. This is obedience to the truth, that our lives are reoriented around the good news that Jesus has paid the ransom so that now … now we seek to live in sincere brotherly love.

Because you are ransomed, because Jesus shed His blood for you, because Jesus is risen and lives and reigns to all eternity, you have been born again, you have been cut free from your sinful past so that you – we! – might love one another. And this isn’t just any kind of love. Remember, I love ham sandwiches. This love flows from the living and abiding word of God. In other words, this love flows from the word of God – Jesus, who is the Word made flesh. It is also shaped by the word of God, meaning it is described in simple human words given by God to us so that we might live in them. A really good summary of what this love looks like is found in the Ten Commandments. It starts with loving God – having no other gods, treating His name rightly, and hearing and believing His Word. It flows from there to honoring our parents, respecting our neighbors’ property, being sexually pure, and building our neighbors up. And, yes, some of the ways that God describes love will be at odds with the way the world describes love, but because Jesus died and rose for us, our hearts and our desires are to follow in His ways because His love is what moved Him to ransom us in the first place.

And that is my fourth point – we are ransomed from, with, for, and by – we are ransomed by God. God the Father gave His Son. God the Son lovingly gave His blood. God the Holy Spirit works to create faith in us and delivers Jesus’ salvation to us. We are saved by God.

Peter quotes Isaiah at the end of our reading. “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.”

All of the things of this world that we are so tempted to wrap our lives around, things that belong to our futile past in sin, they fade and die. But there is something that lasts forever. There is something that is worth reorienting our lives around. The word of the Lord remains forever. The word that ransoms you.

And this word is the good news that was preached to you. It is Christ, crucified, risen, and coming again. Amen.