The Cleansing Blood
“The blood of Jesus Christy Gods Soji, deanseth tis from all siny
I John i. 7.
N some texts of Scripture, as in some species of fruit, a laborious ministry is needed to cut through the covering crust to the concealed kernel that constitutes the children’s food. No such work is necessary here. This is a great, ripe, bursting fruit, lying naked under your eye and close to your hand. Scarcely any other ministry is required to-day than to bid the guests come near and eat abundantly.
On such a subject, and at such a time, we refuse to encumber ourselves with arguments and evidence. We take this at once as the word of God; and we take God at his word therein. Itself is its own evidence; it is seen in its own light. There is not in all the world anything at all like it, with which it might be confounded. Here, in Christ crucified, God is love; and yet God is righteous. Mercy and truth have never found on this sinful earth any other meeting-j:)lace. No rival, false or true, has ever appeared. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” That word is as unique in the world as the sun in the sky. No impostor ever uttered it, or aught like unto it. It comes from man’s Maker, for it fits into and fills man’s deepest want. There is no salvation in any other: none other ever gave, promised, or even conceived, such a salvation as could fill an empty human soul.
Three things in the text should be separately and successively expressed and considered. I. The Instrument. II. The Object.
III. The Act.
I. The mstriiment, or means of cleansing: “The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son.”
I. ‘’The bloodr — ThQ blood is the life. When lif was lost, in blood life was again found: death was the ailment, and death became the cure. As soon as sin entered into the world, the shedding of blood began. Blood was shed by sin, and blood was shed for sin. They first chapter of human history reveals a twofold blood-shedding — one bringing death, the other bringing life. The blood of Abel has two sides, and points two opposite ways: this way it points to the ailment — that way it points to the cure. It tells of death by sin, and of life through righteousness.
It is worthy of notice that in point of time the blood of the lamb was shed and accepted on the altar before the blood of the offerer was spilt upon the ground. The Redeemer of men is beforehand with the destroyer of men. The remedy was prepared in heaven before the disaster was plotted in hell. The first blood that touched the world was the blood that takes sin away. Before sin’s first victim appeared at the judgment-seat, the blood of the Lamb had been already there — his pardon and his righteousness. The redemption was secured, and displayed, and sealed, ere the first man who needed it was called to his account. From the time of Abel’s offering, onward, all the sacrifices proclaimed a want on earth and a resource on high. Everywhere altars were built and sacrifices slain. The early patriarchs, the Abrahamic covenant, and the Mosaic law alike, made the shedding of blood an atonement for sin. The heathen, too, by their eccentric offerings, corroborated the great revealed doctrine. You would not, in quest of evidence on some great event, go first to a maniac; but if, after obtaining the testimony of the wisest man and the best, you should hear a madman in a wood singing wildly but distinctly the same story, you would treasure the fact as an effective corroboration. It is thus that the heathen, by their bloody sacrifices, give evidence of a truth which themselves do not know. God’s voice, declaring his acceptance of a divine Substitute for fallen man, has produced echoes that roll up to the beginning of time and across all the breadth of the world. The articulation is broken and confused by many reflections from nation to nation, and from age to age, so that those who hear it cannot understand its meaninr but when in the Bible we get the key-note —” Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”
we are able to reduce the wildest warblings into harmony. All the sacrifices have come like sunbeams — more or less distorted and dimmed in their progress — from Christ, and all return to meet in him aofain.
2. “The blood of Jesus ^/^r/j:/.” — There is only one sacrifice that can take away sin. From this substance all the shadows were projected. Resting on this one sacrifice for sin, the typical sacrifices reached upward to the beginning of the world, and carried consolation to those who passed away before Christ came in the flesh.
This is purely a matter of revelation; nature does not know it: nature only knows guilt and dreads retribution. There could have been no substitute, unless God had in mercy provided one; and no knowledge of a substitute provided, unless God in his mercy had revealed it. Jesus Christ was man; and as our Head in covenant, he gave himself in his people s stead. The shedding of his blood even unto death became the life of all who trust in him, for whom he died.
But wherein consists the sufficiency of the Substitute’s sacrifice y Herein —
3. He is God’s ozvn Son. — In the beginning he was with God, and was God. He is the Father’s wxll-beloved. He is chosen in the eternal covenant for this end, that he might give his life a ransom for many.
