You Were Bought with a Price

Main Idea

This lecture addresses the doctrine of redemption in the Coptic Orthodox faith through the biblical phrase “You were bought with a price,” explaining its true theological and spiritual meaning and responding to intellectual objections that attempt to empty it of its salvific content.

Spiritual and Doctrinal Essence

1. His Holiness Pope Shenouda III explains that man no longer belongs to himself but belongs to God because he was redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, which obliges him to glorify God in his body and spirit.
2. The price paid in redemption is the blood of Christ, not as a figurative expression, but as a fundamental salvific truth stated repeatedly in Holy Scripture.
3. Man sold himself to death and sin by his own will, and Christ bought him to free him from the bondage of death and corruption.
4. Orthodox teaching rejects the idea that Christ united with a sinful human nature, affirming instead that He took a holy human nature without sin to be an acceptable sacrifice.
5. Redemption does not mean that God punished the Son, but that the Son willingly offered Himself, bearing the punishment of sinners out of love.
6. The ransom was not paid to us, since we are debtors, but was paid for us, for our salvation, justification, and forgiveness of sins.
7. The divine sacrifice was a salvific necessity, not because God needed it, but because humanity needed redemption.
8. The teaching affirms that purification is a result of atonement and not a substitute for it, and that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

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