(Lincoln’s Inn, 4th Sunday after Easter, May 14, 1854.)
‘Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.’— 1 St. PETER i. 18, 19.
Last Sunday I inquired into the force of the words which follow these. I wish to consider, to-day, how the sacrifice of the Lamb, who was foreknown before the foundation of the world, is connected with Redemption. I desire that we should limit ourselves to that question; reserving the consideration of other subjects, such as Remission, Propitiation, Intercession, for future occasions. Great inconvenience, I think, has resulted from a loose habit of confounding the ideas which these words express, as if they were not capable of separate illustration. I am satisfied that there is no such carelessness in the Scripture use of them; that each has a distinct sense of its own, and will bear and reward a distinct investigation. Then we shall know how harmonious they are; how they all converge to one point; how they illustrate and unfold the Divine Mind.
But before I enter upon this examination, I wish to show you how the remarks which I made last Sunday bear upon a topic, which happens to be occupying the minds of many thoughtful people at this time,—a topic in which moral and physical science have become rather curiously blended. Many years ago, a Scotch Divine, whose remarkable abilities were even less remarkable than the benevolence and nobleness of his heart, published some sermons upon the connection of Revelation with modern Astronomy. Assuming, what he supposed to be the settled opinion of scientific men, that our system contains a multitude of worlds, and that each of these worlds may have as many intelligent inhabitants as our own, he grappled with the question: How such a doctrine was consistent with the enormous importance which the Christian revelation seemed to attach to the creature—Man? How it was possible, that such an insect, as he would appear to be, in the midst of such an universe, could be the subject of a great scheme of Redemption, in which the Son of God was the agent? It was answered, that modern science does not only lead us to think of the great, but of the little; that the wonders of the microscope are as overwhelming as those of the telescope; that it does not diminish our idea of the Creator, to believe that He is contriving for the very minutest of His creatures; that in thinking so, we acquire a new sense of His wisdom and greatness, as well as of His love; that the economy of our redemption,—place us as low as you will in the scale of intelligences,—make us numerically as insignificant as you will,—may explain the depths of the divine resources to the admiring students and worshippers of innumerable worlds, or systems of worlds.
It has been argued recently, by an anonymous writer, of great talent and most various information, that the hypothesis on which these Discourses proceed is not one which the latest scientific discoveries encourage; that it is more likely that we are alone in the universe, than that we are surrounded by creatures having capacities at all similar to ours; that, if we hold that opinion, we are free from the difficulty, which it required all the ingenuity and eloquence of the Scottish divine to dispose of; that then we may understand perfectly, why our fall, and our sin, and our deliverance, should assume what, otherwise, would seem so disproportionate a place in the divine order.
On the scientific question, I can, of course, presume to say nothing, except that whatever is true must be satisfactory; that the most beautiful dreams and the most exquisite reasonings are good for nothing, if they are at war with that which is; that moralists and theologians never can have an interest in maintaining any proposition that is physically unsound. But as some have thought that Christianity would gain an advantage, if it could narrow the dimensions of the intelligent universe,—that it would be well for us, because we are believers in Scripture, to snatch at the hope, which the probable absence of an atmosphere in the moon holds out, that every part of creation, except our planet, may be tenantless—I think it is very needful, that we should ask ourselves, whether we have this motive for looking unfairly at the evidence; whether, if the next wave of scientific discovery should sweep us from the ledge on which we had found a temporary standing, we should feel our theological position more insecure. I believe that, so long as we fancy our transgressions and sins form the groundwork of the divine Revelation, so long as we think that the purpose of the Creator was turned into a new and strange direction, by the evils of men perpetrated or foreseen—so long we shall be uneasy when we think that myriads may be living under the law of the same King and Father, of whose history we know nothing. This restlessness will be experienced most strongly by those who feel how glorious a principle that of Sacrifice is; how impossible it is to imagine a blessed world in which it does not exist. For if that which seems to be the source of all good to God’s intelligent creatures is contingent upon the existence of Sin, we could scarcely bear—awful and monstrous as the assertion may sound—to conceive of intelligent creatures without sin. But if sacrifice is implied in the very origin of the universe—if it is involved in the very nature and being of God—if it was expressed in the divine obedience of the Son before the worlds were,—if the manifestation of it in the latter days, was to take away Sin, because Sin and Sacrifice are the eternal opposites—then indeed we may believe that the telescope will only give us another sense of the truth, which the microscope has already revealed, that every conceivable multiplication of worlds, and of spiritual creatures, will only manifest some aspect of that love which was gathered up in the Cross of Calvary. I do not think that these remarks are a digression from the proper subject of this discourse; I believe they are a suitable preparation for it.
