He saves us by His death from all our sins: Past, present, and future. We all have broken God's law, and the wages of sin is death (see Romans 6:23). Jesus Christ never sinned, so as a sinless "second Adam," He was able to die as a substitute for all human sinners. Therefore God was able to preserve His righteous law and government by punishing the breaking of the law while offering a pardon to those who had broken it.

The apostle Paul said that Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law (see Galatians 3:13). The word redeemed means to buy back a slave in the marketplace. Mankind was in bondage to the curse of the law, which is death. Under this analogy, the death of Jesus was the "ransom" needed to set us free from the bondage of the law, sin, and death.

So in one sense, Jesus is our substitute; in another, our ransom. In yet another, His is our hilasterion (translated "propitiation") or mercy seat, a reference to the lid or covering over the ark of the covenant. When the mercy seat was covered with the blood of a sacrifice, the law's condemnation against the people was shut out before God. Jesus Christ is our complete and only covering.