This is the point where faith is needed, and where our own speculations are of little avail. We cannot climb up to that high heaven above us: we must throw ourselves into the arms of this Jesus Christ who is nigh to us, who has taken our nature that he might be within our reach. The matter does not depend on the accuracy of our research and the extent of our knowledge. The essence of the whole lies in the absolute sufficiency of the atonement made by Christ for sin. On this matter it is permitted, it is required of us, that we cast care away. The scripture here is applicable in full — “Casting all your care on him, for he careth for you.” The whole strength of the case hes there. He — God, our Maker and our Judge — God, who made man in his own image, and would not abandon him even when he fell — God, almighty and all-wise — loved the creatures he had made for himself; continued to love them when they had sinned; so loved them that he gave his own Son, — that his own eternal, equal Son, gave himself a ransom for their life. In the covenant between Father, Son, and Spirit, the plan was fully laid before time began; and when the fulness of time had come, the Son took our nature — became flesh and dwelt among us — shed his blood, the blood which is the life — gave his life as a sacrifice for sin. This is the atonement for taking sin away, and admitting cleansed sinners into a holy heaven; the atonement which the Son offered and the Father accepted. That matter now is out of our hands: God has taken it into his own. What is required of us is, that we leave it in his hands — that we believe in God.
THE CLEANSING BLOOD. lic)
If this satisfaction were not sufficient — if the life of the Son of God given for men’s sins were not sufficient for its object — it would be a defect in the purpose and the work of God. But this is not only impossible, it is inconceivable. If we admit the thought of defect on that side, we are for the time not thinking of the infinite and eternal God; we are sinking down to the conception of an idol. Our God — the God with whom we have to do, our Maker and Preserver, our Judge — has taken all that into his own hands. “Jehovah-jireh — the Lord will provide:” it is out of our hands. He has given the Son: the Son has given himself. Christ said, as he poured out his life a ransom, “It is finished;” and the Father has received him into glory, and committed all judgment into his hands.
On that side, brother, let go. Make no attempt to hold by twigs that grow on the face of the rock: let go — let yourself fall Into Christ. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
II. The object to which the blood of Christ is applied: “Sin,” our sin; all our sin.
‘’From siiC — Here the one great remedy touches the one great disease. Sin is the root of bitterness that has sprung up and defiled God’s beautiful world: the sacrifice of Christ is the stroke delivered against that root to kill it, and so cleanse from its poisonous fruit the new heaven and the new earth, where the righteous shall dwell. Sin is that wherewith Satan destroyed man; the blood of Christ is that wherewith God will destroy sin.
In this text are brought together the two greatest things of time, — the greatest evil and the greatest good. There the strong man and the stronger meet, with all intelligent creation as spectators of the conflict. Behold the battle on which our life and blessedness depend. Behold these two, — sin and the blood of Christ. And the same two meet in deadly conflict now in single human hearts. Jesus has said, “If any man will open, I will come in;” and at his incoming he meets sin, either reigning still, or dethroned, but disturbing; but the stronger overcomes the strong, and makes him captive.
The disease was in the world, and would have destroyed it: to the lost world the Healer came. The blood of Jesus Christ flowed upon the ground on Calvary: the power of that life infinitely worthy, then shed, reached upward to the beginning of time and downward to its end, as sunbeams at noon reach the eastern and western boundaries of the hemisphere. For the sin of the world the Divine Healer shed his blood; and the same life poured out, infinite in atoning worth, streams into every open heart, to heal the sore disease that has broken out there. Every soul that opens to Christ becomes a separate battle-field; and all the lifetime from the beginning of convictions is the battle-day. The blood of Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world — the life of the Life-giver devoted as an atonement for the dead, is ready — infinite in value and ever at hand — to flow in and touch the exceeding bitter thing sin, and by touching to take it away.
When you plant a flower in your garden, you are not troubled with any doubt about the power of the sun to send a ray into its bosom, although he must needs at the same time pour rays into every flower over half a world; and this but a creature of our God, one of the works of our Father’s hand. How much more shall life from the life of Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, flow into your heart to heal you, O thou of little faith!
All slur — There is a threefold universality in the remedy needed by man and provided by God. “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin;” — first, All kinds of it; secondly. All parts of it; thirdly, All degrees of it.