When the Scriptures speak of Christ’s Sacrifice as a Redemption, you will find that they give the word its simplest and most natural force. ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people,’ is the burthen of all the songs of the New, and of the Old, Testament. God is assumed everywhere to be carrying out the deliverance of His people, who are, therefore, assumed, by some means, to have fallen into captivity. The sacrifice is a means to this end; the means which God uses; the power by which He ransoms the enslaved captive.
Set this thought, I beseech you, distinctly before your minds, and then compare it with what you know of the effects which heathens attributed to their sacrifices—yes, and with the notions which you have yourselves connected with sacrifices. There is, at the root of both, I am satisfied, an acute sense of some oppression, from which the suppliant wants to be set free; and of a Deliverer, who may be willing, or may be induced, to undertake his cause. But does not this thought mingle with the whole service? ‘The oppression I am suffering comes from the Lord of the universe; from the highest power of all. He has laid it upon me: and, in order to shake it off, I must first secure the aid of some powerful ally; next, I must do a number of slavish acts—acts which I feel to be very burdensome and oppressive, but which it is worth while to go through, for the sake of escaping heavier penalties which may overtake me if I neglect them?’ Is not this the habit of feeling which you detect in many who submit to religious duties in Christian lands? Have you not detected it in your own hearts? And is it not the very reverse of that idea of sacrifice which we should recognise, if we associated it, as the Scriptures do, with the idea of redemption?
Determine, at all events, which view of the subject, whether it agree or jars with our habits, is most consistent with that doctrine of sacrifice which we have been discovering in the Old Testament. The great truth of all which has come out before us, is that the sacrifices were God’s sacrifices,—not merely in that they were offered to him, but in that He originated and prepared them. And, when they assumed the most legal and precise form, they were appointed expressly to commemorate a redemption of the Israelites,—a redemption accomplished for them with a high hand, and a stretched-out arm, by the Lord God of Israel,—a redemption from an actual tyrant.
Still the thought will present itself: ‘Whatever may have been the case with the Jews, the redemption, the spiritual redemption, we, Christians, speak of, is surely from some evil inflicted or threatened by God—justly inflicted and threatened—deserved by us, no doubt,—but still proceeding from Him.’ As the object I proposed to myself was to discover what the Scripture teaching is, I can only answer this question by referring you to the passages in which the word occurs. Take first, our own passage: ‘Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.’ There is no difficulty in giving this language a definite signification. St. Peter was writing to a set of people chiefly Israelites—who were scattered through different provinces of Asia. Their condition explained to him what he had read in the Law and Prophets, what he had experienced himself. The law speaks of the sins of the fathers as being visited upon the children. The Prophets show how idolatrous notions respecting God,—the confusion of Him with the works of His hands, with the powers of Nature, with evil and malignant persons,—increased from generation to generation; the falsehood of the father growing falser still in the children, till the sense of truth, and with it the sense of righteousness and moral order, became nearly extinct. Such a growth of corruption in habits and notions, such a continual alienation from the mind of God,—they led, not heathens, but their own countrymen, to expect, if they forgot that they were a chosen people, if they became mere receivers of traditions from their fathers, not believers in the Lord God of their fathers. The moral state of the Israelites, as described in the Old Testament, at various periods, is precisely that of a people sunk in a vain conversation—in a low habitual idolatry and heartlessness, which had begun in one age, and had been transmitted, with fresh accessions, to the next. The scattered Jews in the provinces of the Roman empire, whether they retained a strong sense of their separation, and held intercourse chiefly with each other, or whether they mixed with the heathens round about them, must have presented striking examples of this degeneracy. To them St. Peter came preaching of Christ the Son of David, the Son of God, who had come down from heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him, who had made the one sacrifice which took away the sins of the world. The message was received by some of these degraded Jews. It became to them the message of a new life. The grovelling thoughts of God, which had been accumulating for years in their own minds, which had been the deposit of centuries, were scattered to the winds. The old words, which they had heard, that He was the Redeemer and King of His people, awakened to life in them. These words prepared them for the new, and still more astonishing, news, that this King was a Father, that He claimed them as His children, that they might arise and go to Him, in the faith that He had owned them, accepted them, delivered them.
