Let us start with the first word, the word translated Redemption. This was probably the most vivid to Paul because he recurs to it most often. The Greek word means "liberation procured by the payment of a ransom." So "emancipation" is a better translation than "redemption." It was constantly used in connection with the purchase of a slave. There is in the word a clear allusion to the social system of slavery then existing. But after recognizing the true, contemporary usage and meaning of the word, Liddell & Scott, in their Greek Lexicon, add that in the New Testament it means "deliverance effected through the death of Christ from the retributive wrath of a holy God and the merited penalty of sin." This surprising addition finds no warrant in any of Paul's writings.
Let us examine his usage. We must remember that in the civilization of his time slavery was one of the most noticeable and characteristic institutions. A picture drawn from slavery must have been peculiarly vivid and appealing to the classes of society from whose ranks the early Christians were largely recruited. And particularly liberation, emancipation, was the idea that was constantly in the slave's mind. In fact it has been said that Christianity made the headway it did because it made just such an appeal to the slave class. However that may be, we find Paul reverting to the subject again and again. Our very epistle begins, "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ." This gives a clue to what redemption, liberation meant to Paul and his readers. It was the emancipation of the slave, or a change of ownership from sin to God. This is brought out very clearly in the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, verse 6:
"Our old self is nailed to the cross with him, so that we no longer shall be slaves of sin."
Verse 14:
"For sin shall not be master over you."
Here Paul uses the correlative word, the "master" of the slave.
Verse 16:
"Do you not know that if you put yourself at the disposal of anyone as slaves to obey, you are his slaves whom you obey."
The word which I translated as "put yourself at his disposal" is the very same word that Paul uses where he speaks of "presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice." And there is a very good reason presented here why that other presentation should be made. You present your bodies to God and no longer are the slaves of sin. This is your normal life, says Paul. It doesn't sound much like purchasing deliverance from the retributive wrath of an angry God. Then he goes on with his figure, in the same verse:
"You are the slaves of him whom you obey, whether it be slaves of sin, which leads to death, or slaves of duty, which leads to righteousness."
That word "duty" or "obedience" as it might be translated, has some interest to Friends. It is the noun form of the verb "to listen," with an intensive particle. Literally it means "listening beneath." The word was used in common speech, of attending a door—the work of the porter in answering the knock. So with Paul obedience is lstening, listening to objective conscience, listening to the inward voice, listening for the Spirit, to let him in.
Verse 17:
"And although once you were the slaves of sin, you have now given your obedience to the new pattern of teaching."
There the word is "listening" again. YOu have hearkened unto it.
Verse 18:
"Being liberated from sin you become slaves of righteousness."
And in the next verse, verse 19, Paul plainly states what he is doing, that is, speaking pictorially not theologically. He says:
"I speak after the manner of human life (that is, I draw a metaphor from human affairs). As you once presented your faculties as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, so now you must present them as slaves to righteousness, unto sanctification (that is, to the degree of setting apart)."
That is all "sanctification" means. It means the same thing as "presenting your bodies a living sacrifice," entire devotion, a complete change of centre of gravity.
Verses 20 and 22:
"For while you were slaves of sin you were free as to righteousness. But now liberated from sin and enslaved to God, you have your reward."1
I do not think there can be any doubt about what Paul meant by that word "redemption"—"liberation." He says himself that he is speaking in a metaphor, a human picture. Why doubt it?
How vividly he himself felt the force of his own picture is shown by the fact that he represents the Incarnation as being basically a taking on of slavery. In Philippians, Ch. 2, verse 7, he speaks of Jesus taking on the form of a slave and being born in the likeness of men. That is what it means to be a man,—a slave. That is how Paul had seen himself. Jesus said the same thing of himself. Mark 10:45: "He who would be first must be the slave of all. The son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his psyche as a ransom for many." That is where the purchase price came in.
Paul even applies the metaphor of slavery to Creation. In the 8th chapter of Romans, verse 20, he says:
"Creation was made subject to futility, that creation itself might be freed from the slavery of decay into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God."
Now we must not think that Paul invented this metaphor. He had plenty of precedent for using it in religious exposition. The Psalmist said (Ps. 116:16) "O Lord, I am thy slave, I am thy slave and the son of thy slave woman." It came to Paul, not only from what he saw in contemporary Greek life, but from his Jewish training. Many of the old Hebrew names have this figure in them. "Obededom" means slave of Edom. "Abdiel" is the slave of God. "Abdullah" is the same word. "Obediah" is the slave of Jehovah. The root that means slave is "obed." To me it is very striking that we find it in our word "obedience," although that word does not come from the Hebrew at all. It comes from the Latin and means "listening" like the Greek, but it appears to have the same root as the Hebrew. To the Jew it must seem to mean "slave obedience."
It was not only the Hebrew religion but the Greek religion also used this figure of slavery. They employed constantly the expression "slave of God." In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, Isis is represented as saying to a new convert, "You will remember clearly and keep laid up in your inmost mind that the remaining course of your life, to the very end of your last breath, is mortgaged to me."
This brings us to consider a phase of the institution of slavery that made Paul's figure of emancipation especially pointed. It appears from the inscriptions that when a slave was to be liberated, it was the custom to deposit the purchase price in the temple of a god. When the time of emancipation came the money was paid to the master by the god and in form the slave was transferred in ownership from the master to the god; and therefore he was the slave of the god, but free as to other men. This was a very well-known custom, often referred to. So, when Paul used the expressions "emancipation" and "slave of God," you can see how vivid the expression must have been to his hearers.
There is one other thing that indicates that this is what Paul had in mind. When the slave became the slave of the god, he was branded as such; and you will remember that in Galatians Paul says, "I bear in my body the stigmata of Christ,"—the branding marks of Christ. He was simply carrying the figure a little further.