Ephesians 1:7 — “Redemption through his blood”: forgiveness paid for or given?

“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”

Ephesians 1:7 (ESV)

Context: a single sentence and a threefold refrain

In the Greek text Ephesians 1:3–14 is a single sentence of some two hundred words — the longest continuous period in the New Testament. Its form is no accident of style but a genre: it follows the Jewish blessing, the berakhah, which opens with “Blessed be…” and then enumerates what is being praised. Anyone who lifts verse 7 out of this period and reads it as a doctrinal proposition about the mechanism of reconciliation has imperceptibly changed the kind of text he is reading.

The period is structured by a threefold refrain: “to the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6), “to the praise of his glory” (v. 12) and once again “to the praise of his glory” (v. 14). Verse 7 stands immediately after the first of these refrains and is joined to it by a relative pronoun: en hōi, “in whom” — namely in the Beloved of whom v. 6 has just spoken. The statement about redemption and forgiveness is therefore, syntactically as well as materially, an unfolding of grace, not its presupposition.

It is also worth noting everything this period lists: election, predestination to sonship, redemption and forgiveness, the making known of God’s will, the inheritance, the sealing with the Spirit. Not one of these members is described as a counter-performance, none as the settling of an account. All stand under the same sign: “according to the good pleasure of his will” (v. 5), “according to the riches of his grace” (v. 7), “according to his good pleasure” (v. 9), “according to the purpose of him who works all things” (v. 11).

Historically the verse has been, since the sixteenth century, one of the chief supports of the doctrine of satisfaction: the phrase “through his blood” seemed to name the price, the phrase “forgiveness of sins” the effect. It is precisely this division into payment and consequence that Fausto Sozzini disputed in his work On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore) — not by explaining the blood away, but by a plain question about the compatibility of the two terms.

The Socinian core thesis: redemption is forgiveness

The decisive finding lies in the syntax. Paul writes two accusative objects one after the other, both with the article, without any connecting particle: tēn apolýtrōsin… tēn áphesin tōn paraptōmátōn — “the redemption…, the forgiveness of trespasses.” This is the ordinary explanatory apposition: the second expression states what the first means. The English versions render it with a comma, as does Luther.

The traditional reading turns this apposition into a causal chain: first redemption as a ransom paid, then forgiveness as its legal consequence. Yet for such a sequence Paul had every means at his disposal — a hína, an eis tó, a diá with the accusative, a participle. He uses none of them. The causal chain is read into the verse; what can be taken from it is an equation.

This equation is decisive for the matter itself, because the two terms taken together cannot be interpreted at will. Áphesis is, in the Septuagint, the word of the year of release and of the cancellation of debts: Leviticus 25:10 calls the jubilee the “year of áphesis,” and Deuteronomy 15:1–2 commands the release of loans every seven years — and there the creditor expressly receives nothing. A term whose entire sense lies in not collecting cannot denote being collected.

Then there is the standard the verse itself supplies. Katá with the accusative names the measure by which something is gauged; here it reads “according to the riches of his grace.” Had a claim been settled, the measure of the thing would be the claim — its amount, its equivalent, its full coverage. Paul names as the measure neither the debt nor the price, but the riches of the giver. That is the language of a gift, not of bookkeeping.

Exegesis: key terms and semantic field

apolýtrōsis — redemption, release

The word is an intensified form of lýtron and in secular Greek carries the sense of ransoming prisoners. It occurs ten times in the New Testament, and in several of these places a recipient of payment is simply unthinkable: the “redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23), the “day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30), and in Hebrews 11:35 the release that the martyrs refused in order to obtain a better resurrection. There it denotes simply becoming free.

The Racovian Catechism captured this state of affairs in an image that does not weaken the metaphor but thinks it through to the end: prisoner, captor, redeemer and ransom are all present — only there is no recipient. It is exactly at this point that the comparison with an ordinary ransoming breaks down, and exactly there that the Socinian interpretation begins.

diá toû haímatos — “through his blood”

Diá with the genitive denotes the means by which something comes about, not the price for which it is exchanged. For a purchase price Greek would use the genitive of price or the preposition antí; for a payment made to someone, a dative. The verse therefore says by what the liberation takes place — not to whom anything was rendered.

The Old Testament background of blood points in the same direction. Blood ratifies the covenant (Exod. 24:8), it cleanses the sanctuary (Lev. 16), and according to Leviticus 17:11 God himself has “given it upon the altar” to make atonement. The God who provides the means is not the creditor who receives a payment. Whoever turns the blood into a purchase price must declare God at once the giver and the recipient of the same sum.