St. Peter could turn to these people, and say boldly: ‘You have been redeemed from your vain traditional notions, and from the degeneration that was consequent upon them; you know that you have. And recollect now, recollect always, who has redeemed you. You cannot think that I was the author of the blessing, because I declared it to you. My message must have been a lie, if it came from me; I was as much involved in these traditions, as ignorant of God, as you were. He has raised us out of that ignorance. But consider again the extent of the redemption. I did not tell you of a Father, who cared for you, the dwellers in Pontus and Galatia, above all the other people of the Earth. I told you of a Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. It was the belief in Him which lifted you out of your miserable subjection to visible things, out of your dark and slavish notions concerning God, out of your dread and horror of Him; are you not conscious that it was? You believed that in Him God has manifested His own fatherly will; you acknowledge Him who had given up Himself, as your King. Hold fast this faith; remember, now and ever, that it is God Himself who has redeemed you out of bondage of which none can understand the bitterness and cruelty so well as yourselves. And the ransom-money, the price of your redemption, has not been corruptible silver and gold. It has been the blood of His only Son. He has made this mighty offering of that which is dearest to Him, that He might bind you to Himself, that He might vindicate His own fatherly love to you, and claim you as His adopted sons.’
There might arise a great many questions, in the hearts of St. Peter’s disciples afterwards, about the meaning and operation of this sacrifice; he might reply to them in various ways, as he does in this letter. But with these questions he has no direct business in the present passage. The one thought, ‘You have been delivered out of an actual bondage, not an imaginary or a technical one; and this has been the process of your deliverance,’ occupies him here. He connects an experience of their minds with a fact. He treats that fact as the manifestation of an eternal law of Sacrifice; of a Person in whom that law was perfectly realised.
I have been anxious that you should dwell upon this particular instance of the use of the word, because it illustrates the practical method of the New Testament teachers, as well as the principle which is embodied in their Gospel to mankind. But I do not wish to rest upon that single instance. St. Paul’s circumstances were very different from those of St. Peter: the habits of their minds were different; the people whom they taught were very different.
Let us take an example, then, of the use of the same word from him. He is writing to Titus, who was settled in Crete; the overseer of a Church, in which the Gentile element was probably predominant. St. Paul is telling him, with the authority of an apostle and a father, what lessons he should impart to his flock. Here is the summary of the doctrine: ‘For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Titus ii. 11-15. Here you have a phrase different from St. Peter’s,—a more comprehensive one. Instead of ’the vain conversation received by tradition’ we have ‘from all iniquity’—dvopias. But surely the spirit of the two passages is essentially the same. The bondage of the Cretans, as of all men, was to irregularity, disorder and lawlessness. They were slaves, because they were separated from the true spring and source of order; because they were living as if He were not, as if some other than He were, their Ruler, and the Ruler of the universe. But His grace had shone forth upon all men. It was a saving, delivering grace: one that rescued from ungodliness, and from the lusts of the world; one that produced a righteous, self-restraining, manly, devout, life; one that kindled the hope and expectation of a still brighter shining forth of the glory of God, and of Jesus Christ—who gave up Himself for the very purpose of redeeming us from evil, and making us zealous of good works. Here, as in the other case, the redemption is clearly connected with the sacrifice. God is said to manifest His own grace through that sacrifice. Christ surrenders Himself to do the will of God; and the result of that surrender is, that men may be rescued from a state which is contrary to the will of God—a state of separation from Him, and of consequent immorality, lawlessness, and moral debasement.
