In our discussion of the kinsman redeemer, one of the most important things we learned is that a kinsman redeemer must have the MEANS to redeem!
He must have the capability of paying the full redemption price.
No discounts, exceptions or loopholes are allowed.
A good person may have had the desire to redeem his brother, but if he didn’t have the financial means, END OF STORY.
Debt holders did NOT accept IOU’s from kinsman redeemers.
The price had to be paid IN FULL!
And here’s the thing.
God does NOT accept IOU’s either.
The problem is the debt we owe God due to our transgressions is our very lives.
We pay our sin debt to God via our own death or a kinsman redeemer had to step in and pay the price.
The kinsman redeemer is a mediator and follows the pattern of substitution.
The prophet Isaiah talks about this mediating work that the Messiah would do.
“In fact, it was our diseases he bore,
our pains from which he suffered;
yet we regarded him as punished,
stricken and afflicted by God.
But he was wounded because of our crimes,
crushed because of our sins;
the disciplining that makes us whole fell on him,
and by his bruises* we are healed.
We all, like sheep, went astray;
we turned, each one, to his own way;
yet Adonai laid on him
the guilt of all of us.”
-Isaiah 53:4-6
Israel has had to wait 4000 years for a kinsman redeemer (a 3rd party mediator) who fulfilled the following two conditions:
First, be a kinsman (in other words, he has to be a Hebrew).
Second, have the means to pay the full price.
Indeed, Yeshua was the only one who not only had the means to be Israel’s kinsman redeemer, he also had the will.
CONNECTING THIS TEACHING TO THE NEW TESTAMENT
“For Messiah also hath
once suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust,
that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh,
but quickened by the Spirit.”
-1 Peter 3:18
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