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)

84. There are many reasons, as will be revealed in due course in the following pages, why God could not redeem mankind, that is, rescue people from hell and damnation, except by taking upon Himself human form. For redemption was the conquest of the hells and the ordering of the heavens, followed by the establishment of a church. This is something that God in His omnipotence could not do except through the Human, just as no one can work unless he has an arm; His Human is actually called in the Word 'Jehovah's arm' (Isaiah 40:10; 53:1). Or just as no one can attack a fortified city and destroy the shrines of idols it contains, unless he has adequate means at his disposal. It is plain too from the Word that in this Divine task God's omnipotence was exercised through His Human. For God, who dwells in the inmost and thus purest parts, can in no other way penetrate to the outermost, in which the hells are, and so too were the people of that time; as, for comparison, the soul can do nothing without the body. Or as someone cannot defeat an enemy without coming in sight of them, or approaching and meeting them with some sort of weapons, such as pikes, shields or muskets. To effect redemption without the Human was as impossible for God as it is for a man to conquer the Indies without ferrying an army there in ships; or as making trees grow solely by supplying heat and light, without creating air to be the medium of their transmission or soil out of which they can grow. Even better, it is as impossible as casting nets in the air to catch fish there, instead of in water. For Jehovah, such as He is in Himself, cannot by His omnipotence lay a finger upon any devil in hell, or any devil on earth, and restrain him and his fury, or tame his violence, unless He is present in last things as He is in first things. He is present in last things in His Human, which is why He is called in the Word the First and the Last, Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.