How Far the Price Reaches

The price has been named. Peter said it plainly: not silver or gold, but the precious blood. The One who became kinsman paid it. One question is left: how far does that price reach?

Under the law, the answer was always limited. A goel redeemed one field for one family, or one man from the sojourner who had bought him. Boaz bought what had been Elimelech’s and took Ruth as his wife. The redemption was real, and it was complete, but it reached as far as one household’s loss and no further.

The redemption Scripture speaks of after the cross reaches further. What the price reaches does not stop with men.

The Creation Itself

Romans 8:19-23 For the eager expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility — not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it — in elpis ἐλπίς el-pece'(hope) that the creation itself also will be set free from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans together and travails together until now. And not only that, but also we ourselves, having the first-fruits of the pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit), we also groan within ourselves, awaiting huiothesia(adoption, sonship) — the apolytrosis ἀπολύτρωσις ap-ol-oo'-tro-sis(redemption, ransom-release) of our body.

Paul speaks first of the creation, and he speaks of it almost as of a person: it has an “eager expectation,” it “was subjected to futility — not willingly,” it “groans together and travails together until now,” and it waits in hope of being set free.

The creation is in the “slavery of corruption,” and it is to be “set free.” That is the language of a release, the release of something held by another, and it is the same kind of language the law of the goel uses. In Leviticus the brother who had fallen low “is sold to a sojourner,” and the law said, “after he is sold, a redemption shall be to him.” In Hebrews He came to “deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” In Romans the creation itself is in slavery, and it waits to be set free.

The word futility links the two apostles as well. The creation “was subjected to futility,” and Peter, describing what believers were redeemed from, called it their “futile way of life.” The two apostles use words from the same Greek family. What was empty in human life and what was empty in the creation are spoken of with words of the same family, and both are named in the context of redemption.

The Redemption of Our Body

Paul says something closer still about believers. They already have “the first-fruits of the pneuma(spirit),” and yet Paul says, “we also groan within ourselves,” because something is still awaited.

The word apolytrosis belongs to the same family as the verb Peter used, lytroo λυτρόω loo-tro'-o, “you were redeemed.” It is the language of a ransom price paid and a release that follows. And Paul says what that release is: “the apolytrosis(redemption, ransom-release) of our body.”

Peter says, “you were redeemed,” and he names the price: the precious blood. That is spoken as something done. Paul says that those who have the first-fruits of the Spirit are “awaiting” the redemption of their body. That is spoken as something still to come. Both are true at once: the price has been paid, and the full release of what it bought, including the body, is awaited.

So the redemption reaches the body itself. Paul does not stop at what is unseen in a person; he names “our body” as what is awaited. It is the same flesh and blood that, as Hebrews 2:14 said, He Himself partook of.

A Redeemer and Flesh

Long before Paul wrote, a man in great suffering put the redeemer and the flesh into one confession. Here is Job 19:25 with the verse that follows.

Job 19:25-26 And I, I know that my Redeemer lives (chai חַי khah'-ee), and at the last He will rise upon the dust (aphar עָפָר aw-fawr'). And after my skin is destroyed, this, yet in my flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr') I shall see God.

Job says, “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and the word for Redeemer is goel; in the next line, “yet in my flesh (basar) I shall see God,” he puts the two in one breath: a goel who lives, and himself seeing God in his flesh.

What the Law Has Answered

The question was this: if Jacob met God in the form of a man, and that was enough for a meeting, why does redemption run through flesh? The law of the goel has answered it.

A goel must be near, flesh of the same flesh. The human race is one household from one blood, and the One who stood outside it entered it, sharing in the same flesh and blood as the children. He called them brothers and was not ashamed. He was obligated to be made like His brothers in every respect. And a goel must be able to pay. The price was not silver or gold, the currency of a goel’s redemption under the law, but His own precious blood. That price reaches further than any goel in Israel could reach: to the creation itself, waiting to be set free from the slavery of corruption, and to the body of everyone who has the first-fruits of the Spirit.

All of this is what Jacob was naming when he said, “the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil.”

The Lion and the Lamb

But Jacob called his Redeemer by more than one name. In the next chapter of Genesis, blessing his sons, he spoke of Judah, of a scepter that would not depart from him until Shiloh comes. That is a different line from the goel. The goel is a matter of kinship and price. The scepter is a matter of rule.

The New Testament keeps the two lines distinct and sets them side by side. In Revelation 5 one of the elders tells John, “Do not weep,” because “the lion of the tribe of Judah” has overcome. John looks, and what he sees is “a Lamb standing as though slaughtered.”

The One announced as the Lion paid the price as the Lamb, and Jacob’s words over Judah, the scepter and the ruler’s staff, lead to that scene.