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ing the tr.ansgressions.' This death was, in point of fact, Christ's death ; and it was because it was Christ's death that it was adequate to its end (v.'*). But the fundamental point in our present ]iassage is that Christ could ransom men from their sins, that is to say, from the conseqviences of their sins, including, of course, that conscicmsncssof sin which bites into the conscience (v.'*), only by dying. By sacrificing Himself He put away sin (v.-") ; He was oti'ered to bear the sins of many (v.^). The images of sacrifice and of ransoming are inextric- ably interwoven, but it easily emerges that Christ is thought of, in giving Himself to death, as giving Himself as a ransom-price to deliver men from the guilt and penalties of sin.
This representation meets us again, very tersely put, in Eph F, of which Col 1" is a slightly less completely expressed repetition. The ransoming (diro\i»r/)cixris) which is in Christ, described with more particularity in Ephesians again as having been procured ' through his blood,' is in botli passages alike identified immediately with ' the remission of our trespasses ' (Eph.), or ' of our sins ' (Col.). 'The studied precision,' as J. B. Lightfoot phrases it in his note on Col 1''', with which the ran- soming is thus defined to be just ' remission of sins,' is the more noteworthy because it is apparently directly contrasted as such with the wider ' deliver- ance' (ipiicraTo) from the power of darkness and removal into the Kingdom of the Son of God's love, for which it supplies the ground. It is be- cause Christ has at the cost of His blood, that is, by dying for us, purchased for us remission of sins (which is our ransoming), that we have deliverance from the tyranny of darkness and are transferred under His own rule. We thus reach a very close determination of the exact point at which the ran- soming act of Christ operates, and of the exact evil from which it immediately relieves us. It relieves us of the guilt and the penal consequences of our sins ; and only through that relief does it secure to us other blessings. It is, at its very centre, just 'the remission of our sins' that we have in Christ when we have in Him our ransom- ing.
The great passage in which the nature of our ransoming is unfolded for us, however, is Ro 3'-''. There, nearly all the scattered intimations of its essential nature found here and there in other passages are gathered together in one comprehen- sive statement. The fundamental declarations of this very pregnant passage are, that men, being sinners, can be justified only gratuitously, by an act of pure grace on God's part ; that God, how- ever, can so act towards them in His grace, only because there is a ransoming (dxoXiIrpuo-is) available for them in Christ Jesus ; and that this ransoming was procured by the death of Christ as an expia- tory sacrifice, enabling God righteously to forgive sins. The ransoming found — perhaps we may even say stored — in Christ Jesus is here represented as the result of His sacrificial death ; this sacrificial death is made the ground of God's forgiveness of sins ; and this forgiveness of sins is identified with the justification which God gratuitously grants believing sinners. The blending of the ideas of ransoming and expiation is complete ; the ' blood of Christ,' in working the one, works also the other. The ascription to God of the whole process of justification, including apparently the ransoming act itself, which is usually (but not always) ascribed to Christ, but which is thus traced back through Christ to God, whose will in this too Christ does, is apparently due to the emphasis with which, throughout the passage, the entirety of salvation, in all its elements, is attributed to God's free grace. This emidiasis on the gratuitous- ness of the whole saving process is the most notice-
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al)le feature of the pnss(if;e. It has been strangelj' contended (e.g. by T. Zaliii) that it is inconsistent witli tlie conception of a ransom, strictly taken. There is, however, not even an antinomy here : the gratuitousness of justification quDnii homines cannot possibly exclude the grounding of that act in tlie blood of Clirist, as a ransom paid for men from without. What the passage teaches is, that all men have sinned and have failed to attain the glory God has in mind for them ; all are in this matter in like case; those whom God justilies — namely, all believers— are, then, justihed freely, by God's grace alone. But it does not teach that God acts thus, in His free grace, justifying sinners gra- tuitously so far as they are concerned, arbitrarily and with no adequate ground for His action. On the contrary, it asserts a ground for His justifj'ing act ; and the ground which it asserts is the ransom- ing that is in Christ Jesus. It says, indeed, not 'on the ground of the ransoming that is in Christ Jesus ' (5ia T77f awoKirpuaiv), but 'through the instru- mentality of the ransoming that is in Christ Jesus ' (Sib. T^s d7roXuTp(i(reus). But this is only a formal dill'erence. What Paul says is, that the ran.soming that is in Christ Jesus is the means by which men, being sinners, are brought by God into a justifica- tion which they cannot secure for themselves. If the ransoming that is in Christ Jesus is the means by which alone they can be justified, that is only another way of saying that God, Avho gratuitously jvistifies them in His grace, proceeds in this act in view of nothing in them, but solely in view of the ransoming that is in Christ Jesus. How this ran- soming comes to be in Christ Jesus is, then, im- mediately explained : God has set Him forth as an expiatory sacrifice through faith in His blood, for the manifestation of His righteousness in the forgiveness of sins. Christ, then, has been ofiered as an expiatory sacrifice ; this enables God to for- give sins righteously ; those thus forgiven are justi- fied gratuitously ; and this justification has taken place in view of, and that is as much as to say by means of, the ransoming which has resulted from the shedding of the blood of Christ. The ransom- ing provided by Christ is, in a word, the means by which God is rendered gracious ; and in this His grace, thus secured for us. He gratuitously justifies us, although we, as sinners, have no claim upon this justification.