Redeemed By the Blood Of the Lamb – Hebrews 9:11-14

Though the nature of this redemption be usually spoken unto, yet we must not here wholly put it by. And the nature of it will appear in the consideration of the state from whence we are redeemed, with the causes of it: [1.] The meritorious cause of it was sin, or our original apostasy from God. Hereby we lost our primitive liberty, with all the rights and privileges thereunto belonging. [2.] The supreme efficient cause is God himself. As the ruler and judge of all, he cast all apostates into a state of captivity and bondage; for liberty is nothing but peace with him. But he did it with this difference: sinning angels he designed to leave irrecoverably under this condition; for mankind he would find a ransom. [3.] The instrumental cause of it was the curse of the law. This falling on men brings them into a state of bondage. For it separates as to all relation of love and peace between God and them, and gives life unto all the actings of sin and death; wherein the misery of that state consists. To be separate from God, to be under the power of sin and death, is to be in bondage. [4.] The external cause, by the application of all other causes unto the souls and consciences of men, is Satan. His was the power of darkness, his the power of death over men in that state and condition; that is, to make application of the terror of it unto their souls, as threatened in the curse, Heb. 2:14, 15. Hence he appears as the head of this state of bondage, and men are in captivity unto him. He is not so in himself, but as the external application of the causes of bondage is committed unto him. – John Owen