Can Someone Be Redeemed And Hell-bound?

A. The doctrine of redemption is critical to an understanding of God’s salvation of sinners from their sins and from sin’s penalties. 1. redemption: Deliverance from sin and its consequences by the atonement of Jesus Christ. a. This redemption is the free act of God by His will and grace. ROM 3:24; 1CO 1:30. b. The legal cost of this redemption was the blood of Christ. EPH 1:7; COL 1:23. c. This is an eternal redemption wrought for us. HEB 9:12. d. God even gives His children a coupon as proof of His own obligation to redeem them fully: the Spirit. ROM 8:23 c/w EPH 1:13-14. (1) When the Spirit-indwelt, Spirit-sealed child of God is presented to God on Resurrection Day, God redeems him fully according to the coupon’s promise. (2) That which the coupon represents will be delivered in full because of God’s faithfulness to His promised redemption. 1TH 5:23-24 c/w PHIL 3:20-21. e. This is eternal spiritual redemption from sin and its penalties. 2. The etymological basis of redemption is redeem. a. redeem: trans. To buy back (a thing formerly possessed); to make payment for (a thing held or claimed by another). b. An important principle to grasp about redeeming is that it is the giver of the coupon who does the redeeming because of his promise. (1) If you are provided by a manufacturer a coupon to be redeemed upon presentation for what it declares on its face, it is actually the manufacturer who is redeeming the coupon, not you. (2) Older versions of American currency carried on their face a promise, “This note...is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve Bank.” The note was a coupon of promise by the issuer that it would redeem its coupon from the bondage of your grip by giving you lawful money for it (which it would have preferred to not have to do). c. All the firstborn in Israel belonged to God’s priests but some could be redeemed with money. NUM 18:14-17. d. A poverty-stricken man could sell himself into bondservitude but could be redeemed. LEV 25:47-48. e. There were clearly natural redemptions, and this principle was at times falsely equated with spiritual redemption. 1PE 1:18-19. f. No corruptible thing could ever redeem a soul. PSA 49:7-8. 3. To understand redemption in Scripture, the following issues need to be addressed: a. Who/what is being redeemed? b. What is the redemption from? c. Who is doing the redeeming? d. What is the cost/method of redemption? e. Is the redemption spiritual or natural? f. Is the redemption permanent or forfeitable? g. Is the redemption full or partial? Note TIT 2:14; COL 2:13. 4. Adam sold men into the bondage of Satan and sin; Jesus Christ redeemed men from them. Believers have the assurance that they “...are bought with a price...” and should therefore serve the One Who spent His life and blood to redeem them. 1CO 6:20; 7:23. B. The above helps us understand Peter’s denunciation of certain wicked men who would get into the church. They are both “bought” and “damned.” 2PE 2:1-3. 1. They are covetous God-denying deceivers who have a problem with authority and are animated by fleshly lust. The only ruler they acknowledge is their lust. 2PE 2:10, 14, 18. 2. Their damnation is not merely a temporal judgment. a. God knows how “...to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (v. 9). They are not justified men. b. They are “...as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed...” (v. 12). c. They “...speak evil of the things that they understand not...” (v. 12) and “...cannot cease from sin...” (v. 14). This is descriptive of natural man, not regenerated spiritual man. ROM 8:7-8; 1CO 2:14. d. “...to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever” (v. 17). e. Jude describes this lot the same. JUDE 1:10-13, 19. 3. The question arises, “If these are spiritually redeemed/blood-bought men, how could they end up in hell?” This would contradict the sworn promise of God to preserve His saints for ever. PSA 37:28; JOH 10:27-29; ROM 8:38-39. C. The parallel of the false prophets in the O.T. church are false teachers which would arise among you in the N.T. churches. 2PE 2:1. 1. Those false prophets among the people of old were permitted as a test of Israel’s mettle. DEU 13:1-3. 2. These false teachers could come in the form of false apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastors, which are all instructive offices. EPH 4:11-12; 2CO 11:13; REV 2:2. 3. The church's mettle would also be tested by such. 1CO 11:18-19. D. Observe the sinister nature of the false teachers' agendas: they “...PRIVILY shall bring in damnable heresies” (v. 1). 1. privily: In a privy manner; not openly or publicly; secretly, privately; stealthily; craftily. 2. They know that their doctrine is not apostolic and it won't endure the light of scrutiny, so they avoid it. This is characteristic of a truly evil person. JOH 3:20. 3. By the time of Revelation, at least two churches in Asia had such damnable heresy in their midst which pretended to justify sexual sin. REV 2:14, 20. 4. It is virtually guaranteed that if someone advances the heresy that religion accommodates sexual sin, it will have an appeal to the carnally minded and “...many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of” (v. 2), reducing the name of Christ to the level of pagan gods whose religions were sex cults. E. If there is anything that Peter's epistle makes clear, it is that there are no contradictions in Scripture. 2PE 1:20. 1. The fact that these false teachers were bought by God presupposes that they were somehow in a state from which they had been delivered at considerable cost. 2. But notice what Peter does NOT say: a. He does NOT say that these false teachers, like his addressees, are such as would obtain “like precious faith...” (2PE 1:1), but that THEY shall be among YOU, thus establishing a contrast. b. He does NOT say that these false teachers were redeemed from the penalty and dominion of their sin. c. He does NOT say that they were bought, purchased, redeemed or ransomed by the precious blood of Christ as were the objects of Peter's epistles. 1PE 1:18-19. F. Peter was a Jewish apostle, commissioned to minister unto the circumcision. GAL 2:7. 1. He is writing people who had a notable national history of some 1500 years. 2. Israel's deliverance from Egypt was of utmost importance to Jewish people and the precursor of many other temporal, natural deliverances. 3. Consider the language that Scripture uses to describe God's deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt. a. He redeemed them. DEU 7:8; 2SAM 7:23. b. He purchased them. EXO 15:16; PSA 74:2. c. He bought them. DEU 32:6. d. He ransomed them. ISA 51:10. 4. Remember, the principle of redemption demands a ransom payment. a. The ransom payment for Israel's deliverance from Egyptian bondage was not the blood of Christ, but something different. ISA 43:1-4 c/w PRO 21:18. b. Obviously this temporal ransom wherein a third party became the redemptive price of God's chosen parallels the spiritual redemption of the elect through Christ. GAL 3:13. 5. The similarities are obvious. a. Israel, as a people, had been bought out of Egypt and become a covenant people unto God which many of them assumed was irrevocable. b. Peter is warning N.T. Jewish saints about the inherent risks of ungodly Jews (in flesh only) among them driven by fleshly lust who would teach heresies not unlike pagan notions of sexual communion with deity, command attention, despise authority, promise liberty and gain followers. c. But they are ultimately deniers of the God they profess, proven by their unrighteous works. c/w TIT 1:10-16. d. Secular history accords with what Jesus said of that wicked generation: they would be overrun with wicked spirits. MAT 12:43-45.