Thus then we have, with the absolute certainty of God's word, the answer to that which, however simple and certain in itself, has proved a difficulty so general among men. Purchase is universal, but does not necessarily secure that all who come under it now will submit to Him Who bought them. Redemption is not of the same extent as purchase, being not universal but partial. It is effectual and complete, as far as the soul is concerned, even now for those who believe. Consequently it is not at all true that, because purchase is universal, redemption should be. On the contrary, scripture shows that redemption is predicated only of a sphere which is limited, whereas purchase is an unlimited one. “The creature itself also shall be set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth together and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but even we ourselves, having the first-fruits of the Spirit groan in ourselves, awaiting adoption, [to wit,] the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:21-23). God will reconcile all things, never all persons, but all things heavenly and earthly. Meanwhile believers are reconciled. “You hath He reconciled;” while the gospel was proclaimed, and so it is now, in the whole creation under heaven. Here again the testimony is unlimited, for all is purchased; but then those only have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, who believe in the Lord Jesus.
This, then, as a matter of truth, is as sure as it is plain; but next, we come to its consequences, for every truth has its answer in practice, and speaks to the affections. How, then, does this truth find its reflection in our hearts? and what answer does it look for in our practical path day by day? “The slave called in the Lord is the Lord's freedman” (ver. 22). What is it that sets the captive free? What is it that brings us into liberty? Is it purchase? So far from this is it that purchase, instead of giving me my liberty, rather makes me a bondman. I am His to serve, now and evermore, Who bought me with a price—His own blood. But people do not serve Christ when it is merely a question of being thus bought. There is another blessing necessary to make the claim of purchase felt, even redemption. For the adverse power of Satan has possession of me in my natural state, and he avails himself of my self-will and love of the world. This must be broken; but how can it be? It is by redemption, when the believer, finding life in Christ, is won to God. How blessed, then, to have redemption in Him through His blood! Unless I am thus brought to God through Him Who suffered once for sins, Just for unjust, what is there to set me free? A slave of sin—what is to liberate me? There is nothing in the nature of purchase to set one free; there may be, and is, a powerful motive in it when the spell of Satan is broken, and forgiveness is known in the incomparable grace of God, but not before or otherwise.
Hence, therefore, in dealing with the different classes addressed, the apostle distinctly lays down the truth, “The slave called in the Lord [even if he abide a slave] is the Lord's freedman.” As a Christian, he need not therefore be troubled about his condition of bondage; no change of life, no intervention of others, could give him such a freedom as he has already. He was a slave, but, called in the Lord, he is His freedman; he belongs to the One Who has set him free. Being called in the Lord, grace gives him freedom forever; it is not for a little while, as in the institutes of law or relations of flesh. Consequently he is entitled to take comfort without an anxious thought. What could the world give him? what could money do for him? Either might procure an emancipation; but from either does it not perish with the using? Neither in any way makes him the Lord's freedman; but redemption does. Thus the Christian slave was divinely consoled and cheered. Can we fail to see that the scripture abounds in such filling of the heart with comfort from above?
So in the Epistle to Titus we have a similar thing. “The grace of God, which bringeth salvation unto all men, hath appeared,” is an outburst of thankfulness in view especially of slaves visited by the saving grace of God, which went out to all, “teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people” (2:11-14). It is not merely purchase here, but redemption. There was the delivering power. It is not therefore merely a price paid, which might as yet have no answer in those purchased. They had redemption in Christ through His blood. Redemption is a state entered, and not merely a title of Christ asserted. He has bought the world: the heathens, the Jews, are all purchased; whatever their actual feeling or conduct, they are bought, one as truly as another. He has right thereby to every soul. But redemption is our state and not His claim only. No man is redeemed unless there be an effect produced—present deliverance from the enemy and the forgiveness of sins, though it goes beyond. So those that were redeemed of old were not left under Pharaoh; they were brought across the Red Sea, God taking His place with them. In Egypt the blood of the lamb secured Israel, so that judgment did not fall on them; but they were redeemed also, and brought completely out of the house of bondage. Redemption supposes known deliverance, though in the wilderness. Evidently, then, the difference is marked.
But we have to see how the apostle turns to the other side. “Likewise the freeman called is Christ's slave.” He now changes the phrase; he does not say he is the Lord's bondman, but “Christ's.” He might be freeborn, or a master of slaves; but be he what he may, if a Christian, he is Christ's bondman. He is bound forever to Him who shed His blood for him. It is the purchase that is urged now to make the freeman feel that he is Christ's bondman. It is an appeal to his sense of grace, and not merely of authority.