I. All kinds of it. — The guilt of our first representative lying upon us, as a heritage, is one kind. Our father was representative: he fell, and we in him. His sin was in some real sense our sin. True, a man readily resents this imputation, and complains. But he makes nothing of his resistance. For my own part, although I cannot explain all the difficulties that adhere to the subject, I clearly see that a man has just as much right, or as little, to complain of injustice in that he was born poor, or in Africa. We cannot by searching find out God. I intend to listen to all his word, and wait on all his providence, and count that he will show himself right when his own time comes. That kind of sin, whatever its specific nature may be, is cleansed away by the blood of Christ. Indeed it is remarkable that almost the only glimpses that the Bible gives us of this species of the disease are conveyed in the account of its cure. (Rom. v.)
Again: another kind is the inherent tendency to sin that lies like a law in our members from the first, and breaks out into activity parallel and simultaneous with the life. It is not so easy to raise questions on this head: men may dispute a doctrine, but cannot well deny a fact. And here the fact is obvious and uniform. “I find a law in my members, that when I would do good, evil is present with me.” This kind, too, goeth out by the blood of sprinkling.
Again: all the actual sins that emerge on the individual life — the abundant overflow of that fountain of sin and uncleanness which has been opened in the heart of fallen man. To sin in this aspect, the blood, the given life of the Divine Substitute, applies a cure. This blood takes away sins, although they be like clouds.
2. All parts of it. — Not portions of a believer’s sins are forgiven, but all. Suppose we should divide them thus, — sins of youth, and sins of fuller age. It is not that later and more distinctly remembered sins are taken off the conscience, while older and more dim remembrances are left like rust spots to eat through the soul’s peace. All sins: look back by aid of memory — for the mind has an eye behind, although the body has only one before — look back on your life-course, and you behold the whole line dotted thick with spots of guilt. The line stretches away into the dim distance, where it fades from your view. How many He in the mist of hfe’s early morning-, before memory was awake to take notice of the facts. But these too are included in the “all.” For although they may be beyond your view, they are not beyond the view of Jesus Christ, God’s own Son. The healing does not depend on how much of his disease the patient understands, but on how much the physician knows. Our healer is the omniscient God. He knows all. Now, he did not give his life a ransom in order to blot out only those sins that we can remember and place before him. in detail: he gave his life a ransom in order that he might purify a people unto himself, and have them without spot or wrinkle for his company in his kingdom. He knows all the sins, if we do not know them all; and “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.”
Sins against God, and sins against man; sins in secret, and sins that are open; sins of omission, and sins of commission — in whatsoever aspect you view them, in all their multitude and variety, the sacrifice of God’s Son takes them all away. The infinite covers all the finite: the life of God’s Son avails for all that death, to take it away.
3. All degrees of it. — Some sins in their own nature, or on account of aggravating circumstances, are more heinous in the sight of God than others. In more senses than one the wicked and their wickedness are like the troubled sea. Over the expanse of human life, or a human life, all is bitter sin; even as over all the expanse of the ocean it is bitter salt water. But as the ocean is in some parts very deep, and in others comparatively shallow, so the varieties in depth of sin, in the world, or in a life, are as many and as great. It is not possible to determine by a look on the surface which are the deepest places of either sea. The deepest may sometimes be the stillest. But one thing is sure as to the magnitude of the ailment: as the shallow portions of the ocean will drown a man as certainly, if he be cast helpless on them, as the deepest; so a soul that is left in its sin, without an ark for refuge, will perish, whatever may be the degree of aggravation that may have marked its guilt.
III. The act: “Cleanseth us.”
While the act is one, it has several distinct aspects. Turned towards God on high, it is justification. Turned towards the believer himself within, it is peace of conscience. Turned outward upon the world and the Church, it is sanctification.
I. Upzvard God’s sight, it is justification. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” “God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” Absolutely blameless and pure in God’s sight is every one who is found by faith in his Son. “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That word is spoken to the Redeemer himself, but it belongs also to all the redeemed. That holy oil of the Father’s approbation which was poured out on the head of the High Priest, flowed down to the utmost skirts of his garments. Now, in God’s sight Christ’s members partake of Christ’s hoHness. As the Father regards the Son, he regards all those who in the Son believe. Those who stand round the throne are in God’s sight all righteous; and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Brethren, so far from being a sublime, exalted, merely contemplative doctrine this, it is the most closely practical of all teaching, and the most powerful on life of all beliefs. But look unto Jesus, and take God at his word. Count that God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you, and walk out and in at your daily occupation as dear children of our Father in heaven. Count that the Judge has no charge against you, because it has all been discharged by the blood of Christ. This belief animating your soul will make your face shine among your fellows, — will make you happy within your own heart, obedient to God, and beneficent to men. To have your sins all blotted out from God’s judgment-book through the blood of Christ, is the greatest fact of human history; and the belief of it is the greatest motive that can be brought to bear in behalf of goodness on a human heart.
