Kinsman Redeemers

These posts are based on notes from our sermon series on Ruth.

Reading:  Ruth 2:19-20

19And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.”

Here we encounter the concept of kinsman redeemers. 

The kinsman redeemer is a primary theme of Ruth.  Boaz—the Christ-type—is the kinsman redeemer who redeems Naomi/Ruth—who saves them from poverty/slavery/ignominy—and glorifies them.

We’re going to look at the five functions of the kinsman redeemer and we’ll see how Boaz does that for Ruth—how Christ does that for the Church—and we’ll see how to apply that to your life.

First—what are the five functions of the kinsman redeemer—just to get them written down.  They are:

1.    Redemption from slavery

2.   Avenger of blood

3.   Redeemer of land/inheritance

4.   Defense attorney

5.   Redeemer of the womb / Levrite

Let’s look real quick at the problem that kinsman redeemer is supposed to solve.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth—and then he placed the man in the Garden to tend it and be fruitful—and he created woman so that he could be fruitful and multiply and create a world that glorifies God.

But Adam sinned and could no longer accomplish his mission of worshiping God.

This created five  problems:

1.      Adam was enslaved to Satan.

2.     Satan had murdered him—caused him to be spiritually and physically dead.

3.     Adam had been kicked out of his inheritance—the Garden of Eden.

4.     Satan had become his accuser—and Satan was right—Adam was unworthy and God was left without a true worshiper.  So Adam was defenseless.

5.     And since Adam was sinful, there was no new creation or seed—so in a sense, mankind was stuck and unable to be fruitful and fill the earth in worshipful way.  Mankind was impotent.  He was spiritually dead.

We participate in all of that personally.  In some way we feel that curse of original sin—for instance the ground works against us instead of for us in the fallen world.  Our relationships accuse us.  We are enslaved to our passions.  We need redeemed.

So what do we do?  What is the solution?

God’s plan was to raise up a seed—we see that starting in Genesis 3:15 God purposes to raise up offspring or a seed that will crush Satan—a Redeemer.

This is acted out through the existence of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament.  And one of the ways is through these kinsman-redeemer laws.

And in the New Covenant—all those Old Covenant types are fulfilled in a greater way in the person of Jesus Christ.  So as we look at some of these aspects, the question we’ll ask is—how does Christ fulfill this for us?