Redeemed: Jesus Paid the Full Price to Make You His Own

In the vision of Revelation 5, John sees a scene in heaven he cannot fully describe: a scroll sealed with seven seals, and no one in heaven or earth or under the earth who is able to open it. John weeps. And then he hears: "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll." John looks — and sees not a lion but a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne.

The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fall before the Lamb and sing: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation."

Purchased. The same word Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 6:20. The price was blood — not the blood of bulls and goats that could never take away sin, but the blood of the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. That blood was the price. Infinite value. Infinite cost. Willingly paid by the One who knew exactly what it would cost and came anyway.

Paul's words to the Corinthians land in this context: "You were bought at a price." This is not a theological footnote. It is the ground of identity. You are not defined by your past, your failures, your family of origin, your worst moments. You are defined by what someone paid for you. And the price was the highest price ever paid in the history of the universe — the blood of God's own Son.

When Jesus cleared the temple courts in Jerusalem, the religious leaders demanded a sign of His authority. Jesus answered with a statement they completely misunderstood: "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." They thought He was talking about the building — the magnificent structure Herod had been constructing for 46 years. John clarifies: "But the temple he had spoken of was his body."

Jesus was the true temple. In Him, the fullness of God dwelt bodily (Colossians 2:9). He was the place where heaven and earth met, where God and humanity were in immediate contact. When His body was destroyed on the cross and raised on the third day, the meaning of temple shifted permanently.

Paul carries this shift forward. The risen Jesus sent the Holy Spirit — the same Spirit who had dwelt in the Most Holy Place — to take up residence in every person who received Him. And so Paul tells the Corinthians, in the middle of correcting their sexual immorality: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?" The inner sanctuary — the naos — has relocated. It is now inside you.

This is not metaphor. This is the actual topology of the new creation. The Spirit of the living God inhabits the bodies of those who have been purchased by blood. The dwelling place of God walks around in human skin, sharing meals, going to work, raising children, sitting with the grieving. Every believer is a portable sanctuary of the presence of God.

Paul opens Romans 12 with a phrase that has always startled readers: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship." Worship, for Paul, is not primarily what happens in a building on a Sunday. It is what happens in a body — your body — offered daily to the God who purchased it.

The ancient sacrifice was dead. The animal was slaughtered, placed on the altar, consumed. Paul's new covenant equivalent is different: the sacrifice is living. The body offered to God is still breathing, still moving, still going to work and cooking dinner and raising children and speaking to neighbors. What has changed is whose purposes it serves and whose character it displays.

"Honor God with your bodies" — Paul's command to the Corinthians — is not a list of prohibitions about what the body cannot do. It is a positive vision: the body as the instrument of God's glory in the world. Every handshake of comfort. Every hour of honest labor. Every act of physical service to the poor. Every moment of sexual faithfulness. Every night of sleep received as a gift. All of it, offered to the One who purchased the body with blood, can be worship.

The body is not incidental to the Christian life. The resurrection proved that. God does not save souls and discard bodies — He will raise these bodies on the last day (Romans 8:11). And in the meantime, these same bodies — purchased, inhabited, consecrated — are the physical means by which the glory of God travels through the world.