The Blood of God
First Sermon on a Pauline Text
THE CHURCH OF GOD, WHICH
HE HATH PURCHASED WITH
HIS OWN BLOOD. — Acta XX. 28.
THERE is a well-known device in first-class composition whereby a great author gives his readers a sudden stroke of surprise; and that is when he substitutes quite another name for the ordinary and the expected name of the person concerning whom he is writing. All our best literature is full of this ancient rhetorical device; Holy Scripture is full of it, and the text is a case in point. The readers of the Apostle would have expected him to say: The Church of God, which He hath purchased with the blood of His Son; or, with the blood of Jesus Christ; or, with the blood of the Lamb. But by this new and unique way in which the Apostle words this great scripture, he startles his readers into still more wonder and worship than if he had been content to employ one of those far more usual names of our Lord. In this very bold passage the Apostle sets the sin-atoning death of Jesus Christ before us with the veil of His flesh withdrawn, as it were, for a moment. In this almost too bold scripture, he
18s sets before us the pure and immediate Godhead of our Lord made sin for us. And the immense impression that these almost too awful words, the blood of God, make on our minds and our hearts as often as we return to them, is the Apostle’s complete justification and rich reward for his almost too bold employment of those awful words.
1. Now, in the first place, what an unspeakable evil sin must be! We would not have been altogether ignorant of the awful evil of sin, even if it had not gone the length of the blood of God. We could not have shut our eyes to the way that sin has cursed and enslaved the soul of man. Death here, and hell hereafter, would surely have burned something of the diabolical evil of sin into the most sin-seared conscience and into the most stone-hardened heart. But all the sick-beds, and all the death-beds, and all the lazar-houses, and all the mad-houses, and all the battle-fields, and all the desolated homes, and all the broken hearts of men and women, from the fall of man to the day of judgment, would not have proclaimed to earth and heaven and hell the unspeakable malice and wickedness of sin. God’s own blood, shed by sin, and shed for sin; that alone, in all the universe, is the full measure of the infinite evil of sin. ‘Whatever your thoughts about sin may be; whatever your experience and estimate of sin may be, that is My experience and estimate of sin,’ says Almighty God, pointing us to Gethsemane and to Calvary. God the Son, made a curse, that and that alone is the true measure of sin: that and that alone has for ever revealed the true evil of sin: and that and that alone has paid the uttermost farthing for our everlasting redemption and deliverance from sin. ‘Let it be counted folly, or phrenzy, or fury, or whatsoever,’ says Hooker, in what is perhaps the greatest sermon in the English language; ’ it is our wisdom and our comfort. We care for no other knowledge in the world but this, — that man hath sinned and God hath suffered: that God hath made Himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God.’
2. And then, what a glorious seal has been set to the holiness of the law of God by His own blood. No wonder that the holy law of God was proclaimed to be magnified, and made honourable for ever, when the very blood of the Lawgiver Himself was shed in order to vindicate and redress the broken law. The throne of God had been founded in righteousness from everlasting. But after a full satisfaction for sin had been made with His own blood who had sat on that throne from everlasting, that glorious throne was for ever established in righteousness as never before. How surpassingly illustrious has the holiness of the law of God shone out on all earth and heaven ever since that day when He whose holy law it was, shed His own blood in atonement to the holiness and the inviolability of that law!
