(1.) They speak of redemption as a deliverance. We have found throughout the Word of God that to redeem is not merely to make atonement, but to deliver by means of a ransom. In all the passages that we have examined it has included the idea of actual deliverance. It has never been applied to the act of propitiation alone. Now turn to this hymn of the elders and living ones before the throne, and there you see precisely the same idea: ‘Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.’ There was an act of outgathering and ingathering. They were gathered out as a separate people from all nations of the earth, and gathered in to be a peculiar people unto God. The passage reminds us of those words in John, xi. 52, which teach us that the great object of the death of the Lord Jesus was, ‘that he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.’ So this heavenly hymn describes them as being thus gathered in one before the throne. (2.) It is a redemption through the most precious blood of the Lamb. The deliverance, or the gathering, is not simply an exercise of power, but is the result of atonement by blood. It is not merely the act of the Holy Ghost calling the sinner, but the act of God making atonement, or giving Christ to die for him. Before one soul could be drawn out from the ruin of the world, and gathered in to God, the barrier of the curse must be taken out of the way, and the law satisfied by its complete fulfilment in the Person of our Redeeming Head. Till the ransom was paid not one soul could be set free, and therefore the hymn says, ‘Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.’