áphesis — remission, release, year of release

No term in the verse is so unambiguous. In the Septuagint áphesis translates the Hebrew derôr and shemittah: the release of slaves in the jubilee and the cancellation of debts in the seventh year. Both are legal acts whose essence consists in the fact that no one receives anything. Jesus takes up this word twice in his inaugural sermon, when he applies Isaiah 61 to himself: “to proclaim liberty to the captives… to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

In the New Testament áphesis is almost invariably joined with “of sins” or “of trespasses,” and then denotes the injured party’s renunciation of his claim. The opposite of remitting is not forgetting but exacting. So when Paul in Ephesians 1:7 defines redemption as áphesis, he is saying at the same time that here nothing was exacted.

paraptōmata — trespasses, missteps

Paul chooses here neither hamartíai (sins) nor opheilēmata (debts) but paraptōmata, literally missteps, a falling beside the way. The word is thus no technical term from the law of obligations; it names a failure within a relationship, not a quantifiable item. The parallel passage Colossians 1:14 puts hamartiōn in the same slot — the two expressions are evidently interchangeable here, which tells against any narrowly juridical determination.

This does not mean that Paul made light of the matter. Two chapters later in the same letter we read that we were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1, 5). The term carries great weight — but its weight is moral and personal, not commercial. Where there is no amount, no amount can be settled; what happens here is reconciliation between persons.

katá to ploûtos tēs cháritos — “according to the riches of his grace”

The phrase names the standard, and Paul uses it twice more in Ephesians in exactly this sense: God acts “according to the immeasurable riches of his grace” (2:7) and strengthens “according to the riches of his glory” (3:16); Philippians 4:19 adds the same formula. The reference point is always the fullness of the giver, never the need or the debt of the receiver.

With this the verse is coherent in itself: a remission measured by the means of the one who grants it is a gift. A payment, by contrast, is measured by what is owed. The two standards exclude one another, and Paul names only one of them.

Comparison of the interpretations

Sozzini and the Racovian Catechism on redemption and forgiveness

Sozzini approaches the question not by way of the word “blood” but by way of the compatibility of the two terms that Ephesians 1:7 names in one breath. His starting point is a fact both sides concede: that through Christ we have received forgiveness. To this he attaches his decisive question:

“But what more do we require, since it is agreed among all and written everywhere that through Christ we have received from God the forgiveness of sins? And what is more opposed to forgiveness than a true and complete satisfaction?”

Fausto Sozzini, On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore), Part Three, ‘Forgiveness without satisfaction’

The obvious objection runs that the two terms exclude one another only if the same person pays who is also forgiven — whereas a third party may perfectly well step in for the debtor. Sozzini regards this answer as untenable, and for a reason that has nothing to do with theology and everything to do with the concept of remission:

“For he is not truly forgiven on whose behalf another renders complete satisfaction. For what need is there of restitution, or how can it stand, where no debt any longer exists? But there is no debt any longer where full satisfaction has already been made for it.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore), Part Three, ‘Forgiveness without satisfaction’

The argument is purely conceptual and therefore hard to evade. Whoever collects a debt — from whomever — has not remitted it; and whoever remits it does not collect it. Sozzini compresses the finding into a single sentence that sounds like a definition:

“For a true satisfaction cannot stand together with forgiveness.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore), Part Three, ‘Forgiveness without satisfaction’

But this still leaves unanswered the question what sense the cross then has — and Sozzini does not dodge it. His answer consists in not halving grace but doubling it. Where the doctrine of satisfaction knows a single act of generosity (God provides the price), Sozzini counts two, and both remain grace:

“For God’s liberality in forgiving our sins is in fact twofold: the one consists in his willingness to remit so great a debt freely and to renounce his right without inflicting punishment. The other consists in this, that so we might enjoy the deliverance won by so mighty a benefit, he gave us his only-begotten Son.”

Fausto Sozzini, On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore), Part Three, ‘Forgiveness without satisfaction’

It is precisely this doubling that stands in Ephesians 1:7. The verse names both side by side — the blood of Christ and the riches of grace — without making the one the condition of the other. Sozzini’s reading explains why this is no tension: the first is the cost God is willing to incur for the matter; the second is the standard by which he acts.

