Note VI: Cleansing by Blood

Cleansing with blood is a common expression in the book of Leviticus; but, in the New Testament, it is found only in the 9th chapter of Hebrews, and the beginning of St. John’s Epistle. Of Hebrews I have already spoken; but the passage in 1 John claims some notice, not only because of its connection with the present subject, but also on account of the difficulties that seem to surround it. “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”

It is a canon of interpretation, that whenever the benefits or results of the death of Christ are ascribed to His blood, the figure therein implied is borrowed from the types. It behoves us, therefore, to turn back to the Old Testament, and seek out the particular key-picture to which it is intended to direct our minds. In 1 Peter i., for example, the second verse will naturally turn our thoughts to the only occasion on which blood was sprinkled on the people of Israel (Ex. xxiv.); while verse 19 brings us back to their one great redemption sacrifice of the passover in Egypt.

Here then we have a certain clew to the meaning of the text before us: ‘‘The blood of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin.” The particular type in the light of which we are to understand the word must be that of some offering which was for sin, and one moreover which was for the people generally, as distinguished from those which were for individuals, and thirdly, a sacrifice of which the benefits were abiding. This at once excludes all the offerings of the first fifteen chapters of Leviticus, and will I think confine our consideration to the great day of expiation,

1 Heb. ix. 14, 22, 23, where, as in 1 John i. 7, the word is xadaplgw.

prescribed in the 16th chapter. ‘‘For on that day” (was the word to Moses) ‘‘he shall make an atonement for you to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord” (Lev. xvi. 80).

We can picture to ourselves some godly Israelite telling of his God to a heathen stranger, recounting to him the proofs of Jehovah’s goodness and faithfulness to His people, and going on to speak of His holiness, His terribleness — how for trifling acts, in which his guest would fail to see sin at all, God had visited them with signal judgments; how He was ‘‘ of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” And we can conceive that, in amazement, the stranger might demand, Whether then this people were free from the weaknesses and wickedness of other men; and, on his hearing an eager repudiation of all such pretensions, with what deepening wonder and awe he would exclaim: “How thea can you live before a God so great and terrible?”

And here the heathen stranger within the gates of the Israelite, would have reached a point analogous to that to which the opening verses of St. John’s Epistle lead us. Eternal life has been manifested, and life is the only ground of fellowship with God. But ‘‘God is light,” and it is only in the light, as the sphere of its enjoyment, that such fellowship is possible. The light of God! how can sinners bear it? Is it by attaining sin-, lessness? ‘The thought is proof of self-deception and utter absence of the truth (v. 8). But just as the question of his guest would turn the thought of the Israelite to his great day of expiation, and call to his lips the word, “It is the cleansing blood which alone enables us to live before Jehovah,” so the Christian turns to the great sin-offering, and his faith finds utterance in the blessed words, ‘‘ The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

It is not “has cleansed,” nor yet ‘‘ will cleanse,” but ‘‘ cleanseth.” It is not the statement of a fact merely, but of a truth,

and truths are greater and deeper even than facts.

But how “cleanseth?”?y

Just as the blood of the sin-offering cleansed the Israelite, It was not by any renewal of its application to him, but by the continuance of its efficacy. With Israel its virtue continued throughout the year: with us, for ever. It is not mere acts of sin, mark, that are in question here, but the deeper problem of our condition as sinners (comp. v. 10 with v. 8). Neither the

1 “Washing with blood” is an expression wholly unknown to the law, and it conveys an idea which seems quite at variance with its teaching. ‘This consideration surely must decide the otherwise doubtful controversy as to the correct reading of Rev. i. 5. “Unto Him that loveth us and loosed us from our sins in His own blood.” There is a difference of only one letter in the Greek, and the altered reading has at least equal MS. authority with that of our version. Ps. li 7, must of course be explained by the law; and the student of Scripture will naturally turn to the 19th of Numbers, or the 14th of Leviticus, to seek its meaning (Lev. xiv. 6-9). A like remark applies to other similar passages in the Old Testament. Overlooking this, Cowper derived his extraordinary idea of a fountain of blood from the 13th of Zechariah, construed in connection with the received reading of Rev. i. 5. The fact is that cleansing with water was one of the most frequent and characteristic of the typical ordinances, but yet it has been almost entirely forgotten in our creeds. ‘In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of J erusalem,, for sin and for separation for uncleanness.” (Zech. xiii. 1, see marginal reading, and compare Num. xix. 9.) “Jn that day” — the epoch referred to in verses 9-14 of the preceding chapter, Israel shall be admitted to the full benefits of the great sin-offering typified in the 19th of Numbers. (See also Rom, xi. 25-29.)

