The redemption power is the Redeemer Himself, and so, as pointed out in a previous lecture, the Lord Jesus is called in Isaiah, lix. 20, ‘the Redeemer,’ and in the quotation of that passage Rom. xi. 26, ‘the Deliverer.’ And this applies whichever way you understand the words. If you apply them to the curse of sin it is He that delivers from that curse by the satisfaction of the law through His precious blood. He paid the ransom, and in the Father’s name He has set us free. Or, if you apply it to the bondage of lawlessness, it is equally He that delivers, for it is just as much His office to release from the dominion of sin by the power of the Holy Ghost as it was to remove the curse. In either sense the passage brings Him before us as a present living Deliverer, not merely one who has given Himself for us, but one who is now engaged in actually delivering us from all iniquity and purifying unto Himself a peculiar people. The first clause, ‘He gave himself for us,’ describes His work on the cross finished at once and for ever; the latter part, ‘That He might redeem us from all iniquity,’ His present work as a risen and living Saviour, continuously employed in delivering and purifying His Church. Whatever we may think of the clause, ‘that he might redeem us from all iniquity,’ this is clearly the meaning of the words that He might ‘purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.’ So that either way we are brought to the indisputable and most important lesson, that in our great struggle against sin, either without or within; either in the world or in our own hearts; and in our efforts to aim at the practical Christian life exhibited in this chapter, we may take the greatest possible encouragement from the fact that it is the present office of our living Lord to deliver and to purify. We may be profoundly conscious of the deep, inbred corruption of our own nature. We may know by bitter experience how often we have failed; we may be humbled to the dust at the thought of our shortcomings; we may be ready to say, as St. Paul did, ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ but in the midst of it all we may look up in peaceful trust, and thank God for the delivering power that is in Christ Jesus, our risen and living Head. We may say as St. Paul did, ‘I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’