The Racovian Catechism carries through the same interpretation in its section on the meaning of redemption. It does not deny the ransom metaphor but spells it out — prisoner, captor, redeemer, ransom — and then names precisely the one point at which the comparison no longer holds:

“The difference consists only in this, that in this our deliverance from sins there is no one at all who receives anything as a ransom, which in ‘redemption’ in the proper sense must always be the case.”

Racovian Catechism, ‘The meaning of redemption through Christ’

To the obvious question why Scripture then reaches for an image that suggests a recipient at all, the same section gives an answer that directly illuminates Ephesians 1:7. It explains why the text speaks there of blood and not of the mere will of God:

“For deliverance can take place without love, and certainly without great love; but redemption, which takes place through cost, and all the more through blood rather than money, can in no way be accomplished without the highest love.”

Racovian Catechism, ‘The meaning of redemption through Christ’

This is why the Polish Brethren never wanted to strike out the word “redemption.” The metaphor says something that a mere amnesty would not say: that this liberation cost God something. Only the addressee of that cost is not a creditor but ourselves — and what it proves is not the inflexibility of justice but the height of love.

Logical arguments

The following arguments for the Socinian interpretation follow from Ephesians 1:7:

1. Argument from the apposition. The two accusatives tēn apolýtrōsin and tēn áphesin stand side by side without connection, both with the article. This is the ordinary explanatory apposition, in which the second member defines the first. Paul defines redemption as forgiveness — not as its precondition.
2. Argument from the missing causal marker. Had Paul meant a sequence of payment and remission, all the resources of Greek were at his disposal: hína, eis tó, diá with the accusative, a participle. He uses none of them. A causal chain must therefore be supplied by the reader.
3. Argument from the standard. Katá with the accusative names the measure, and it reads “according to the riches of his grace.” A claim that had been settled would have the claim as its measure. Where the means of the giver is named as the measure, we are dealing with a gift.
4. Argument from the semantic field of áphesis. In the Septuagint áphesis is the word of the jubilee and of the cancellation of debts (Lev. 25:10; Deut. 15:1–2), and there the creditor expressly receives nothing. A term whose whole sense consists in not collecting cannot denote collecting.
5. Argument from the usage of apolýtrōsis. The word occurs ten times in the New Testament, and in several places a recipient is inconceivable: the redemption of the body (Rom. 8:23), the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30), the release the martyrs refused (Heb. 11:35). Scripture’s usage is liberation, not transaction.
6. Argument from the preposition. Diá with the genitive names the means by which something happens, not the price for which it is exchanged. A purchase price would stand in the genitive of price or with antí. “Through his blood” answers the question by what, not the question to whom.
7. Argument from the genre. Verse 7 stands in the middle of a doxology whose refrain runs three times to the praise of glory (vv. 6, 12, 14) and whose first form is expressly “of his glorious grace.” A hymn of praise extols what has been given — not what has been duly settled.
8. Argument from the parallel passage. Colossians 1:14 offers the same apposition — “the redemption, the forgiveness of sins” — without the blood clause, which entered the textual tradition there only late. The fixed core of the formula is therefore the equation; the blood clause is its further specification, not its condition.
9. Argument from incompatibility. Remission and full payment exclude one another: where a debt is discharged, nothing remains to be remitted; where it is remitted, nothing has been discharged. The verse names both in one breath — so the one cannot be the payment for the other.
10. Argument from imitation. The same letter commands: “forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). Christian forgiveness does not consist in recouping one’s losses from a third party. If God’s forgiving were of that kind, it would be useless as a model.

Biblical cross-references

Colossians 1:14 — the same apposition, without the blood clause

“In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The verse offers the formula in its barest form; the phrase “through his blood” is absent from the oldest manuscripts and was taken over from Ephesians 1:7 only later. What remains is precisely the equation: redemption means forgiveness.

Leviticus 25:10 and Deuteronomy 15:1–2 — the year of release

In the Septuagint the jubilee is proclaimed as the year of áphesis, and every seven years the law commands the release of loans. In both cases the legal act is defined precisely by the creditor’s renunciation of his claim. Whoever wants to know what the word means that Paul uses in Ephesians 1:7 finds its primal scene here.

Luke 4:18–19 — the inaugural sermon

Jesus reads Isaiah 61 and in doing so uses the same word twice: liberty to the captives, liberty to the oppressed, and with it “the year of the Lord’s favour.” His public programme is thus formulated from the outset in the language of the year of release. The forgiveness of which Ephesians 1:7 speaks is the fulfilment of this announcement, not the conclusion of a lawsuit.

