To whom is the Ransom paid?

Fe2O3Girl

I think that even JW-lites have a grasp of the basic teaching that all humans have inherited sin from Adam and Eve, and hence all humans die. Jesus was a perfect human, and through his death......(from the WT website):

"His sacrificed perfect human life became the ransom price, able to redeem mankind from sin and death. Jesus Christ said: "No one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his soul in behalf of his friends." (John 15:13) On the third day after his death, Jesus was resurrected to spirit life, and some weeks later he ascended to heaven to present the ransom price to Jehovah God. (1 Corinthians 15:3, 4; Hebrews 9:11-14) By doing so, Jesus was able to apply the merit of his ransom sacrifice to those who follow him."

I have been pondering the idea of the Ransom recently and I honestly couldn't remember to whom the ransom was supposed to have been paid. Looking at this article, the JWs teach that it is God himself who was demanding the Ransom. So was it God keeping humanity enslaved to sin and death?

How did you view the Ransom teaching as a JW, and do mainstream Christian churches also teach that the Ransom was paid to God? Why?

Undecided

It seems all Gods like sacrifices. Sometimes it's humans, sometimes animals and sometimes material stuff.

In the case of the bible God, it seems he needed one of his own creations to give up his life as a spirit and then God put his dna by sperm in some unexplained way into the egg of a woman. It seems women are still perfect since she could have a perfect baby, only the man could not contribute to his being born. Anyway, his body was taken to heaven three days after he died and someway was presented to him as a perfect sacrifice, unless of course you believe the trinity. In that case he just became his own sacrifice.

Now we are good to go, we will be angels, or perfect humans or something like that, depending on what religious theory you follow.

I hope you understand it clearly now.

Ken P.

Sirona

As far as I remember it, it was God who asked for the ransom to be paid. He sent his own son because for the loss of Adam there was a sacrifice required of equal value -the life of a "perfect" human being.

This is the one issue that made Christianity impossible for me.

Sirona

plmkrzy

God created man in his image...uh, well kinda.

Man turned out less then expected...a big dissapointment.

God decided these are no good, got to get rid of man. Back to the drawing board.

Jesus said NO WAIT DAD! Can I have 'em?

God said, well ok son but, its gonna cost ya. How bad do you want em?

In a nut shell, Jesus bought us from his father then mapped out a plan to bring some of us back to perfection over the next several thousand years and live happily ever after.

Maybe God sold us to his son then went on to try it again elsewhere, there's another planet somewhere with actual perfect humans living in a paradise. Watching us f%%kups.

Narkissos

Among the many NT models of interpretation of Jesus' death, "ransom" and "sacrifice" are two distinct metaphors which are never linked together: in the NT there is no such thing as a "ransom sacrifice" -- neither the equation between Adam and Jesus in terms of "life value," or the idea that either was "perfect". All that is WT stuff, not the Bible.

While a "sacrifice" is naturally offered to a saving deity, a "ransom" would logically have to be offered to a harmful one (that was the case of the OT Yhwh who is paid a ransom for the firstborns he would otherwise kill or require as a sacrifice). Quite logically then, several Church Fathers, starting with Origen, understood that the ransom was paid to the devil (a doctrine which is still held by some Christians, e.g. http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_atone7.htm).

Justin

In JW thinking the ransom is paid to Jehovah. I used to question this myself (how, in effect, Jehovah was ransoming people from himself to himself), and no one could give me a satisfactory answer.

The ransom idea is used by JWs as a form of what others call the substitutionary atonement, which means that Jesus paid the penalty and died in the place of sinners. This satisfied God's justice. As a ransom takes the place of what is ransomed, substitution is thereby implied. The reason JWs prefer to speak of ransom rather than substitution is that, in the ransom analogy, the price paid cannot be taken back. This thought leads to the belief that Jesus was not resurrected back to human life, in his human body. The ransom (a perfect human life) having been paid, he was raised on a higher level than human - to the spirit plane.

