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Jehovah Provides “a Ransom in Exchange for Many”Draw Close to Jehovah
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11. (a) How would the ransomer “taste death for everyone”? (b) Why could Adam and Eve not have benefited from the ransom? (See footnote.)
11 Jehovah arranged to have a perfect man voluntarily sacrifice his life. According to Romans 6:23, “the wages sin pays is death.” In sacrificing his life, the ransomer would “taste death for everyone.” In other words, he would pay the wage for Adam’s sin. (Hebrews 2:9; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24) This would have profound legal consequences. By nullifying the death sentence upon Adam’s obedient offspring, the ransom would cut off the destructive power of sin right at its source.a—Romans 5:16.
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Jehovah Provides “a Ransom in Exchange for Many”Draw Close to Jehovah
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Finishing His Redemptive Work
16, 17. (a) How did Jesus continue his redemptive work? (b) Why was it necessary for Jesus to appear “before God on our behalf”?
16 Jesus had yet to finish his redemptive work. On the third day after Jesus’ death, Jehovah raised him from the dead. (Acts 3:15; 10:40) By this momentous act, Jehovah not only rewarded his Son for his faithful service but gave him the opportunity to finish his redemptive work as God’s High Priest. (Romans 1:4; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8) The apostle Paul explains: “When Christ came as a high priest . . . , he entered into the holy place, not with the blood of goats and of young bulls, but with his own blood, once for all time, and obtained an everlasting deliverance for us. For Christ did not enter into a holy place made with hands, which is a copy of the reality, but into heaven itself, so that he now appears before God on our behalf.”—Hebrews 9:11, 12, 24.
17 Christ could not take his literal blood into heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:50) Rather, he took what that blood symbolized: the legal value of his sacrificed perfect human life. Then, before the Person of God, he made formal presentation of the value of that life as a ransom in exchange for sinful mankind. Did Jehovah accept that sacrifice? Yes, and this became evident at Pentecost 33 C.E., when the holy spirit was poured out on about 120 disciples in Jerusalem. (Acts 2:1-4)
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