The washing of garments in blood is likewise wholly unscriptural, save in poetical language — as, e.g., Genesis xlix. 11. The meaning of Revelation vii. 14 is too often frittered away thus as though it were a merely poetical expression. But the figures used are typical, not poetical: “These are they that come out of the great tribulation (compare Matt. xxiv. 21) and they washed their robes (compare Rev. xix. 8), and made them white by (év) the blood of the Lamb.” Their lives were purified practically from the defilements that surrounded them, and purged in a still deeper sense by the blood. In Rev, xxii. 14, also, the true reading is “Blessed are they that wash their robes,”

difficulty, nor yet the answer to it, is the same. In regard of the one the Israelite turned to the day of atonement, and said ‘‘ the blood cleanseth;” but in case of his committing some act of sin, he had to bring his sin-offering, according to the 4th or 5th or 6th chapter of Leviticus. But as I have shown,’ the need of these special offerings depended entirely on “the weakness and unprofitableness” of the sacrifices of the old Covenant (Heb. x. 9-18). Therefore they have ceased; and for us the purification typified in the rite of the 19th of Numbers has taken their place. It is the 9th verse of our Epistle, and not the 7th, to which we turn. For the believer who sins against God to dismiss the matter by “the blood cleanseth,” is the levity and daring of antinomianism. The word for such is, “If we confess owr sins:” no flippant acknowledgment with the lip merely, but a solemn and real dealing with God; and thus he obtains again and again a renewal of the benefits of the death of Christ. “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

And this, no doubt, is the truth intended by the popular expression “coming back to blood.” The Israelite “came back to blood” by seeking a fresh sacrifice; but had he attempted to “come back to blood” in the sense of preserving the blood of the sin-offering in order to avail himself of it for future cleansing, he would have been cut off without mercy for presumptuous sin. (Num. xv. 30.) The most superficial knowledge either of the precepts or the principles of the book of Leviticus, will make us avoid a form of words so utterly opposed to both. With one great exception the blood of every sin-offering was poured round the altar of burnt-offering, and thus consumed; and that exception was the sacrifice of the 19th of Numbers, so often referred to in these pages. The red heifer was the sin-offering in that aspect of it in which the sinner can come back to it to obtain cleansing for every fresh act of sin. And here the whole beast

1 See pp. 116, 119, note, and 121, note, ante.

and its blood was burnt to ashes outside the camp, and the unclean person was cleansed by being sprinkled with water which had touched those ashes. But to confound the cleansing by blood — the 16th of Leviticus aspect of the sin-offering, with the cleansing by water — the 19th of Numbers aspect of it, betrays much ignorance of Scripture. The one is a continuously enduring agency; the other a continually repeated act.

There is no question, observe, as to whether the benefit depends on the death of Christ. But with some, perhaps, it is a question merely of giving up the “form of sound words 3” with others, the far more solemn one of depreciating the sacrifice of Christ, and denying to it an eflicacy which even the typical sin-offering possessed for Israel. Christ has died and risen and gone up to God, and now His blood cleanses from all sin. It is not that it avails to accomplish a succession of acts of cleansing for the believer, but that its efficacy remains to cleanse him continuously (eis rd Sunvixés Heb. x. 14), It is not in order that it may thus cleanse him, that the believer confesses his sin; his only right to the place he holds, even as he confesses, depends on the fact that it does thus cleanse him. The Israelite could avail himself of the ashes of the red heifer only in virtue of the place he had through the blood of the lamb. Our destiny, our hope, our life, depend entirely upon the enduring eflicacy of that blood, that, whether in bright days of fellowship with God, or hours of sad wilderness rebellion, “the blood cleanseth from all sin:” here it is a question only of the preciousness of Christ to God, and the faithfulness and power of Him in whose hand we rest.

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