knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers,
Truth to Learn
The price of our salvation was of great worth and is eternal.
Behind the Words
The word translated “redeemed” is a form of lutroō. This word means “to pay a ransom for another’s freedom.” It carries the idea of a person being held without the ability to escape and released only when a sufficient ransom price was paid.
“Aimless” is translated from mataios, meaning “to no purpose” or “fruitless.” It is a picture of someone wandering through this life without any purpose or destination in mind.
The phrase “received by tradition from your fathers” is translated from the Greek word patroparadotos. This is made up of pater, meaning “father” and a form of paradidōmi, meaning “to deliver.” It refers to something handed down by tradition from father to son. It is used here in reference to our aimless manner of living.
Meaning Explained
Before coming to faith in Christ, we were captured and in bondage to sin. The only payment that could set us free was life itself. But God, in His infinite mercy, offered the life of His only begotten Son in exchange for our life, as the acceptable ransom payment to set us free.
Peter here reminds us that the price of our salvation, the ransom for deliverance from the punishment of sin, has already been paid. But it was not paid with those things which we consider valuable like gold and silver. In fact, as we saw in verse seven, Peter refers to gold and silver as perishable things because they have no lasting value. But the blood of the sinless Lamb of God has eternal value.
He also tells us here that the life we were living before salvation, living under the bondage of sin, was characterized by wandering without purpose. But now that the ransom has been paid and applied to our account, we can choose to live for God (even though we don’t always do it). We now have a purpose in life!
Peter is telling us that we should do good works, works with lasting value, because we were redeemed with something of lasting value. He goes on further to say that the manner of life we had before we were saved was vain, that is, worthless or empty. We were delivered from a worthless life by something very precious, therefore we should be holy and make our new life worth something by putting works of value into the remainder of our life.
Application
Before salvation we were not free to live as we choose. We were slaves to sin and had no choice but to live for self. Now that we have been ransomed with the blood of Christ, we can choose to live for self or to live for God.
Who do you choose to live for?
In God's service, for His glory,
Copyright © 2016 Will Krause. All rights reserved