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The nearest of kin, nearer than Boaz himself, is mankind. Man however can never be
his own saviour. He stands exposed before all as a failure. Every son of Adam bears the
reproach of Deut. 25: 10:--
"His name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed."
In Isa. 59: 20 we read:--
"And the Redeemer (Goel) shall come to Zion."
This Redeemer is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the context suggests the kinsman nearer
than He, who failed:--
"And He saw there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore
His arm brought salvation" (Isa. 59: 16).
The word translated intercessor, occurs in Isa. 53: 6 and 12. "The Lord hath made to
meet on Him the iniquity of us all", and "made intercession for the transgressors". Man's
failure is further set forth in such passages as Rom. 8: 3 together with the triumph of
Christ, the true Redeemer:--
"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His
own Son IN THE LIKENESS of sinful flesh (did)."
The utter inability of man by nature to accomplish his own redemption is too fully set
forth in Scripture, and is too really fundamental to need further proof. The whole plan of
redemption presupposes man's hopeless state, and indicates most clearly the antitype of
the man who failed to redeem his brother's forfeited inheritance.
#4.
Resurrection Life.
pp. 145 - 147
The declared purpose of the redemption by the kinsman-redeemer in the law, and in
the book of Ruth, is "to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance". The
firstborn which the wife of the dead man bears as a result of the kinsman taking her to
wife "shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out
in Israel" (Deut. 25: 6).
Types fail, and wherever resurrection is typified a certain amount of accommodation
is necessitated. When the death and resurrection of Christ was set forth by the killing of a
bird and the setting free of a bird, two birds were necessary, but not to set forth two
Persons; so with this great type of the redemption set forth in Ruth and the law. It was
not possible for the dead man to be brought to life again in order that he may enjoy his
inheritance. That is redemption in reality, but in the type his name is perpetuated as a