The fundamental idea underlying the representa- tion of salvation as a ransoming is its costliness. In some of the jiassages which have been adduced this idea is thrown very prominently forward. This is the case with Ro P*, and, indeed, with all the passages in which Christ is said to have given ' Himself,' or ' His blood,' as a ransom for His people ; and it is elaborated in much detail in such passages as He 9" and 1 P 1'"-. But the emphasis often falls no less on the value of the acquisition obtained, and that both on its negative and on its positive sides. Naturally it is the eschatological aspects of this acquisition on which ordinarily most stress is laid. These eschatological asjiects of our ransoming are brought very decidedly into the foreground, for example, in Tit 2''', 1 P I'X and not less so in He 9", Eph 1', Col 1". When the mind is thus occupied with the eschatological re- sults of the ransoming, it is apt to be relatively less engaged with the nature of the ransoming act itself, and we may be tempted to read the term ' ransoming ' as if its whole implication were ab- sorbed in the simple idea of 'deliverance.' This is, of course, not really the case. The term ' ransoming ' is employed instead of one by which nothing more than 'deliverance' would be ex- pressed, precisely because tlie writer is conscious that the deliverance of which he is speaking has been secured only at a cost, and instinctively
employs a term which intimates this fact. It was thus a true feeling which led James Morison (A Critiral Expo.ntiun of (he Third Chapter of PiiuVs Epistle to the Roynans, 1866, p. 254) to insist that by the terms in question is exjiressed not mere deliverance, but 'deliverance which is ellccted in a legitimate way, and in consistency with the rights and claims of all parties ('oncerned.' We must, however, go a step further and recognize that the deliverance intimated by these terms is thought of distinctively as resting on a purcliase, as, in a word, the issue of a ransoming. This is, at all events, the state of the case witli the NT instances.
When we read, for example, in Ko 8^, that we, in this life, are groaning within ourselves, waiting; for our adoption, and then this adoption is deliiicd as ' the ransoming (diroXiir/jucris) of our body,' the word 'ransoming' cannot be taken out of hand as merely 'deliverance,' and much less can it be sup- posed to intimate that a special ransom shall be paid at the last day for the deliverance of the body. What is meant is that the deliverance of our bodies — by which is intended just our resurrection, con- nected in this context with the repristination of the physical universe, an object as yet of hope only — shall be experienced in due season, not as something disconnected with the salvation we are enjoying here and now in its first-fruits, but as its consummation ; that is to say, as one of the results of the ransom paid by Christ in His blood on the Cross, from whicli flow all the blessings which, as believers, we receive. It is because Paul's mind is fixed upon this fundamental ransom-paying that he uses here a term which imports a ransoming and not one of mere deliverance.
Similarly, when we read in the closing words (Eph 1") of that splendid hymn of praise which opens the Epistle to the Ephesians, that believers, having received the promised Spirit, defined spe- cifically as ' the earnest of the inheritance,' have been ' sealed unto the ransoming of the acquired possession, to the praise of God's glory,' every element in the wording of the statement itself, and of the context as well, cries out against seeing in the term ' ransoming ' anything else but a reminder that this deliverance is an issue of the ransom- paying of Christ in His blood. This ransom-paying had just (Eph 1') been defined as made by Christ in His blood, and as consisting in the remission of our trespasses. As it is impossible to sujipose that the term is used in two radically ditterent senses in the same sentence, so it is impossible to imagine that those who are delivered are de- scribed expressly as God's ' acquired possession,' and their deliverance is made dependent upon their reception of the Spirit, described specifically as 'the earnest of their inheritance,' without a very precise intention of connecting tliis deliver- ance with the ransom-paying out of which it flows as its consummation. And, this being true, it is quite clear that ' the day of ransoming' of Eph 4^" does not mean the day on which the ransom shall be paid, nor merely the day of a deliverance wrought somehow or other not intimated, but distinctly the day on which there shall be actually experienced the ultimate results of the ransom- paying which Christ has made ' through his blood ' (!'), that is, at His death on the Cross, assured to believers, because they are sealed thereto by the Holy Spirit of God, received now as the earnest of their inheritance.
There seems no reason to doubt that the same conception underlies the language of our Lord (Lk 21-*) when He encourages His followers to see in the signs of the coming of the Son of Man, fear- ful to others, the indications of their approaching ' ransoming ' (dTroXiTpoiffis) : ' But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your