Christians who believe in substitutionary atonement would say instead that Jesus made condign satisfaction - that is, since Jesus is believed to be both God and man, his brief sufferings had an infinite value and could atone for the sins of people who would otherwise have to spend an eternity in hell. This equivalency did not preclude his remaining the God-man when resurrected - he took back a glorified human body.

So the ransom idea, as used by JWs, is an attempt to discredit Christendom's belief in a physical resurrection for Jesus. The substitutionary atonement theory is only one approach to Christ's atonement even in Christendom (though Evangelical Christians think it is the only one), and causes problems for many. But such an atonement would be a ransom only metaphorically, and in its classical form avoids the problem of who receives the ransom.

RR

Adam sinned, bringing sin and death to all within his loins, (i.e. the World of mankind) Justice demanded restitution, a ransom.

Jesus as a perfect man (the second Adam) paid that price. he died for Adam, taking his place thus redemming him and all those in his loins (i.e. the world of mankind).

The ransom price was paid to Jehovah, since he passed the death sentence on Adam for disobedience!

RR

blondie

Hebrews 9:11-14 (Contemporary English Version)

Contemporary English Version (CEV)

11 Christ came as the high priest of the good things that are now here. [ a ] He also went into a much better tent that wasn't made by humans and that doesn't belong to this world. 12 Then Christ went once for all into the most holy place and freed us from sin forever. He did this by offering his own blood instead of the blood of goats and bulls. 13 According to the Law of Moses, those people who become unclean are not fit to worship God. Yet they will be considered clean, if they are sprinkled with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a sacrificed calf. 14 But Christ was sinless, and he offered himself as an eternal and spiritual sacrifice to God. That's why his blood is much more powerful and makes our [ b ] consciences clear. Now we can serve the living God and no longer do things that lead to death.

Carmel

One source...

The Muslims do not believe in original sin, or vicarious atonement; salvation is not only for Muslims but for the followers of all previous faiths: "Verily, they who believe, and the Jews, and the Sabeites, and the Christians -- whoever of them believeth in God and in the last day, and doth what is right, on them shall come no fear, neither shall they be put to grief. (Qur'án 5:73).

(Marzieh Gail, Six Lessons on Islam)

And another:

"Now consider how far this meaning conforms to the reality. For the spirit and the soul of Adam, when they were attached to the human world, passed from the world of freedom into the world of bondage, and His descendants continued in bondage. This attachment of the soul and spirit to the human world, which is sin, was inherited by the descendants of Adam, and is the serpent which is always in the midst of, and at enmity with, the spirits and the descendants of Adam. That enmity continues and endures. For attachment to the world has become the cause of the bondage of spirits, and this bondage is identical with sin, which has been transmitted from Adam to His posterity. It is because of this attachment that men have been deprived of essential spirituality and exalted position.

When the sanctified breezes of Christ and the holy light of the Greatest Luminary were spread abroad, the human realities -- that is to say, those who turned toward the Word of God and received the profusion of His bounties -- were saved from this attachment and sin, obtained everlasting life, were delivered from the chains of bondage, and attained to the world of liberty. They were freed from the vices of the human world, and were blessed by the virtues of the Kingdom. This is the meaning of the words of Christ, "I gave My blood for the life of the world" -- that is to say, I have chosen all these troubles, these sufferings, calamities, and even the greatest martyrdom, to attain this object, the remission of sins (that is, the detachment of spirits from the human world, and their attraction to the divine world) in order that souls may arise who will be the very essence of the guidance of mankind, and the manifestations of the perfections of the Supreme Kingdom."

(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 124)

A Paduan

Firstly I'd like to say that to myself as an outsider the term "ransom sacrifice" sounds like one of those dental drill, knife on the plate, blackboard and chalk type of jwism sayings.

The ransom is from how things are, the way it is - and God pays our ransom ie. Christ. This further says Jesus as Lord as.

Truly no man can ransom himself, or give to God the price of his life

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God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me

To whom is the Ransom paid?

Hebrews 9:11-14 (Contemporary English Version)

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