Matthew 18:23–35 — the king who remits

In the parable of the unmerciful servant the king remits an unpayable sum on a mere request. He collects it neither from the debtor nor from a third party; the remitting itself is the benefaction. It is by this that Jesus then measures the servant’s conduct — and it is this very picture that underlies the Socinian interpretation of áphesis.

Romans 3:24 — “as a gift” and “redemption” in one sentence

“Justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The adverb dōreán means “gratuitously”; Sozzini devoted a philological discussion of his own to it. That Paul places it immediately beside redemption shows that for him the two terms form no tension. Cf. the entry on Romans 3:25–26.

Romans 8:23 — the redemption of the body

Paul uses the same word apolýtrōsis for the still outstanding liberation of the body at the resurrection. Here plainly no recipient of a purchase price is in view, but simply the coming free from corruption. The usage of the same author is the best commentary on Ephesians 1:7.

Ephesians 4:32 — God’s forgiving as the model

“Forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Sozzini drew a sharper argument from this passage: if Christians were permitted to recoup the wrong they suffer from some third party, the command would be senseless. The model works only if God’s forgiving is a real remission.

Exodus 34:6–7 — the forgiving God before Golgotha

God reveals himself to Moses as “merciful and gracious…, bearing iniquity, transgression and sin.” The Hebrew nasa’ means here both “to bear” and “to take away”; the Racovian Catechism pointed precisely to this ambiguity. If God forgave centuries before Christ without anyone rendering him satisfaction, then forgiveness without satisfaction is not inconceivable.

Objections and Socinian answers

Objection 1: “The verse says it itself — through his blood. Without blood no forgiveness.”

The Socinian interpretation does not strike out the blood; it determines its grammatical role. Diá with the genitive names the means by which something comes about — not the equivalent for which it is exchanged. For a price Greek would use the genitive of price or antí, for a recipient a dative. Both are absent.

The Old Testament background points in the same direction. Blood ratifies the covenant (Exod. 24:8) and cleanses the sanctuary (Lev. 16); according to Leviticus 17:11 God himself has “given it upon the altar” to make atonement. Whoever makes a purchase sum of it must declare God both the giver and the recipient of the same sum — an embarrassment produced not by the text but by the interpretation.

Hebrews 9:22, finally, says schedón, “almost everything” is cleansed with blood — the qualification stands in the text and breaks the alleged exceptionlessness. Moreover the verse speaks about the order of the Old Testament cult, not about the conditions of divine forgiving as such. Cf. the entry on Hebrews 9:22.

Objection 2: “Redemption means ransoming. Where there is a price, there is a recipient.”

The objection would be sound if biblical usage followed secular usage. It does not. Of the ten New Testament occurrences of the word, several admit of no recipient at all: the “redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23), the “day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30), and in Hebrews 11:35 the release that the martyrs refused. In all three cases the word means simply becoming free.

The Racovian Catechism did not dispose of the point by explaining it away but by spelling it out: prisoner, captor, redeemer and ransom are all present, “the difference consists only in this, that in this our deliverance from sins there is no one at all who receives anything as a ransom.” That a metaphor fails to cover at one point is no weakness of the metaphor but its normal condition.

The same observation holds for the Old Testament, whose language Paul takes over. God “redeems” Israel out of Egypt (Exod. 6:6), he “redeems” David and Abraham — and no one has ever asked to whom he paid anything in doing so. Cf. also the entry on Mark 10:45.

Objection 3: “If God simply remits, what is the cross for?”

Sozzini answers this question not by diminishing the cross but by doubling grace. The one consists in God’s willingness “to remit so great a debt freely and to renounce his right without inflicting punishment”; the other in his having “given us his only-begotten Son,” so that we might also partake of this deliverance. The second gift is not the condition of the first but its way to us.

What this way comprises the New Testament states at length: Christ’s death ratifies the new covenant (Matt. 26:28), demonstrates God’s love (Rom. 5:8), breaks the power of death (Heb. 2:14–15), consecrates him as heavenly high priest (Heb. 9:11–14) and calls us to discipleship (1 Pet. 2:21). None of these aspects presupposes a penal performance; together they yield a full economy of salvation.

