by G. H. Lang
All Scripture quotations are from the R.V. (1881 revision).
Copies of this book are available from: Schoettle Publishing Co., U.S.A.
PART ONE
1. WHAT THE BLOOD DOES?
2. BLOOD PROTECTS FROM VENGEANCE.
3. THE BLOOD GIVES ACCESS TO GOD.
4. WHY THE BLOOD SAVES?
5. WHO'S BLOOD SAVES?
6. WHOM DOES THE BLOOD SAVE?
7. BENEFITS SECURED BY ATONING BLOOD.
PART TWO
8. WHAT THE BLOOD DOES NOT DO.
9. BLOOD DOES NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF FOOD.
10. BLOOD DOES NOT DO THE WORK OF WATER.
11. BLOOD IS NOT OIL AND DOES NOT SERVE THE PURPOSE OF OIL.
12. THE BLOOD DOES NOT DISPENSE WITH DISCIPLINE.
13. BLOOD DOES NOT DO THE WORK OF THE SWORD.
PART I
The taking of life in the service of God and to the advantage of man began immediately after man sinned. It appears that the Creator Himself originated the practice. That the fallen pair might not be always exposed to His indignation as naked, and thus unsuitable to His eye, and that their nakedness might be hidden from each other, "Jehovah God made for Adam and his wife coats of skin, and clothed them" (Gen. 3: 21). It is presumed that this involved the death of victims to provide the skins.
While the basic instinct to worship the Deity is inherent in man it could scarcely have been otherwise than by Divine instruction that Abel slew a firstling of his flock and offered this, including the richest element, the fat (Gen. 4: 4).
When the judgment of the Flood had swept away the wicked, and a new era opened for the cleansed earth, Noah consecrated all to God by offering clean beasts and birds, and these must die and be burned in fire on an altar.
This distinction between living creatures, that some were "clean," suitable to and acceptable to the Deity, and some were not, continued in the remembrance and observance of the race, even after mankind had again revolted from the only true God. Of early Babylonian sacrifices Sayce says : "It is noticeable that it was only the cultivated plant and the domesticated beast that were thus offered to the deity. The dog and swine, or rather wild boar, are never mentioned in the sacrificial list.*
[* A. H. Sayce, The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia, 466, 467. The learned author showed various other parallels between that earlier Babylonian religion and the Mosaic ritual. Ch. ix, "The Ritual of the Temple" is of great interest, but his conclusion is wrong : The Mosaic Law must have drawn its first inspiration from the Abrahamic age." Rather was the human religion a debased survival of the original God-appointed arrangements by which man could approach Him, and the Mosaic system a revival and extension by Divine instruction of that original system of worship.]
This essential distinction was revived and amplified by Moses.
In the same way Abraham drew near to God at altars he built, and God’s covenant with him was ratified by the sacrifice of clean animals and birds (Gen. 12: 7, 8 ; 13: 4 ; 15: 9, 10). This ground of approach to God culminated in the offering of Isaac his son on an altar and the substitution of a clean animal, a ram, for the deliverance of Isaac (Gen. 22.). Isaac and Jacob similarly drew near to God at altars (Gen. 26: 25 ; 35: 3, 7). During that same period Job likewise offered burnt-offerings on behalf of his family, in case their hearts had failed in reverence to God (Job 1: 5).
All this is Biblical and historical evidence that from the very beginning of man’s history God had taught him that, being a sinner, he could draw near to God only upon the basis that a death had taken place to redeem him from death as the consequence of his transgression of the Divine law. Death as the penalty of sin cannot be remitted but must be exacted ; only it may be exacted by means of an innocent substitute dying instead of the culprit.
Down to this stage the Divine records have summarized two and a half thousands of years of man’s history, and no mention has been made of the blood of the sacrifices. But it were wrong to infer from this that the use of the blood in sacrificing was unknown in earliest times and that the emphatic use of the word is a later addition not warranted by primitive usage. When writing this brief summary of the salient events of most ancient times Moses knew well (1) that the sacrificial use of blood was practised universally and known by his hearers and readers ; (2) that he had already, before writing his records, explained and enforced this usage upon Israel ; and (3) that in the next following sections of his history (Exodus and Leviticus) the theme would be enlarged. Thus no one of those times would make the false inference suggested, or would regard the extensive use of the blood as an innovation.
This leads to our first topic,
WHAT THE BLOOD DOES.
But before considering its atoning virtue it is most necessary to notice
first its opposite power, as the background of its atoning power.
1.- BLOOD CRIES FOR VENGEANCE.
