arguments but to provoke believers to praise God for the grace poured out upon them in salvation. The second blessing is redemption (1:7–8), and again the lavishness of God’s grace is celebrated. Redemption focuses on God’s great act of deliverance, recalling Israel’s liberation from Egyptian slavery by God’s power (Exod. 6:6). Here the deliverance is from our trespasses, our deliberate flouting of God’s will. The deliverance took place at a price, through the blood of Christ; the word “blood,” as
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