Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things - To redeem, λυτροω, signifies to procure life for a captive or liberty for a slave by paying a price, and the precious blood of Christ is here stated to be the price at which the souls of both Jews and Gentiles were redeemed; is was a price paid down, and a price which God's righteousness required.

Corruptible things mean here any thing that man usually gives in exchange for another; but the term necessarily includes all created things, as all these are corruptible and perishing. The meaning of the apostle is, evidently, that created things could not purchase the souls of men, else the sacrifice of Christ had not been offered; could any thing less have done, God would not have given up his only-begotten Son. Even silver and gold, the most valuable medium of commerce among men, bear no proportion in their value to the souls of a lost world, for there should be a congruity between the worth of the thing purchased and the valuable consideration which is given for it; and the laws and customs of nations require this: on this ground, perishable things, or things the value of which must be infinitely less than the worth of the souls of men, cannot purchase those souls. Nothing, therefore, but such a ransom price as God provided could be a sufficient ransom, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the world.

Vain conversation - Empty, foolish, and unprofitable conduct, full of vain hopes, vain fears, and vain wishes.

Received by tradition from your fathers - The Jews had innumerable burdens of empty ceremonies and useless ordinances, which they received by tradition from their fathers, rabbins, or doctors. The Gentiles were not less encumbered with such than the Jews; all were wedded to their vanities, because they received them from their forefathers, as they had done from theirs. And this antiquity and tradition have been the ground work of many a vain ceremony and idle pilgrimage, and of numerous doctrines which have nothing to plead in their behalf but this mere antiquity. But such persons seem not to consider that error and sin are nearly coeval with the world itself.

ye.

Psalm 49:7,8 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him...

1 Corinthians 6:20 For you are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

1 Corinthians 7:23 You are bought with a price; be not you the servants of men.

corruptible. See on ver.

1 Peter 1:7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire...

vain.

Psalm 39:6 Surely every man walks in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heaps up riches, and knows not who shall gather them.

Psalm 62:10 Trust not in oppression, and become not vain in robbery: if riches increase, set not your heart on them.

Jeremiah 4:11 At that time shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem...

Romans 1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations...

1 Corinthians 3:20 And again, The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

received.

1 Peter 4:3 For the time past of our life may suffice us to have worked the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts...

Jeremiah 9:14 But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them:

Jeremiah 16:19 O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come to you from the ends of the earth...

Jeremiah 44:17 But we will certainly do whatever thing goes forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven...

Ezekiel 20:18 But I said to their children in the wilderness, Walk you not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments...

Amos 2:4 Thus said the LORD; For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof...

Zechariah 1:4-6 Be you not as your fathers, to whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus said the LORD of hosts...

Matthew 15:2,3 Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread...

Acts 7:51,52 You stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do you...

Acts 19:34,35 But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians...

Galatians 1:4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:

The Family Likeness
'As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy, in all manner of conversation.'--1 Peter i. 15. That is the sum of religion--an all-comprehensive precept which includes a great deal more than the world's morality, and which changes the coldness of that into something blessed, by referring all our purity to the Lord that called us. One may well wonder where a Galilean fisherman got the impulse that lifted him to such a height; one may well wonder that he ventured to address such wide, absolute …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

On Perfection
"Let us go on to perfection." Heb. 6:1. The whole sentence runs thus: "Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection: Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God;" which he had just before termed, "the first principles of the oracles of God," and "meat fit for babes," for such as have just tasted that the Lord is gracious. That the doing of this is a point of the utmost importance the Apostle intimates in the next …
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions

The Christian's Heaviness and Rejoicing
I would have you this morning, look first of all at the Christian's heaviness: he is "in heaviness through manifold temptations;" and then, in the next place, at the Christian's great rejoicing. I. In the first place, HIS HEAVINESS. This is one of the most unfortunate texts in the Bible. I have heard it quoted ten thousand times for my own comfort, but I never understood it till a day or two ago. On referring to most of the commentaries in my possession, I cannot find that they have a right idea …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 4: 1858