I have quoted, I believe, the only two passages in which the simple verb λυτρόω occurs, with the exception of one, in St. Luke’s report of the walk of the disciples to Emmaus, where they say, ‘We thought that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel.’ There is, however, a very remarkable passage, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the substantive λύτρωσις occurs. It is this, ‘That Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come, by a greater, and more perfect, tabernacle, not made with hands,—that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of bulls and calves, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained (or found) eternal redemption for us. For, if the blood of bulls, and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself to God, purge your conscience from dead works, to serve the living God?’ I must, hereafter, consider this great passage for another purpose; I refer to it now because it connects so remarkably the obtaining of redemption with the offering of the blood of Christ; and because it explains so fully what the writer’s idea of redemption is. He who vindicated for us a right to enter into the presence of God, and enabled us to enter into it—‘He who purified the conscience from dead works, that it might serve the living God’—He has found the redemption for us. As if he had said—‘Do you not know that there has been an oppression on your conscience, tyranny which you could not shake off? Do you not know that this oppression arose from a sense of separation from God, of being at war with Him? Do you not know that, while you have that sense, you cannot pray to Him as a Father, you cannot serve Him as a living God? And can anyone emancipate his own conscience from this bondage? Does not God emancipate it, when, instead of asking you to make the sacrifices which you feel that you cannot make, He proclaims His gracious will in that Son, who perfectly does His will, by offering up Himself?’
When we have entered into these applications of the word—Redemption, and when we have tested them, by considering what vain habits, handed down from our fathers, what iniquity, what bonds of conscience, we have need to be delivered from, and by asking ourselves what but the belief in a sacrifice made by God will deliver us from them;—when we have proved their power in another way, by considering whether there is any power that is effectual to break the chains of superstition, and of moral corruption, which Christian or Pagan nations have inherited, and are wearing—then we may be able to appreciate the force of some of those passages, in which St. Paul carries out the same idea into heights and depths, which at first make us dizzy, and yet which are continually visited by men of all ranks and intellects, nay, to which they are driven by the every-day sorrows and trials of earth. He speaks of redemption, that is the forgiveness of sins; he speaks of a redemption of the body, which is burdened with the weight of sickness and death; he speaks of a redemption of the whole creation, which is still in travail, but shall be delivered, and shall enjoy the glorious liberty of the sons of God. These are hints of mighty themes upon which I do not purpose to dwell, because I would rather you found out for yourselves how they all belong to the idea of the one Sacrifice, how inseparable they are from it. But there is one help which I can give you in that search, by directing you to some sentences which our Lord spoke when He was Himself on earth. The word λύτρον, which is translated (rightly, I should suppose) ransom, was used by Him in one of His discourses, which is reported in the twentieth chapter of St. Matthew. I should like you to reflect upon the occasion on which He used it. It was when the mother of Zebedee’s children had asked that her two sons might sit, one on the right hand, and one on the left in His kingdom. The other ten apostles, we are told, showed great indignation at the two brothers. ‘But Jesus called them unto Him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.’ I do not think it is just in that place we should have expected to find this phrase. We speak of the unspeakably costly ransom which Christ offered for the redemption of man, and we speak truly. He teaches us wherein the costliness of it consisted. He humbled Himself; He became a servant; He was the servant of all. Here was the sacrifice with which God was well pleased; here was the costly oblation; here was the mighty ransom by which the One was able to deliver the many. The lowliest of all was the One who most showed forth the glory of God’s love; the lowliest of all was the One who could alone exercise God’s power on behalf of His creatures. That power was a redeeming power; that power came forth when the Son gave up His Spirit to His Father; that power becomes effectual for us, when it redeems us from our pride, when it breaks that chain which has kept us in slavery to the Spirit of Disobedience, which has hindered us from serving the living God. We know the meaning of the Ransom, we understand the greatness of the Sacrifice, when we give up the craving to be chief of all, and ask for the Spirit of Christ to make us the servants of all.