What does it mean that we were not redeemed with corruptible things (1 Peter 1:18)?

The meaning for us in this day is plain enough. Christ, the Lamb of God, has been slain; His precious blood has been shed: all that God requires from the sinner who would escape the wrath to come is to accept these mighty facts in simple-hearted faith. But just as in Egypt that night no man could help his neighbour, each being compelled to sprinkle the blood for himself, so now no man can shelter himself under the cloak of another's faith; each must appropriate for himself Christ's precious blood as the only safeguard of his soul. To those who have done this Peter writes thus: "Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold … but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; who verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by Him do believe in God that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; so that your faith and hope are in God" (1 Peter 1:18-21). The sentiments expressed in this passage manifestly go far beyond anything that was experienced in Egypt in Moses' day. Then it was simply a matter of keeping God as Judge out of the house; now, on the righteous basis of the blood of Christ, every believer is brought to God, accepted and taken into favour in the risen One, and withal entitled to know it in the power of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

They knew, and so do we, that we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. Their fathers had been redeemed with silver and gold — a typical redemption carried out under Jewish law. Sometimes actual money was given as in Exodus 30:11-16; Numbers 3:44-51. Sometimes it was by sacrifice, as in Exodus 13:13-15; still, even then, silver and gold were involved, since they were needed to purchase the animal used for sacrifice. Silver and gold are the least corruptible of metals, yet they are corruptible. The price of our redemption was incorruptible and precious.

The Jewish manner of life had degenerated into a matter of mere tradition received from their fathers. This was quite manifest in Isaiah's day (Isa. 29:13), and the Lord Jesus charged it home upon them, quoting Isaiah's words, in Mark 7:6-13. Even the right things they did, they did not because they were enjoined of God, but because ordered by tradition. Thus their manner of life had become corrupt and most offensive to God. Our Gentile manner of life was pure darkness and lawlessness, and equally corrupt. Whether, however, it were we or they, we have been redeemed out of our old manner of life by the precious blood of the One who was typified as the unblemished and spotless lamb of Exodus 12:3-6; only He was ordained not a mere matter of four days before sacrifice, but from before the foundation of the world. Our redemption, therefore, was according to the eternal counsels of God.

There is a manifest allusion to the atonement-money in 1 Peter 1:18; "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot." An allusion, by way of contrast. What men consider precious metals, and free from impurity and corrosion, God calls "perishable" and "corruptible." He says that gold and silver "canker" and "rust."

The man who amasses wealth is an object of praise and envy. "Men will praise thee when thou doest well to thyself" (Ps. 49:18). But in this epistle, gain is denominated filthy lucre. The redemption, which God has paid for us, is no amount of corruptible things, as silver and gold. Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt-offering. Nothing less than the precious blood of Christ would avail. God has valued our salvation at no less cost, than the pouring out of His soul unto death.

It is the general character of the infinite price with which we have been redeemed, contrasted with poor corruptible things such as silver and gold.

Judging according to every man's work is a present thing; otherwise, "the Father judgeth no man." Then he goes to the foundation of it: "Forasmuch as ye know ye were redeemed." Silver and gold are the general character: the infinite price with which we have been redeemed is contrasted with poor corruptible things - silver and gold. The Jews understood it very well.

True redemption was no mere release by creature means, such as the children of Israel knew, when every man in the numbering of them had to give a ransom for himself as a living man to Jehovah, "that there might be no plague among them." Here it was no question of sins or sacrifice but of a ransom for his life against plague. Accordingly the principle established was a sacred half-shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary. "The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than the half shekel when they give the heave-offering of Jehovah to make atonement for your souls" (Ex. 30:15). This was a beautiful token that each of the people, all alike, belonged to Jehovah their Divine Guardian and Governor. But in presence of Christ and His redemption already possessed, even silver that shadowed grace or gold that represented divine righteousness, were but "corruptibles," fading away before the glory that both surpasses and abides (2 Cor. 3:9-11).

