The Old Testament specified rights of redemption to the nearest of kin regarding both close relatives and property. These rights were carried out when Boaz took Ruth as his wife and thereby restored the family inheritance and preserved the honor of the family name. This and the many other examples of redemption rights in the Old Testament were types picturing the “right-ness” of God’s repossession of His people through the blood of Christ.  

The kinsman redeemer or Goel had several specific rights under the law. Everyone had to respect his rights. He could either exercise them or neglect them as he chose. The Goel had these options:  

(1) to purchase back a forfeited inheritance (Leviticus 25:23-28).  

Christ bought us back, but also restored our right to share an inheritance in God. He not only set us free, but made us heirs, joint-heirs with himself.  

2) to ransom his kinsman from bondage to a foreigner (Leviticus 25:47-49).  

Sin is an aberration; it is a foreign taskmaster. We were not designed to be enslaved to sin. Christ gave himself to pay the price to God’s justice; but He went even further and effectively destroyed the power of sin over us.  

(3) to avenge the death of a slain kinsman, to maintain family honor (Numbers 5:8; 35:12; Deuteronomy 19:6; I kings 16:11, etc.).  

We were dead in our trespasses and sins. But God had always purposed that we should be His children, members of His family and household. He destroyed the Murderer and made us alive again together with Him.  

(4) to marry the widow of the deceased kinsman (Deuteronomy 25:7-9; Ruth 3:12; 4:1-14).  

Christ not only bought the Church with His own blood (Acts 20:28), but made her His Bride.