Anna Backens - outside reading - John Piper

I have been reading in a Christian book called The Passion of Jesus Christ, which I had been given soon after the release of the blockbuster Passion of the Christ. It is a devotional each outlining a different reason explaining why Christ suffered and died for mankind. I recently read one chapter called "To Become a Ransom for Many". It was a description of Mark 10:45 which talks about Christ giving his life as a ransom. I always thought that a ransom's purpose was to give something so that you can get back something in return. Like in the movie Ransom, Mel Gibson has to come up with money to get his son back, but in this devotional, it was explained a little differently. John Piper writes that Jesus was not coerced into a ransom and that Jesus did not require anything from us to come to save us. In actuality, I am not sure that we could have given anything of worth to him in or state that would have come close to repayment for the sacrifice of the crucifixion.

In John 10:18 it says, "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down on my own accord." This is the difficult part to understand about the Christ's ransom. He gave his life for free; he didn't require man to pay money or gold for it. This is why sometimes, in my opinion, the scriptures can be confusing because I think that in today's society, if someone pays a ransom, you feel obligated to give back for the payment. With Christ, he didn't. Piper also mentioned that this ransom was given for everyone but not everyone chooses to accept it. Its like someone paying of a set of loans for a whole neighborhood but not everyone wants to take the ransom.
A ransom given for free is a hard concept to understand because it is so different from a social definition of what a ransom's purpose is. Interestingly the scriptures in Mark say that Jesus gave up death for the life of others. He gave up a gift to give it. Also Jesus said that he came to serve and not to be served, so not only did he not require anything from men, he came with a priority of serving them instead.