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Who gave himself a Ransom for all, to be testified in due time. We are indebted to the slavery of St. Paul's time for the use of the word "ransom." So literature, in its words, enshrines history. We cannot make a perfect theory of the Atonement. Many have tried. Some have taken the idea of slavery; some have taken the idea of debt. There has been the "commercial theory, and the legal" theory; but no theory is complete that does not contain all the ideas. The idea of "ransom" has had its false theory; for in the seventh century some theologians said, "It was a price paid to the devil." That we are the slaves of sin, and that Christ ransoms us, is the great doctrine of the gospel.

I. CHRIST GAVE HIMSELF. The humanity of that age gave others. What is the great study of the dying Roman age? Selfishness. The patricians, wrapped up in togas, saw, in the Colosseum, the gladiators fall to amuse them. The great generals brought home as slaves - physicians, musicians, and workmen, and used them as good investments. Rome bore away the native art of Greece to decorate its own homes. Not only the humanity of that age, but the humanity of every age without Christ tends to self-ism. The philosophy of the cross is the only social philosophy. It does not take. It leaves men to the personal use of their gifts and possessions; but it says, "Give yourself - your purest ideals, your best impulses, your noblest powers, for the good of others."

II. THE CAESARS OF THAT AGE HAD NO TRUE POWER. They held men by the throat, and not by the heart; and they were lifted to Caesarship by the Praetorian guards. They rose and fell by the sword; and the dagger or the Tiber saw the last of them. The words were a satire on the Savior, "saying that he also himself is Christ, a King" - an unconscious prophecy, and yet how true! His kingdom came without observation; it was an empire within the heart; it was not in word, but in power; it was not with observation, but it silently grew like the mustard seed. Its foundation was in this, "He gave himself" - his exquisite sensibilities, his sacred energies, his unwearied endurance, his contact with shame and scorn; and then, on the cross, he died, "the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God." - W.M.S.

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KJV: Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

WEB: who gave himself as a ransom for all; the testimony in its own times;