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)

87. The difference between good without truth and truth coming from good can be clearly seen in the case of man. All his good is located in the will, and all his truth in the understanding; and the will cannot act to the slightest extent as a result of its good, except through the understanding. It cannot act, speak or feel. All its ability and power come through the understanding, consequently through truth, for the understanding is the container and dwelling-place of truth. It is like the way the heart and lungs work in the body. The heart unless accompanied by the breathing of the lungs cannot produce any movement or any sensation, but both of these are the product of the breathing of the lungs proceeding from the heart. This is evident in the loss of consciousness in cases of suffocation or drowning, when the breathing stops, though the systolic action of the heart continues. It is well known that in these cases there is neither movement nor sensation. It is the same with an embryo in the mother's womb. The reason is that the heart corresponds to the will and the various kinds of good it contains, the lungs to the understanding and the various kinds of truth it contains.

[2] The power of truth is very clearly to be seen in the spiritual world. An angel who possesses Divine truths from the Lord, even if physically as weak as a child, can still put to rout a crowd of spirits from hell, though they look like the Anakim and Nephilim, that is, like giants, and pursue them down to hell and force them into its caverns; and when they emerge from these they do not dare to approach the angel. Those who possess Divine truths from the Lord behave in that world like lions, though they have no more strength in their bodies than sheep. Likewise, human beings who possess Divine truths from the Lord have power against evils and falsities, and so they have against serried ranks of devils, who regarded as they are in essence are simply evils and falsities. The reason there is such strength in the Divine Truth is that God is Good itself and Truth itself, and He created the universe by means of the Divine Truth; and all the laws of order by which He preserves the universe are instances of truth. This is why it is said in John that 'all things were made through the Word, and without Him was nothing made that was made' (John 1:3, 10); and in the Psalms of David:

Through the Word of Jehovah the heavens were made, and through the breath of His mouth the whole company of the heavens, Psalms 33:6.