How little such a reference to the revolution wrought in the life of Christians empties the term ' to ransom ' of its implication of purchase may be learned from 1 P 1'"-. Peter is here as completely engrossed with conduct as Paul is in Tit 2'^. He too is exhorting his readers to a life, during their sojourn here expecting the revelation of the Lord, consonant with their high dignity as a people of God's own possession. And he too seeks to gain force for his exhortation by reminding them of what they owe to Christ their Ransomer. The thing asserted to be secured by this ransoming is, with Peter as with Paul, an ethical deliverance. ' Knowing,' says he, ' that ye were redeemed . . . from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers' (1 P l'«). The thought is closely similar to that of Gal 1'' : ' That he might deliver us out of this present evil world.' If we should be tempted to suppose that, therefore, the term ' ran- somed,' as here used, has lost its implication of purchase, and become the exact equivalent of the ' deliver ' of Gal 1*, Peter at once undeceives us by emphasizing precisely the idea of purchasing. The peculiarity of the passage consists just in tlie full- ness with which it dwells on the price paid for our deliverance. Paul contented himself in Tit 2'* with saying merely that Christ 'gave himself for us.' Peter tells us that this means that He poured out His blood for us. ' Ransomed ' here, although used exactly as in Tit 2", cannot possibly mean simply 'delivered.' It means distinctively, 'delivered by means of the payment of a price.'
What the price was which Christ paid to ran- som us ' from our vain manner of life, handed down from our fathers,' Peter develops with great full- ness, both negatively and positively. Negatively, he tells us, it was no corruptible thing, no silver or gold. His mind is running on the usual commodi- ties employed in the ordinary ransomings familiar to everyday life ; and we perceive that he intends to represent the ransoming of which Christians are the object as similar in kind to them. It difiered from them only in the incomparable greatness of the pricre paid ; and this carries with it the great- ness of the evil from which it delivers us and the greatness of the good which it secures for us.
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The price paid, Peter tells \is positively, is the blood of Christ. This blood he characterizes in a twofold manner. On the one hand, he speaks of it, enhancing its value, as precious. It is at {,'roat cost that we have been ransomed. On the other hand, intimatinj; the source of its efficacy, he com- pares it with the blood 'of a lamb without blemish and without spot' (1 P 1'"). The sacrihcial allusion here is manifest, whether we think (with Hermann Gunkel), through the medium of Is 53, of the ordin- ary offerings (cf. Lv 23'-), or (with F. J. A. Hort) particularly of the Paschal lamb (cf. Ex 12°). The main point to observe is that Peter feels no incon- gruity in blending the ideas of ransom and sacri- lice. The blood which Clirist shed as a sacrifice is the blood by which we are ransomed. The two modes of representation express a single fact.
Peter does not inform his readers of these things as something new to them. He presents them as matters which are of common knowledge : ' knowing, as you do, that,' etc. ' It is an appeal to an elementary Christian belief (F. J. A. Hort, T/w First Epistle of St. Peter I. l-II. 17, p. 75). Of course, then, there are other allusions to them, more or less full, scattered through the NT. There is, for instance, a similar conjunction of the notions of sacrifice and ransom in He 9'". There we are told that Christ, in contrast with the priests of the old dispensation, 'a high priest of the good things to come, . . . not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place having obtained eternal ransoming.' There are not two acts intimated here : by the one shedding of His blood, Christ both entered once for all into the holy place and obtained an eternal ransoming. The correspondence of the 'once for all ' in the one clause and the ' eternal ' in the other should not be overlooked ; it is a binding link assimilating the two assertions to one another. Christ, unlike the Levitical priests with their repeated entrances, entered the holy place ' once for all,' because the ransoming He was obtaining through His blood was not like theirs, temporary in its etiect, but 'eternal,' that is to say, of never- failing absoluteness (cf. 'eternal Spirit,' v.'^, ' eternal inheritance,' v."). The effect of the sacrificial shedding of Christ's blood is here ex- pressed in terms of ransoming.
Precisely how this author conceived this ransom- ing is made plain by a phrase which he employs tliree verses further on : 'a death having taken place for the ransoming of the transgressions.' He is still contrasting the ett'ective Avork of Christ witli the merely representative work of the Old Covenant. A promise had been given of an eternal inheritance. But men had not received the heritage whicli had thus been promised. Their sins stood in the way, and there was no sacrifice which took away sin. Christ had now brought such a sacrifice. In His case a death had taken place ' for the ransoming of the transgressions ' which they had committed. ' Ransoming ' here conveys a meaning which might have been conveyed by ' expiation.' The term used is not the simple form XiJx/jaxrij, but the streng- thened form airo\vTpw(m ; and the construction is inexact — it is not the transgressions but the trans- gressors th.at are ransomed. But the meaning is plain. • The genitive expresses in a wide sense the object on which the redemption is e.xercised (" redemption in the matter of the transgressions," "transgression — redemption")' (B. F. Westcott, Hebrews, p. 264). It was because men had sinned that they required to be ransomed ; sin had brought them into a condition from which they could be delivered only by a ransom. And tiie ransom required was a death. The matter is juit (Hiite generally : ' a death having taken place for ransom-