We see an interesting feature of statutory law – the commandment that no stranger may eat of the Passover, and then followed by this exception to the statute, covering a subset of the prohibited class. One type of strangers, rather than being prohibited from fellowship, must be brought into the fellowship.
But every man’s servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof.
Exodus 12:44
Among the types of strangers, we’ve seen the ‘free’ long term resident and the ‘free’ short term resident, the day laborer, and the long term ‘servant.’ This ‘servant’ is a euphemism for the more provocative word, slave.
The foreigner that belongs to a member of the community of God – though he is a slave, yet is he invited to the high feast.
Before Passover, we see this command in the earlier dispensation:
And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.
He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.
Genesis 17:12-13
The New Testament explains this command – we were bought – yet not with money!
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
1 Peter 1:8
For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 16:20
Are we in bondage? Paul spent much time in his epistle to the Galatians telling how we are free, but yet in other epistles he notes that we are still slaves:
Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.
Romans 6:18
But now that we are purchased and bound to the family of God – are we circumcised?
In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:
Colossians 2:11
Dispensationalism and the Law 