Now go, if you would, to Matthew chapter number 20, and while you're turning to Matthew 20,
I'll read for you from Hosea 13 verse 14, and Hosea, it says, "I will ransom them from
the power of the grave," and this is actually prophetic here, "I will ransom them from the
power of the grave.
I will redeem them from death.
O death, I will be thy plagues.
O grave, I will be thy destruction.
Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes."
Look at Matthew 20 verse 28, it says, "Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered
unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many."
So Jesus Christ came to this earth to give his life a ransom for many.
Also it says in 1 Timothy 2 verse 6, "Who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified
in due time."
Now Calvinists can't comprehend this.
Such learning has made them mad, and so they can't understand this anymore, where it says
he gave himself a ransom for all, because they're like, "Well, but over here it says
he's a ransom for many."
Now let me just explain something to you.
All is still many, right?
If you gave yourself a ransom for all, you still gave yourself a ransom for many people.
But if you take their definition of many, which means, well, it's a certain people,
well then now all no longer applies, okay?
It says he gave himself a ransom for all.
He died and tasted death.
The Bible says for every man.
And it says, well, that just means just every man who's a believer.
No, the Bible says he's the savior of all men, especially of those that believe.
Meaning he's the savior of those that don't believe.
Now it doesn't do them any good if they don't get saved, but he's still their savior.
If they would call upon him, he would save them.
Because it says he's the savior of all men, especially of those that believe, okay?
That proves that he, and even of false prophets, who the Bible says their damnation slumbereth
not, even of damnable false prophets in 2 Peter 2, it says that they deny the Lord that
bought them.
You know, Jesus still paid for everybody.
He gave himself a ransom for all.
So it's great when we understand this word ransom, you can go back to Exodus 21.
But when we understand this word ransom, we understand what Christ did for us because
here we are guilty of a crime and the penalty is death and there needs to be a ransom given
for our life, except we don't have the money in our spiritual bank account to pay that
ransom.
It would be like if we committed some crime and it was, okay, you're going to prison for
five years or $50,000 ransom.
They don't call it a ransom anymore.
They call it, you know, a fine, okay.
But they say, hey, $50,000 or five years, if you don't have the $50,000, you're going
to prison for five years.
Now, anybody who had the $50,000 would pay it, rather than go to prison for five years.
Okay, it'd be ridiculous, oh, I'll just do the five years, keep my money.
It wouldn't make any sense, right?
You're going to make more than $50,000 during that five years.
So you'd take it, but if you don't have it, you don't have it, folks.
And guess what?
Nobody has it when it comes to spiritual salvation.
Because we don't have the right, our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, the Bible says.
So that's why the Bible says, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
We come up short to pay that ransom, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus.
And remember the word "redeem" was associated with the word "ransom" in Hosea 13.
It said, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death."
So those two words are talking about the same thing.
Basically paying for someone to not be punished, paying the fine instead.
And that's what Jesus did.
He paid our punishment, He paid our bill.
That's the substitutionary atonement of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what gets us into heaven, is the fact that He paid our ransom with His own blood,
with His death, burial, and resurrection.
And if we're willing to just believe on Him and trust in Him, then He'll take care of
it.
And then we go scot-free.
We've been ransomed, we've been redeemed.
That's what the Bible means when it says that.