Who is the Redeemer?
God the Son, Jesus Christ, is the Redeemer — fully God and fully man, who willingly paid the penalty for our sin with his own blood.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John opened his gospel by identifying Jesus as “the Word” who “was with God” and “was God” (John 1:1) — eternal, uncreated, fully divine. This verse is the turn: that same eternal Word entered human history as a real, physical person, not appearing to be human, but actually becoming flesh. The whole logic of the rescue depends on this: only someone who was already fully God could accomplish what needed doing, and only someone who became fully human could do it on our behalf.
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
Paul frames Jesus’s arrival with careful precision: not a random moment, but “the fullness of time” — a coordinated fulfillment of centuries of prophecy. And notice the purpose clause: to redeem, so that we might be adopted. Redeemer isn’t just a title describing what Jesus is; it names what he came to do — buy back people who were, apart from him, under judgment, and bring them into God’s own family.
“Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.”
“Propitiation” is a dense word worth unpacking: it means turning aside wrath by an offering that actually satisfies it, not just covering it over. This verse ties together why Jesus’s humanity mattered — a priest represents people to God, and to genuinely represent us, he had to actually share our nature, our weaknesses, our temptations, without sharing our sin.
Hard questions
If there is only one God, how can God have a Son?
The confusion usually comes from picturing “Father and Son” the way human families work — one existing before the other. Scripture’s claim is different: within the one God, the Father and the Son (and the Spirit) have eternally existed in relationship. The Son wasn’t created at Jesus’s birth; he has always been the Son, and the incarnation is the moment the eternal Son took on a human nature, not the moment he began to exist.
If Jesus is God, how did he die?
Because Jesus was genuinely both God and man, and it was specifically his human nature and human body that experienced death — his divine nature, by definition, cannot cease to exist. This is why Christians describe the incarnation as addition, not subtraction: Jesus didn’t trade divinity for humanity, he took on a human nature in addition to what he already was, and it was that human nature that suffered, bled, and died on the cross.
If we trust Jesus Christ, does his death really pay for all of our sins?
Scripture’s answer is yes, and the reason is precisely who was doing the paying. A merely human sacrifice, however sincere, could only ever cover a finite amount — one life for one life, at best. But because the one who died was also fully God, his sacrifice carries infinite worth, sufficient for every sin, of everyone who trusts him, across all of history. The payment isn’t partial or provisional; it’s described as finished (John 19:30).