In what, then, consists the difference between purchase to the believer and the unbeliever? It lies in this, that faith acknowledges the purchase, while unbelief despises it and all responsibility founded on it. The believer owns it, and is bound to glorify God in his body, as no longer his own. So we find Israel acknowledging both, in the song of Moses, “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed ... the people pass over which thou hast purchased” (Ex. 15:13-16). Men may abuse the purchase to their destruction.
But the great truth is plain. The believer is redeemed by the mighty arm of the Lord; he is no longer the slave of Satan, though he was; he is forgiven his offenses, and does not stop there, but he passes into liberty: he is on the other side of the Red Sea, and he can now sing for the first time. Israel's song was only when they were clean out of the land of bondage; and so with the believer now. Redemption is the great thought, from Ex. 14 and onward, but the same song owns that then they were bought; and the soul should reflect upon both: “A slave once, I am become the Lord's freedman, for I am redeemed. But I am purchased also, and so became Christ's bondman.” Such is the double truth for the Christian, as the apostle puts it. So it was in the type. Jehovah had interfered as a man of war. It was a fight between Himself and the enemy. Israel never struck a blow, but none the less enjoyed the victory. So with the Christian now. He is the Lord's freedman. He was the slave of sin and Satan, but the Lord has delivered him from all that kept him in bondage; but of what is he reminded—he who had known only human liberty? He is bought with a price, and Christ's servant; he is glad to acknowledge such bonds of love. For “Christ” is the name that speaks of grace, as the “Lord” at once recalls supreme authority. The believer acknowledges himself bondman, not merely as his duty to the Lord, but as that in which his heart is concerned; it is his boast, his joy, his glory, to be Christ's slave; and this is the more strikingly said of him who never knew other than freedom in the world. Both in truth were the Lord's freedmen, and both Christ's bondmen; but it comes out with the greater emphasis when the distinction is put as the apostle puts it here.
Even in the Revelation, as we have remarked, the thought as here is purchase rather than redemption. In chap. 5:9 it is the worth of the Buyer, and consequently the value of the price paid, that is celebrated, not the liberated state of the redeemed. Hence in the text ἡμᾶς; is not found—an omission as hard to account for, unless it be the truth, in A., 44, Aeth., as it is easy to understand its insertion in all the other witnesses. The Lamb is worthy, because He was slain, and purchased to God by His blood out of every tribe and tongue, etc., and made them to our God a kingdom and priests; and they shall reign over the earth. Such is the new song of the elders; whereas ἀπολύτρωσις; is our state, rather than the costly act which bought us. In chap. 14:3, 4, though the connection of course differs, the 144,000 with the Lamb on Mount Zion were bought from the earth and from men. From these they were purchased, so that they did not belong to either; but it is not the act or state of deliverance they were in. Way. may go a little further, yet it is not properly “redeem,” but buying up or retrieving, as in Gal. 3:13; 4:5; Eph. 5:16; and Col. 4:5. It is not the state of deliverance we enjoy, though this be the result for the believer, but that Christ bought out from under the law those once under it to make them His own; or ourselves exhorted to make the fitting time or opportunity our own. Cf. Dan. 2:8 for the two latter references.
Thus we see our place with reference to these two truths. Beyond doubt, the Lord has, in His infinite goodness, interfered for us in our utter guilt and ruin. On the one hand, He has dealt with Satan, who had us enslaved, and brought us clean out of that bitter bondage; on the other hand, we are bought with a price, and have not a single right that is not swallowed up in that purchase by Christ's blood, not only what we have, but ourselves also. “Ye were bought with a price.” The Corinthians were dull to see and own what it is to be thus bought. Therefore, the Spirit takes up the truth again and again. In chapter vi. they were reminded that their body was the temple of the Holy Ghost, which was in them, which they had of God; but, moreover, that they were not their own, for they were bought with a price: therefore were they to glorify God in their body; they belonged to Christ the Lord. Thus, there is not only a divine power that deigns to dwell and work in answer to Christ in the body: to take our own way, or do our own will, is denying God's title to us as His positive possession through Christ's blood. We are His for all the way, and not merely for the end in glory. We are His to please and glorify Him now in this world, yea, in these bodies of humiliation which the Holy Spirit deigns to make God's temple.
