The Ransom

A classic letter from an anonymous taxpayer to the IRS stated, “My conscience won’t let me sleep because I cheated on my tax payment. I am enclosing fifty dollars of the amount I owe you. If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send the rest.”

Reminders of guilt torment the conscience. A church-sponsored billboard read “YOU MUST PAY FOR YOUR SINS.” Tempering these dire words was a forgiving graffiti scrawled beneath them, “If your bill is already paid, please disregard this notice.”

The bill for our sins, of course, has been paid already. Etymologically, the word redemption implies payment. The New Testament reminds us that we were “bought with a price” (1Corinthians 6:20; 7:23), “with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19; see also Acts 20:28).

Jesus proclaimed that he came “to give his life as ransom [the price of a slave] for many” (Matthew 20:28). But why the word many? Paul wrote that Christ “desires everyone to be saved” and so “gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:4-6. Italics mine). Is everyone saved or only many? Or even less than many, as Jesus’ words would imply: “The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:14; see Luke 7:24)?

Christ’s ransom payment was “a bank deposit” – more than enough to pay for all. Yet not everyone will be saved because, like any bank deposit, redemption is accessible only to those who draw on it, by properly repenting of all sin.

Jesus himself affirms that condition for salvation: “Unless you repent, you will all perish” (Luke 13”:3,5). Yet as Peter wrote, “The Lord….is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, italics mine). And Paul told the pagan Athenians, “God….commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). As a noble people, they would have been moved at Alexander Pole’s epigram “A noble mind disdains not to repent.” *

Thus, since “repentance ….leads to salvation” (2 Corinthians 7:10) it is critically important. We should not delay the “repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18). As one quipster phrased it, “You can’t repent too soon, because you don’t know how soon it may be too late.” But also repentance must be neither deficient nor improperly understood. Too often it is.

*Alexander Pope quoting Homer Iliad, Book XV, 1, 227, as cited in 12,000 Religious Quotations (Grand Rapids MIL Baker 1989), p. 376.

This excerpt is from the book The Awesome Mercy of God, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Books. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.