Part of the Christian message is the concept of redemption. What does it mean, to say that the Lord redeemed people?

Here are the key concepts about redemption in New Christian thought, as excerpted from Swedenborg's works (written in the 1700s):

"Jehovah God came down and took upon Himself a human form, in order to redeem and save mankind.

Christian churches today believe that God the Creator of the universe fathered a Son from eternity, who came down and took upon Himself human form to redeem and save mankind. But this is an error and collapses of its own accord, so long as the mind concentrates on the oneness of God, and the reason looks upon as fiction or worse the idea that the one God fathered a Son from eternity, and also that God the Father together with the Son and the Holy Spirit, each of whom is severally God, is one God. This fiction is utterly exploded, like a meteorite in the atmosphere, when it is shown from the Word that it was Jehovah God Himself who came down and became man and also was the Redeemer." (True Christian Religion 82)

"In the process of taking on a human manifestation, God followed his own divine design.... Now, because God came down, and because he is the design..., there was no other way for him to become an actual human being than to be conceived, to be carried in the womb, to be born, to be brought up, and to acquire more and more knowledge so as to become intelligent and wise. Therefore in his human manifestation he was an infant like any infant, a child like any child, and so on with just one difference: he completed the process more quickly, more fully, and more perfectly than the rest of us do." (True Christian Religion 89)

"There is a belief that the Lord in his human manifestation not only was but still is the Son of Mary. This is a blunder, though, on the part of the Christian world. It is true that he was the Son of Mary; it is not true that he still is. As the Lord carried out the acts of redemption, he put off the human nature from his mother and put on a human nature from his Father. This is how it came about that the Lord's human nature is divine and that in him God is human and a human is God.' (True Christian Religion 102)

"Suffering on the cross was the final trial the Lord underwent as the greatest prophet. It was a means of glorifying his human nature, that is, of uniting that nature to his Father's divine nature. It was not redemption. There are two things for which the Lord came into the world and through which he saved people and angels: redemption, and the glorification of his human aspect. These two things are distinct from each other, but they become one in contributing to salvation.

In the preceding points we have shown what redemption was: battling the hells, gaining control over them, and then restructuring the heavens. Glorification, however, was the uniting of the Lord's human nature with the divine nature of his Father. This process occurred in successive stages and was completed by the suffering on the cross." (True Christian Religion 126)

"Redemption consisted in the conquest of the hells, the ordering of the heavens and the establishment of a new church, because without them no one could have been saved. This is their proper order: the hells had first to be conquered, before a new heaven of angels could be formed, and this had to be formed before a new church could be established on earth. For people in the world are so linked with the angels in heaven and the spirits in hell, that in the interiors of their minds they are identified with one party or the other." (True Christian Religion 115)

"Without that redemption no man could have been saved, nor could the angels have continued in a state of integrity. It shall be told first what redemption is. To redeem means to liberate from damnation, to deliver from eternal death, to rescue from hell, and to release from the hand of the devil the captive and the bound. This the Lord did by subjugating the hells and establishing a new heaven." (True Christian Religion 118)

101. (vii) THUS GOD BECAME MAN, AND MAN GOD, IN ONE PERSON.

It follows that Jehovah God became man and man became God in one person as the consequence of all the previous propositions in this chapter, and particularly these two: Jehovah the Creator of the universe came down and took upon Himself human form, in order to redeem and save mankind (see above 82-84); and the Lord by redeeming acts united Himself with the Father, and the Father reciprocally and mutually united Himself with the Lord (see above 97-100). That reciprocal union makes it obvious that God became man and man God in one person. The same consequence follows from the union of each resembling the union of soul and body; this is in agreement with the faith of the church to-day as stated in the Athanasian Creed (98 above). It is also in agreement with the faith of the Evangelical churches as stated in their leading book of orthodoxy known as the Formula of Concord. In this the doctrine is strongly supported both from Holy Scripture and from patristic literature, as well as by arguments, that Christ's human nature was raised to Divine majesty, omnipotence and omnipresence; also that in Christ man is God and God is man (see pp. 607, 765 of that book).

[2] Moreover it has been proved in the present chapter that Jehovah God in respect of His Human is called in the Word Jehovah, Jehovah God, Jehovah Zebaoth ¹ , as well as the God of Israel. Therefore Paul says that in Jesus Christ all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9); and John says that Jesus Christ the Son of God is the true God and everlasting life (1 John 5:20). The Son of God in its true sense means His Human (92ff above). Moreover Jehovah God calls both Himself and His Son Lord, for we read:

The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, Psalms 110:1.

and in Isaiah:

A child is born for us, a son is given to us, whose name is God, the everlasting Father, Isaiah 9:6-7.

Son also means the Lord in respect of His Human in the Psalms of David:

I will bring news of a decree, said Jehovah. You are my son, to-day have I begotten you. Kiss the son, so that he may not be angry and so that you do not perish on the way, Psalms 2:7, 12.

This does not mean a Son from eternity, but the Son born in the world, for it is a prophecy of the Lord's coming. This is why it is called a decree, news of which Jehovah gave to David. Earlier in that Psalm it says:

I have anointed my King over Zion, Psalms 2:6.

and later:

I will give him the nations for an inheritance, Psalms 2:8.

This proves that 'to-day' does not mean from eternity, but in time, for with Jehovah the future is present.

Footnotes:

98. It is in fact a tenet of belief in the church to-day, and also supported from the Word, that the Father and the Son, that is, the Divine and the Human, are united in the Lord like the soul and the body. Yet there are scarcely five in a hundred, or fifty in a thousand, who know this. The reason is the doctrine of justification by faith alone, so zealously propagated by many of the clergy, who seek a reputation for learning for the sake of honours and preferment, to such a point that that doctrine occupies and besets every point in their minds. Because it has made their thoughts drunk, just as the spirits of wine called alcohol, they have, like drunkards, failed to see this most essential tenet of the church, that Jehovah God came down and took human form. Yet that union is the sole means by which man is linked to God, and by being so linked is saved. It is evident that salvation depends upon the knowledge and acknowledgment of God, if anyone considers that God is all in all in heaven, and so all in all in the church, and therefore all in all in theology.

[2] Here I shall first prove that the union of the Father and the Son, that is, the Divine and the Human in the Lord, is like the union of soul and body; and, secondly, that this is a reciprocal union. The concept of a union as of the soul and the body has been established in the Athanasian Creed, which is accepted throughout the Christian world as the doctrine concerning God. In it we read as follows:

Our Lord Jesus Christ is God and Man; and although He is God and Man, they are not two, but one Christ. He is one, because the Divine took to itself a human. Indeed He is altogether one and is one Person, for as the soul and the body are one man, so God and Man are one Christ.

This is understood to mean that this is a union between the Son of God from eternity and the Son born in time; but because God is one and not three, so long as that union is understood to be with the one God from eternity, the doctrine agrees with the Word. There we read that He was conceived of Jehovah the Father (Luke 1:34-35); and that was the source of His soul and life. This is why He says that He and the Father are one (John 10:30); that he who sees and knows Him sees and knows the Father (John 14:9); 'if you knew Me, you would also know My Father' (John 8:19); 'he who receives Me, receives Him who sent Me' (John 13:20); that He is in the Father's bosom (John 1:18); that all things whatsoever the Father has are His (John 16:15); that He is called the everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6); that He thus has power over all flesh (John 17:2), and all power in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). From these and many other passages in the Word it can be clearly seen that the union between the Father and the Son is like that between the soul and the body. For this reason too He is often called in the Old Testament Jehovah, Jehovah Zebaoth, and Jehovah the Redeemer (83 above).