2. Imvards, as reflected on the Christian’s own conscience, it is peace. “My peace I give unto you,” said Jesus: “not as the world giveth give I unto you.” Many costly washings superstition has tried in order to cleanse the conscience and so obtain peace; but all in vain. Nothing but the blood of God’s own Son has power to make peace; for when that offering has been given and accepted, the Judge demands no more. Nothing lies behind unreached. This saves to the uttermost.
Conscience is a terrible disturber when it is left unclean, and a mighty peacemaker when it is purged. Conscience is a kind of resident ambassador from God in the inner court of the soul. Our appliances cannot satisfy the conscience, because the conscience speaks from God, — for God. But let the appliance for cleansing the conscience which God has himself provided, and with which he is well pleased, be brought to the soul, at length all strife ceases. When the blood of Christ is accepted and applied, conscience has no more to say, for the King eternal is satisfied.
The act of forgiving is God’s act, and it is done on high; but wdien the soul within clearly and correctly sees the reflection of that great light glancing down from heaven, all its troubles subside, and there is a great calm. It is not that the soul can make peace within itself; but even that sea can settle down into a oreat calm when it hears its Lord’s command, “Peace, be still.” There are three experiences at this point.
(i.) Sometimes people think they see the shadow of God’s forgiveness flitting about within their own hearts, when it is nothing else than the mists that spring from the uneasy ground. This is peace when there is no peace.
(2.) Sometimes a darkness remains over a soul after the blood of the Lamb has discharged its burden from the book of God. This is fear continuing in a poor feeble heart after the true cause of fear has been taken away; as the sea sometimes continues to heave after the storm which stirred it has changed into a calm.
(3.) Sometimes the two meet — justification in heaven above, and peace of conscience in the beHeving man. God is at peace with him, and he is at peace with God. Discharge on the ground of Christ’s blood is entered in favour of this man in the sealed book of judgment — he is safe; but an impression, faithfully taken off that entry in the book, has been dropped like a tiny leaflet from high heaven, and has fallen into the bosom of the believer, so that, assured of his pardon, he already enjoys a great peace.
3. Outward, in the view of men, all that appears is a new obedience. Human eyes cannot penetrate heaven to learn whether your sins are blotted out from the book of judgment, — cannot penetrate even into your heart to know whether you are in secret reconciled to God through the death of his Son; but human eyes, excluded from these secret things, pry all the more keenly into that which lies within their reach, — your spirit and life in the world. The world seizes a divine weapon that lies at hand, — “By their fruits ye shall know them,” — and wields it with a will, to test the various professions of the Church.
For one thing, brethren, if we be true, and truly leaning on Christ, we should not very much regret this, nor loudly complain of it. Granted that the scrutiny is sometimes carried to an excess, and in a hostile spirit, —
(512) 17 granted that under the power of prejudice they often pronounce unjust judgment, — still, on the whole, it is safer for us to be exposed to such testings. The same Lord who permits the winter frost and wind to search our bodily weakness, and impart bodily strength, permits a world keen and biting like a north wind to compass Christians about, and will make it all work together for good. That blast which comes searching for a weak point in your character, in order to enter and rend all away, will be overruled by its seeking for the weakness to remove it, and make the place strong. “The poor ye have always with you,” said the Lord to his disciples. Why y For their good. All things in his administration are for their sakes, for their good, — to exercise them in love, and pity, and benevolent deeds. The jealous, unbelieving, unfair world ye have always around you, watching whom it may assail and devour. Why, all things are for your sakes; and this north wind, beating hard upon the disciples’ brows, will improve the health of their holiness, and fit them for greater usefulness to God and to men. “Adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour.”
The design of this meditation, from first to last, has been to magnify the mercy of God; but every additional glory that is seen in it magnifies the guilt and danger of all who neglect or despise it. Has God given us such a Saviour, and have we left him stretching out his hands to us in vain y “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation y “God has, in infinite compassion, provided a life to set over against ours when it was forfeited, — a life divine, that spreads over all finite life, and goes beyond it to infinitude; and poured out that life, for our life a substitute; and opened the door of heaven, and left it standing all through the day of time with the invitation, “Whosoever will, let him come: the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” And when the door is shut, what will become of the despisers who would none of him? In very proportion to the fulness of the measure of mercy from God in the day of grace will be the justness of their exclusion in the day of judgment.