We said last week that the atonement doctrines of ransom and redemption are interlinked. This week I will cover redemption. So what is redemption? Deliverance upon payment of ransom. What is the deliverance? Freedom from sin. What is the payment of ransom? His blood.

The doctrines of ransom and redemption are interlinked. However, this week I will talk about ransom and next week about redemption. So what is ransom? The price Christ paid. What is the price Christ paid? His blood. What is his blood for? Redemption. And what else did Christ’s blood do for us?

Here, we will see how those roll right into justification, Christ’s righteousness imputed to you. Martin Luther calls this the great exchange:
“This is that mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners: wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours but Christ¹s, and the righteousness of Christ not Christ¹s but ours. He has emptied himself of his righteousness that he might clothe us with it and fill us with it; and he has taken our evils upon himself that he might deliver us from them.”

Continuing on from the previous weeks, we will talk about two more themes in the atonement and apply them to counseling. The themes are propitiation and expiation. Propitiation is God’s wrath satisfied, the payment of sin accounted for and God’s wrath turned into favor. Expiation is the wiping away of sin. The debt of sin no longer stands against us. The debt is cancelled; the sin is removed.

This week, I am going to explain how Christus Victor flows from penal substitution in the atonement and how it applies in counseling. In the blog addressing penal substitution, I mentioned that the atonement is central to our faith and that penal substitution is central to the atonement, which flows right into Christus Victor.

I am going to spend the next couple of weeks talking about how the atonement works in counseling and in our lives as Christians. When we look at Scripture with a biblical theology lens, from Genesis to Revelation, everything points to the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is where transformation occurs and change happens. As I said last week, we view counseling as the great commission, making disciples out of men.

Hopefully, you have experienced sharing your life with people who love you in the expressions of both grace and truth. Grace is full and unreserved acceptance of where you are, and truth is unabashedly not leaving you where you are. This is a community group. This is a redemption group.

When you think of counseling, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Most people think of professional counselors, therapists, clinicians, and psychiatrists—not the church. We believe counseling is really the care of one’s soul through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, it is the Great Commission (Matt 28:16-20). We believe that the gospel brings change, real transformation and healing from all types of sin, both the sins we commit and sins committed against us, including but not limited to, addictions, disorders and abuse.

We at Mars Hill believe that there is no distinction between counseling and discipleship. Counseling is in fact discipleship. Thus we are taking the Great Commission seriously when Jesus says “Make disciples of all nations” by discipling through counseling and bringing counseling back to His Church, where it rightfully belongs.