Since ransom means an exact corresponding price,
the ransomer must be exactly like the perfect Adam in Eden.
[204]A perfect man had sinned and lost everything; therefore none but a
perfect man could provide a price sufficient to buy and release Adam and
his race from this sentence of death and its effects. Divine justice
demanded the life of a perfect human being and this was received when
Adam went into death. It followed that divine justice would accept
nothing more or less, as a price for releasing Adam and his offspring,
than a perfect human life. In order to meet these divine requirements,
the ransomer must be a perfect human being.
[205]When God gave the law to Israel at Mount Sinai he indicated by the
promise of that law that the only means by which the human race could be
redeemed or ransomed would be by the giving of a perfect human life in
the place of Adam's perfect human life, which he had forfeited by his
disobedience. We remember that St. Paul said that this law was a shadow
of better things to come. That law required an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth, a foot for a foot, a life for a life; that is to say, a
price exactly corresponding to that which had been lost. As an
illustration: Under the law if one man knocked out another's tooth, he
must lose one of his own teeth. If he struck out a man's eye, he must
give up his own eye.
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