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he will", to which Gal. 5: 17 and Rom. 7: 19 are evident allusions. The word
exogorazo translated "redeem" in Gal. 3: 13 and 4: 5, Eph. 5: 16 and Col. 4: 5, and
agorazo refer to the agora or `market' (Matt. 11: 16).
"As slaves were bought and sold in the forum (Gk. agora) among other things, the
word came to signify also to redeem, and be used of slaves who were bought at a fixed
price and set at liberty, whence it is applied to our redemption by the precious blood of
Christ" (Parkhurst).
To `redeem' time, suggests the readiness to snap up a bargain, "to fore-stall" for
Christ's sake, even as keen buyers spend many hours waiting for the `sales' to
commence. A "freeman" could be either (1) Liber; (2) Ingennus or "born free"; or
(3) Libertinus "made free". One born free could be either (1) civis (citizen) or (2) a
Latinus, i.e. occupying a position intermediate between that of a true-born Roman and a
foreigner. All this and more would be common knowledge to Paul and to the Church of
his day.
The privileges of a free citizen included:
(1) The right of voting in the comitea (Jus Suffragii).
(2) Eligibility for all public offices and magistracies, (Jus Honorium), and
(3) The right of appeal (Jus Provocationis).
This latter right was exercised by Paul when he "appealed" unto Caesar, a right which
could not be denied. The Apostle himself was a free-born Roman citizen, and also being
a Tarsian "a citizen of no mean city". These features are in the background of those
references in the epistles to bondage, freedom, ransom, emancipation and citizenship, and
would be more vividly seen and appreciated than they are at the present time.
Now the "glorious liberty of the children of God" involves "the adoption, to wit the
redemption of our body" (Rom. 8: 23). To appreciate the Apostle's argument in
Galatians 3: and 4:, as also that of Rom. 8: 17-23, we must understand the law of
adoption, and particularly the Greek law that obtained in Paul's day.
"The adopted son became a member of the family, just as if he had been born of the
blood of the adopter . . . . . As a matter of fact it was by this means that a succession
amongst the Caesars was continued. It never descended from father to son . . . . . Nero
was the great nephew of his predecessor Claudius, who had adopted him in the year
50A.D." (Septimus Buss).
"Adoption was called a capitas diminutio, which so far annihilated the pre-existing
personality who underwent it, that during many centuries it operated as an extinction of
debts" (W. E. Ball).
The reader will not fail to re-read this legal "annihilation" and "extinction of all
debts", in a spiritual emancipation as one redeemed by precious blood. Eph. 1: 13, 14
probably refers to a Roman form of will. W. G. Ball translates the latter part of the
passage:
"Until the ransoming accomplished by the act of taking possession (of the
inheritance)."