And not His own blood at its last and completed outpouring only. But, along with that, take all the things of the same kind that led up to
His bloodshedding on the tree, and all the things that entered into that last bloodshedding. Take all His holy obedience, and all His holy endurance of all kinds in His body, and in His soul, and in His spirit, from His circumcision to His crucifixion. For all that was paid by Him, first in tribute, and then in atonement, to His own holy law. And it was all paid for us. Is all our daily and hourly sin so much bold rebellion against God, and all done in despite of God’s holy law? Then see, standing over against our rebellion, the complete, and perfect, and most willing subjection and obedience in everything of God the Son. Are we by nature, and on every temptation to it, full of malice towards God and man? Look, over against that, at our Lord’s love to God and man. Look at His unbounded goodness of heart and life. Is there bitter repining, and envying, and grudging in our hearts at the good of our neighbour? Then let us lift our eyes and look at the Son of God, how He made Himself of no reputation, and rejoiced at the prospect of His sharing His glory with us all for ever. Hear Him, O jealous and grudging hearts! I thank thee, O Father, that Thou hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me.’ And so on through the whole of His life of suretyship obedience, and on to the end of His death of atonement, till His own holy law was satisfied and vindicated to its very utmost height and depth and length and breadth, even to its very innermost spirituality, in every thought and word and deed of God the Son as the son of man.
3. But the sinner’s guilty conscience is sometimes, and in some men, far more difficult to satisfy and to silence than even the broken law of God. Long after the broken law of God has been magnified and made honourable, the sinner’s evil conscience will still hold out against all that can be said or done to restore its lost peace, and to re-establish its lost confidence in the goodwill of God and man. There is a divinely delegated sovereignty in the human conscience; and there is a corresponding uncompromisingness and inappeasableness in the guilty conscience. Even after the offended sovereign is satisfied, the viceroy still holds out against the disloyalty and the treachery. The crimen Icesce majestatis, the high misdemeanour done against the crown, is far more resented and avenged by the king’s judges than even by the king himself. And sin is such an unpardonable misdemeanour against all law and all authority, and it so gashes the conscience and so horrifies the heart of the truly penitent sinner, that absolutely nothing has ever been discovered to heal and to quiet and to restore the conscience but the blood of Him who is God. There is no physician for the sinner’s exasperated conscience, as Luther is always saying, but the Lord of the conscience Himself. And there is no balm that even He can bring to bear on a thoroughly bad conscience, but His own blood. Your guilty conscience can have nothing better than the blood of your God. And if that does not cleanse, and quiet, and heal your guilty conscience, it must just rage on. Your conscience can be offered nothing on earth or in heaven beyond the blood of God.
4. One of the ways in which the blood of God comes to have such sovereign virtue in the sinner’’s conscience is this. When our consciences toward one another are wounded, and are full of remorse and fear, nothing will heal the wound and restore peace between man and man, nothing but a great uprising of love between the alienated parties. But if a great enough uprising and outgoing of love takes place between them, then not only is the lost peace restored, but those who were once such enemies are henceforth far better friends than ever they were before. And the same noble law of reconciling love holds even more in the world of sin and salvation. The blood of God the Son is such a manifestation of divine love toward the sinner that nothing can resist it. No guilt, no remorse, no terror, no suspicion, can stand out against the love of God in the blood of His only begotten Son. It is not so much our Surety”*s payment of the uttermost farthing of our debt that heals our horrified consciences. It is not His atoning blood even that so pacifies, and so conquers, and gives such peace, to the guilty conscience. It is the love of God as seen in the atonement that can alone do all that. And if there are still any of the dregs of remorse, and terror, and irreconcilability, and suspicion, in your conscience toward God, it is not because His blood is not of volume and virtue enough to wash away all your sins; but it is because you do not open your heart wide enough and deep enough to receive His love. For there is no fear in love. But perfect love on God’s part to you, awakening on your part a corresponding love to God, such perfect love on both sides casteth out all possible fear, so much so, that he that feareth is not made perfect in love.
My brethren, I can recommend this great Scripture to every guilty conscience and corrupt heart. For, times and occasions without number, when every other Scripture has threatened to fail myself, this Scripture has been a rock and a refuge to me. The very awfulness of the word used has again and again silenced the almost as awful accusation of my conscience and the almost as awful despair of my heart. I know all that has been said against the above reading in this glorious passage; but once read by me I shall never let it go, though I have to hold it against all the world. The Blood OF God has an inward, and an experimental, and an all-satisfying evidence to me: and I recommend it to you with all my heart.