Apoc. 14:3 f. ( a[/dousin wJ" wj/dh;n kainh;n ) oiJ hjgorasmevnoi ajpo; th'" gh'" ... ou|toi hjgoravsqhsan ajpo; tw'n ajnqrwvpwn, ajparch; tw'/ qew'/ kai; tw'/ ajrnivw/ .
The compound ejxagoravzein combines the thought of redemption with that of purchase:
Gal. 3:13
Cristo;" hJma'" ejxhgovrasen ejk th'" katavra" tou' novmou genovmeno" uJpe;r hJmw'n katavra
.
Gal. 4:4 f. ejxapevsteilen oJ qeo;" to;n uiJo;n aujtou' ... i{na tou;" uJpo; novmon ejxagoravsh/, i{na th;n uiJoqesivan ajpolavbwmen .
The Christian, it appears, is bought at the price of Christ's Blood for God. He is Christ's bond-servant, and at the same time God's son by adoption. They that have been purchased have a work for others: they are first-fruits to God and the Lamb.
Additional Note on Hebrews 9:14. Aspects of Christ's Sacrifice.
The Levitical Sacrifices expressed, as we have seen, several great ideas, the ideas of atonement and fellowship resting upon the idea of a covenant. They brought before the people in vivid types thoughts of cleansing and divine communion through which God realised the gracious purpose which He made known when He took them to Himself. Under outward forms and limitations they shewed how man might yet reach the destiny for which he was created.
The self-sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross fulfilled absolutely all that was thus shadowed forth. That Sacrifice is presented to us in the Epistle under three distinct aspects:
(1) As a Sacrifice of Atonement (9:14, 15);
(2) As a Covenant Sacrifice (9:15-17); and
(3) As a Sacrifice which is the groundwork of a Feast (13:10, 11). In each respect it had a spiritual, an eternal, a universal validity, where the type had been necessarily external and confined.
These several aspects are considered in detail in the notes on the passages which deal with them, but there is one common feature which may be more conveniently noticed here. In the animal sacrifices of the Law two points are carefully distinguished which our own habits of thought lead us more or less to confuse, the killing of the victim and the application of the blood. The killing was properly the act of the person on whose behalf the victim was presented, or, in the case of a public sacrifice, of the representative of the people. The application of the blood was the office of the priests only. Christ was Offerer at once and Offering. In Him the victim and the people and the priest were one. He therefore performed both acts, He offered Himself through the eternal Spirit (9:14), and so by the surrender of life He fulfilled the work of the people, of the humanity which He had assumed. Through His Blood He entered into the Divine Presence and cleansed the heavenly archetypes of the earthly sanctuary (9:12, 23), and so by the impartment of a new life He fulfils the work of the priest, having realised in His divine-human nature the end of man's existence.
The direct references to Christ's Death are naturally less frequent than the references to His Blood. Death, with its unnatural agony, was the