The term, lutron (λυτρον),
can mean “ransom.” There is no reason why St. Paul should not have been
inspired by the well-attested Greek custom of emancipating slaves through the payment
of a ransom; on the other hand, it is not the emancipation of the Corinthians
that he wishes to emphasize so much as “the new bonds which attach them to
Christ and make them his property . . . “We have, therefore, for St. Paul,
become God’s property in virtue of a contract whose every condition has been
fulfilled, especially that which the Apostle does not fail to mention, the fact
that the price has been paid (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). But, as Fr. Prat so rightly
observes, “the metaphor is not carried too far, and no one intervenes to demand
or receive the price.” In particular, one is certainly not entitled to conclude
from these expressions of St. Paul that he wishes to represent the redemption
as a king of commercial barter, in which the jailer refuses to release his
prisoner and the vendor his goods save on the condition of losing nothing.
The term, lutron,
may also mean any instrument of deliverance without there being any question of
paying a ransom, and even when this is positively excluded. This usage often
occurs in the Judaeo-Greek literature contemporary which Christ, and even more
often than not in the New Testament. Lutron, therefore, is far from
always meaning that a price has been paid.
Paul goes beyond the
juridical notion of punishment. For this does not take into account the
attitude of the person condemned and whether he accepts his punishment or
revolts against it; in either case justice is assured as soon as he receives
it; “justice is done.” But for St. Paul and the whole New Testament, on the
contrary, Christ’s Passion and death only have value through the voluntary acceptance
of the person who suffers them . . . What, in fact, St. Paul seems to see above
all in Christ’s death is the clearest possible proof of the Father’s love for
men and of Christ’s love for his Father—in the form of obedience—and for us. .
. . His death and the circumstances of that death were, in reality, the
proving, or, if one prefers, the “mediation” of his obedience and love. (Robert
et Feuillet, “La soteriologie paulinienne,” II, 880. 881)
This redemption was
costly for him since it was the Lamb who was slain who bought men for God at
the price of his blood out of every tribe, language, people and nation. (Rev
5:9). (Philippe De La Trinité, What is Redemption? [Steubenville, Ohio:
Emmaus Road, 2021], 105-6)