Definition (house-style)
Agorazo (Gr. ἀγοράζω) is the most basic of the three Greek verbs for redemption in the New Testament. It means literally ‘to buy in the marketplace’ (agora) and describes the act by which Christ purchased humanity as though on the slave market, paying his blood as the purchase price (cf. 1Cor. 6:20; 1Cor. 7:23; Rev. 5:9). This word denotes the transfer of ownership: the believer no longer belongs to sin but to Christ.
Agorazo represents the first step in threefold redemption: the purchase act itself, without yet describing liberation from the market (exagorazo) or release into freedom (lutroo). The emphasis falls on the price paid, not on the subsequent condition of the purchased person.
Author variants
Warnock
Warnock describes agorazo as the starting point of the redemption structure:
“The simple meaning is that we have been ‘bought with a price.’ The Greek word is agorazo — ‘bought in the market place.’ […] The picture is: a slave is standing on the auction block in the market place. Another man puts down the redemption money out of compassion. He has bought the slave for himself.”
[Warnock, The Hyssop that Springeth Out of the Wall, hyssop2.html]
For Warnock, agorazo illustrates that the believer has genuinely become Christ’s property. This is the juridical foundation: the purchase price has been paid. But the term says nothing yet about the slave’s position — he has a new owner, but he has not yet left the market.