The Orthodox concept of redemption may be briefly epitomized as follows: the meaning of "atonement" is really "to remove (or overcome) the cause of separation." In other words, man is alienated from God by sin (by his constant "missing of the mark"), and so he is in bondage to death.

Since man sins continually due to the power of death (which is held by Satan), sin alienates man from God, and death perpetuates the separation (and vice versa). By death, we fall short (again, by "missing the mark"—sin) of our original destiny, which is to live through unity with the Creator. We are ransomed by Christ from the power of death so that we can become partakers of the divine essence and share in immortality, which belongs to God alone. Being ransomed from the power and fear of death, we are thus redeemed from bondage to the Evil One, a bondage that has been affected and strengthened by our own sinful passions. Christ did not die to save us from God, as the neo-pagan doctrine of “substitutionary sacrifice atonement” teaches.

The following summary of the Orthodox teaching about redemption is drawn from various works by Fr John Romanides:

Christ saves men who have fallen through their own fault into the power of the devil by breaking that power. He became Man for this purpose; He lived and died and rose again so that He might break the chains by which men were bound. It is not His death alone but the entire Incarnation, of which His death was a necessary part, that freed men from their captivity to Satan.

By becoming Man, living a sinless life, and rising from the dead (which He could not have done unless He had first died), He introduced a new power into human nature. This power is bestowed on all men who are willing to receive it, through the Holy Spirit. Those who receive it are united with Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church; the corrupted human nature (the bad habits and evil desires, which St Paul calls "the old man": Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9) is driven out by degrees until at last it is expelled altogether, and the redeemed person becomes entirely obedient to the will of God, as our Lord Himself was when on earth. The prisoner is set free from the inside; both his mind and body are changed; he comes to know what freedom is, to desire it, and, by the Holy Spirit working within him, to break his chains, turn the key and leave the dungeon.

Thus he is freed from the power of sin. God forgives him as an act of pure love, but the condition of his forgiveness is that he must sin no more. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8-9). but if we wilfully continue to be sinners, Christ's death for us will have been in vain. We are made capable of ceasing to be sinners by the power of Christ's Resurrection, which has given us the power to struggle against sinfulness toward moral perfection.

The advantage of this Orthodox teaching is that it is firmly based on the New Testament. "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (2 Cor. 5:19); the act of reconciliation is effected by God in the Person of His Son, for it is man that needs to be reconciled to God, not God that needs to be reconciled to man.

Throughout the New Testament, we find the proclamation that Christ has broken the power of the devil, to which mankind was subject (see Lk. 10:17-18); 11:22; 1 Cor. 15:25; Gal.1:4; Col. 2:15; 2 Tm.1:10; Hb.2:14; Jn.10:11; 12:31; 16:11; 1Jn.3:8; and frequently in Revelation).

Moreover, this teaching of the atonement requires no "legal fiction" and attributes no immoral or unrighteous action to God. Man is not made suddenly good or treated as good when he is not good; he is forgiven not because he deserves to be forgiven but because God loves him, and he is made fit for union with God by God's own power, his own will cooperating. He is saved from the power of sin by the risen life of Christ within him, and from the guilt of sin by God's forgiveness, of which his own repentance is a condition.

Thus, salvation consists in the union of the faithful with the life of God in the Body of Christ (the Holy Church), where the Evil One is being progressively and really destroyed in the life of co-suffering love. This union is effected by Baptism (the Grace of regeneration) and fulfilled in the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ and in the mutual, cooperative struggle of Orthodox Christians against the power and influence of the Evil- One. This is precisely why the last words of the "Lord's Prayer" are, "deliver us from the Evil-One," and not "deliver us from evil."