It is worthy of remark, that the saints are here said to be redeemed, among its manifold and wondrous results, from their vain course, or mode of life, handed down from their fathers. Language so precise to describe, not Gentile idolaters, but the Jews since the Maccabees in their tenacity of tradition from father to son, it is hard to conceive. Of old before the Babylonish captivity, kings, priests, people, ran a race after the abominations of the heathen. But this hateful lusting after strange gods they learnt to abjure; and even Antiochus IV. (Epiphanes) could only impose his profane Hellenising on Jerusalem and the Jews for a measured space by treachery and violence, by pillage and massacre. Our Lord Himself formally charged even the more orthodox and learned among them with neutralising the most solemn duties of the law on its human side, and thus the word of God, because of the tradition of the elders. It made them "hypocrites." "In vain do they worship me" (citing Isa. 29:13); a prophecy which embraces their final trouble but deliverance when at the lowest, as well as their sinfully blind state, that brought them so low, about to pass away for ever at the end of the age.

Can there be a more authoritative comment on the apostle's description of their state before they were redeemed? Their manner of life, even in its religious aspect, had neither purpose nor result. No doubt this might well be said of Paganism, which was wholly a lie with demons behind it; but how emphatic when applied truly to men confident of being a guide of the blind, a light of those in darkness! Only among Jews had the early fathers a claim from God. But this was for His promises, not for any such tradition of theirs, as the sons imagined. For the truth, "one is your Father, who is in heaven" said the Lord to the disciples. Fore-fathers, of whom scripture gave a reliable and sad account, were their trust, not the living God. They were guilty, because only they knew those sure and unambiguous oracles; but the heathen knew them not, and filled the void with the deceptive myths of poets. Gentile religion, like their wisdom, did not come down from above, but was earthly, natural, and demoniacal. What a contrast with ours which has its centre in Christ and its basis in His redemption, its glorying in God, its charter in His word, and its power in the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven!

But perhaps these two points need a little amplification. Turn, then, to 1 Peter 1:18: "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold …" — the inference being that their fathers had been so redeemed. But when had they been? The answer evidently is — Their redemption was always purchased thus. If a pious Israelite desired to be right with his God then must he always be expending silver and gold in the purchase of sacrificial animals which brought him by death that measure of redemption which he knew. Now at the census time God did not require, as we might have surmised, the death of sacrificial animals on an immense and national scale. Rather He cut down His requirements to a minimum, if we may so say, and only demanded this small silver coin from each man as a token that sacrifice was needful.

Having shown that the elect of God have been set apart for His pleasure by the anointing of the Spirit and the efficacy of the blood of sprinkling (1 Peter 1:2), the Apostle writes of the redemption of God’s children as foreshadowed in the blood of the paschal lamb. A half shekel of silver sufficed to ransom each one of the children of Israel in relation to earthly things (Ex. 30:12-13), so that there should be no plague among them, and gold was offered by the captains of Israel as an atonement for the sparing of the lives of the warriors in their war against Midian (Num. 31:48–54), but neither silver or gold could redeem a soul from eternal judgment, a sacrifice of infinite value was required for this.

REDEMPTION. The apostle reminds the believers whom he addressed (naturally Jews), that they had not been redeemed from their traditional religion with "silver and gold; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." The silver and gold here no doubt refer to the atonement-money of half-shekel, paid in Israel for every one that was numbered among them from twenty years old and upward. (See Ex. 30:12, etc.) With this ordinance they had been as Jews familiar, and no doubt it stands before us as a remarkable type of the redemption-work of Jesus, inasmuch as this atonement-money was used to make the silver sockets on which all the tabernacle rested, and for hooks on which the curtains were hung. And surely all our hopes are built, and all our confidence hangs, on this only foundation which has been laid for us in the death and blood-shedding of the Son of God. They were here, then, reminded of the cost and reality of their redemption.

Those to whom the Apostle wrote had been redeemed from a religious life of human traditions. Hebrews was written to deliver the believers from a system of ordinances and shadows, to bring them to Christ, outside the camp of Judaism. Peter tells them that what they had been connected with was an empty manner of life, the product of their fathers' traditions. Nor had they been redeemed by the half shekel of silver, demanded of old, or of anything greater in value in the eyes of men; but with what was of infinite value in the sight of God — the precious blood of Christ. He was the true Pascal Lamb. Israel's lamb was taken on the tenth day and kept till the fourteenth day: God's lamb was "foreknown before the foundation of the world."