The Racovian Catechism adds the decisive reason why Scripture nevertheless chooses the language of ransoming: “Deliverance can take place without love…, but redemption, which takes place through cost, and all the more through blood rather than money, can in no way be accomplished without the highest love.” The cross is therefore not superfluous, but it proves something other than the objection assumes — not the inflexibility of justice, but the height of love.

Objection 4: “The apposition proves nothing — redemption may be the ground, forgiveness the consequence.”

That an apposition can join ground and consequence is not disputed. Only it does not designate them as ground and consequence — and for that Paul had unambiguous means. A final clause, a preposition with the accusative, a participle: any of these would have expressed the alleged sequence. Whoever asserts a causal chain bears the burden of proof, because he is adding something to the text.

The control case is supplied by Colossians 1:14. There the same apposition stands — “the redemption, the forgiveness of sins” — without any mention of the blood, which entered the textual tradition only late. If redemption there manages without the supposed payment and nevertheless says the same thing, then payment is not its content.

Above all, the causal reading would have to explain how the alleged consequence squares with the standard given in the verse. “According to the riches of his grace” is the basis of assessment for the whole; but a claim that has been met is assessed by the claim, not by the means of the recipient. The verse names only one standard, and it is not that of the balance sheet.

Objection 5: “Romans 3:25 speaks of a propitiation and of God’s righteousness.”

Remarkably, in exactly the same context stands the adverb dōreán: “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). Paul thus places the word for “gratuitously” immediately beside redemption. Whoever reads a payment out of the following verse must explain how the preceding one expressly excludes it.

Sozzini treated the passage at length in his exposition of Romans 3 and determined its sense thus: that God showed himself “so reconciled” to us that he “remitted” us the punishment of sins — and that the blood of Christ was added although God was “truly not incapable” of this deliverance. In his view the addition of the blood has the effect of moving us to accept what is offered and of demonstrating God’s benevolence.

Materially the objection depends on what “the righteousness of God” means. In Old Testament usage, which Paul follows, tsedaqah is not retributive justice but saving covenant faithfulness — that attribute for the sake of which God raises up his people. Understood in this way, God demonstrates it in forgiving and not in punishing. Cf. the detailed entry on Romans 3:25–26.

Dogmatic consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast with the interpretation presented here:

• Colossians 1:20 — reconciliation “by the blood of his cross”: the same instrumental phrase in the parallel letter.
• Romans 3:25–26 — hilastērion and the righteousness of God; in the same context stands the “as a gift.”
• Mark 10:45 — the ransom saying and the problem of the addressee in a ransoming.
• 1 Peter 1:18–19 — ransomed “from the futile ways”: the from-what of the liberation, not a to-whom of payment.
• Hebrews 9:22 — “almost everything” is cleansed with blood: the schedón breaks the exceptionlessness.
• Hebrews 9:11–14 — eternal redemption in a high-priestly, not a juridical, framework.
• Galatians 3:13 — redemption from the curse of the law: liberation from a situation, not the discharge of a claim.
• 1 John 2:2 — Christ as the propitiation for the sins of the whole world: universal scope instead of a limited sum of coverage.
• John 3:16 — God gives out of love; the giving of the Son is the origin, not the result, of grace.
• Ephesians 2:3 — the human condition before grace, in the same letter and with the same semantic field.

Summary

Ephesians 1:7 stands in a doxology, not in a doctrinal proposition about legal relations, and its grammar is clearer than the history of interpretation would lead one to suppose. Paul places two accusatives side by side without connection — “the redemption…, the forgiveness of trespasses” — and thereby explains the first expression by the second. Redemption is forgiveness; a sequence of payment and legal consequence is not in the text.

Both terms bear this reading. Áphesis is, in the Septuagint, the word of the year of release, in which the creditor expressly receives nothing; apolýtrōsis Paul himself uses where a recipient is inconceivable, as for the redemption of the body at the resurrection. And “through his blood” names, with diá and the genitive, the means, not the price. The measure of the whole matter the verse finally supplies itself: not the size of a claim, but the riches of grace.

Sozzini’s contribution to this passage is no exegetical trick but a conceptual observation: “A true satisfaction cannot stand together with forgiveness.” Where a debt has been fully discharged, nothing remains to be remitted; where it is remitted, nothing has been discharged. What the cross then means does not thereby disappear — it merely shifts: from price to gift. God’s liberality, according to Sozzini, is twofold, and the Racovian Catechism draws from it the conclusion that finally carries this verse: a deliverance can take place without great love — a redemption through blood rather than money cannot.