Here the exhortation takes a rather different direction, though grounded on the same truth. “Ye were bought with a price: be not ye slaves of men.” There it was urged against pleasing ourselves, especially against corrupt license and impure passions. Here it is a guard against pandering to others, it might be for ease or honor, or to avoid pain or reproach: a great snare to the Corinthians, not to slaves only, but as much, or more, to the free. Hence the force of this word which embraces both. The Lord's freedman should not become a slave of men; neither should Christ's slave. There is not such a thought as enfeebling the Christian slave in serving his earthly master: grace would rather strengthen him to serve with twofold zeal and honor, for he was now the Lord's freedman. How base again for one who, after the flesh free but now bound to Christ as His slave by the deepest and most durable of ties, should become man's slave by compromising his Master, Who had bought him with His blood.
All this and more is clenched in the following verses of our chapter. “But this I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use the world as not abusing it.” As the verses before deliver the believer from the spirit of change, so these sweep away every thought of a settling down in the world that now is. Not a word brings in formally the return of our Lord Jesus Christ; but it is all really and profoundly based on that great and most influential truth, as a living constant expectation. What does the entire course of the world depend on? It takes for granted ages to come for man and man's progress here below; it thus denies virtually, and often openly, the Lord's coming as a real hope, or even truth. Do you think that that which fills man with vainglory, or kindles his enthusiasm, or nerves him to labor and endurance—that all or any of these things would be found if he believed the Lord was coming? Clearly not. All the aspirations of the world, all that men here pant after as objects, and push forward as ways and means, are founded on an uninterrupted future. They confidently look for amelioration and advance. Just as infidel but credulous geologists, naturalists, etc., imagine an indefinite past here below, so they generally build all their hopes of the progressive and triumphant future, not on God's word, or Christ's coming and reign, but on an assumed infinite series of improved methods and inventions, till they reach a perfection of their own for the human race on earth.
But the coming again of the Lord at any moment cuts up by the root all such unbelieving and presumptuous speculations of men. Hence their angry opposition to that truth. Hence the guilt and shame of the church's failure to walk in that light. Not believing it herself, she says in her heart, My Lord delayeth His coming, eats and drinks with the drunken, and beats most those who have been most faithful in serving Him. The consequence is, she does not confess this grave but also bright testimony of divine truth, as He meant it, before the world; for people must walk and worship in the truth they utter (if even, alas! they do utter it, for many deny it), in order to have power with others. Everything good flows really from faith working by love, the springs of which are in God. When souls show that the heart is filled with Christ, when the ways are according to the truth they confess, then even enemies feel that for them it is a living reality. We know what the blessed hope was to the apostles and the church of that day: what has it been since?
Here, in the apostle's exhortation to all, we see its influence so mighty that, without a word of direct reference, it shows the time straitened. Not that it does not reveal a period of true and holy blessedness for the earth afterward; but there will be a total change, compared with which the greatest of revolutions is as nothing; for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, not the earth only but also heaven, and the world-kingdom of the Lord and His Christ shall come, not to speak of the still brighter portion of the glorified saints in the Father's house. Thus the scriptural expectation effectually blots out from heart and mind a long future for man's enjoyment as he is. “It remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use the world as not abusing it; for the fashion of this world passeth away” (vers. 29-31). It is not, of course, that Christ ignores relationship, sorrow, joy, business, or position; but He brings in an energy of the Spirit for each, which, while deepening sensibility, and respecting everything which God established in nature and on earth, raises superior to all and attaches to Christ in heaven about to come again. The apostle thus would have the saint true to Christ on the one hand, and on the other to form a just estimate of the world as already condemned, and only waiting the Lord's coming to have the sentence executed. For not more surely has He been lifted up from the earth and does He draw all to Him, than the judgment of the world is now, though its prince has yet to be actually expelled. The apostle would have us in faith to see the present form passing away.
This brings in a most sanctifying element for the heart. What a guard for the affections even in the closest ties of life! What a check to otherwise unrestrained grief! And, supposing there is an occasion of joy, what solemnity in the hope that the Lord is at hand! Ought the buyers to forget Him? or they that use this world to use it as their own? This is what I would press with all simplicity, the way in which the truth sets us free, holily free, even here on earth, in which we are now to be entirely the Lord's and only for the Lord, waiting for that bright moment when He will make good His every word. Surely now is the time for faith to confess Him fully; now is the time to exhort one another, and so much the more as we see the day approaching.
May grace then give us to rejoice in this that, as He has set us free, so we may enjoy our liberty for His glory and not for ourselves; and as we are bought with a price, so we may refuse to become slaves to men, and gladly acknowledge Christ's purchase, redeemed from the enemy and bought for God from self and all else.
May God thus endear Christ and the truth to our hearts proving how it all abides from the beginning and is needed to the end, to direct and strengthen us in what we do or suffer, in the least things of this life as well as in the greatest that belong to the life to come. Amen.
W.K.
(Concluded from p. 265).