This God had sternly emphasized in the earliest years when
He said to Cain : "the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the
ground. And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened its mouth to
receive thy brother’s blood ; when thou tillest the ground, it shall not
henceforth yield unto thee its strength" (Gen. 4: 10-12). This, as other first
events in man’s history, must have been well known to Noah, seeing that for 600
years he was contemporary with Methusaleh who had been contemporary with Adam
for 243 years, and that during that period the race formed but one society in
one region. The memory of those words of God to Cain would, it may be taken for
granted, be fresh in Noah’s mind when, directly after the Flood, God added this
declaration fundamental to human society : "Every moving thing that liveth shall
be food for you ; as the green herb have I given you all. But flesh with the
life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your
blood, the blood of your lives, will I require ; at the hand of every beast will
I require it : and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother,
will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his
blood be shed : for in the image of God made He man" (Gen. 9: 3-6. R.V.).
These early Divine statements are basic to the affairs of earth and man as
viewed by God. They have never been abrogated but rather amplified. These
essential points are to be observed :
1. That blood shed unrighteously brings Divine judgment on the very land it
stains. This was incorporated into the Mosaic law. Speaking of murder Moses said
: "blood it polluteth the land" (Num. 35: 33). Considering the torrents of blood
that have been shed without Divine warrant how defiled this earth must be before
God, and what judgments must hang over it. How heavy must be the wrath of heaven
accumulating against, say, the United States of America with over 11,000 murders
annually, and only a few punished, and 21,000 suicides.
2. Blood is the vehicle of bodily life. This also forms the basis of sin being
atoned by blood, which will be considered later from Lev. 17. Life is the gift
of God alone. No one else can impart it, though one may rob another of it. To
take life therefore is to rob God. He sets upon human life such value that He
exacts reparation from the man who takes it and even from the beast which takes
it. Such is the control of the Creator over every creature, even the wild
creatures. What an awfully solemn title of God is this. "He that maketh
inquisition for blood" (Ps. 9: 12). It is said that when Metternich urged
Napoleon to agree to peace and to spare human life, the Emperor replied by
cursing human life.
"He that maketh inquisition for blood" could not overlook this.
3. The penalty of shedding man’s blood, so taking his life, is that the
murderer’s blood must be shed. Capital punishment is by express Divine command.
It is not simply a deterrent against murder, though it is this : much more it is
demanded by equity. Life is of higher value than anything else ; as Satan truly
said, "all that a man hath will he give for his life" (Job 2: 4). Therefore
nothing else could be accepted from the murderer in place of his life, for
nothing else could be equivalent to the other man’s life he had taken (Num. 35:
33).
4. Hence arises the prohibition against eating blood, or flesh with the blood
undrained from it. It is self-appropriation of an article which belongs
exclusively to God, its only Giver, its permanent and solitary Owner. The
prohibition was heavily enforced upon Israelites (Lev. 17: 10: Deut. 12: 16,
23), and duly re-enacted upon Gentile Christians (Ac. 15: 20 ; 16: 4 ; 21: 25).
The ground for it admits of no exceptions.
In its highest aspect war is a Divine judgment upon peoples for their sins
(Ezek. 14: 2 1). Yet even so, David, the God-fearing soldier who executed this
judgment on the surrounding nations, and was supported by God in his campaigns,
was disqualified from the honour of building God’s house at Jerusalem because he
had shed much blood (I Chron. 22: 6-8). Let the soldier who is a Christian
ponder this. It emphasizes the value that God sets on human life, and that, even
when war is viewed ideally, it is a lower service that disqualifies for the
highest service. Suppose that the extermination of some degraded tribe or nation
be a Divine judgment, required for the general moral good of mankind, yet
clearly a Christian soldier who, by order of his superiors, carries out that
extermination cannot build up God’s spiritual house, the church, among that
people he destroys.
Thus does blood shed defile man and land and cries aloud for vengeance, which
cry God hears.
This being the case when any common man is murdered, how much louder must be the
cry for vengeance of the holy blood of the murdered Son of God. What an incubus
of guilt and penalty His murderers accepted when they shouted in a frenzy of
rage "His blood be on us, and on our children" (Matt. 27: 25). That penalty is
not yet exhausted because, as a people, the descendants maintain the attitude to
Christ of their ancestors. The observant sojourner in Palestine can note how the
above cited curse upon the soil is in force, for the nearer one gets to
Jerusalem the more sun-scorched and barren is the land.
(back to the top)
2. - BLOOD PROTECTS FROM VENGEANCE.
Some fourteen centuries B.C. God was dealing judicially with the richest and
dominant nation on earth, the Egyptians. The visitor to the monuments of that
period can see the damning records the people left of their vileness and
cruelty. These make fully credible the account of Moses in Exodus of the
enslavement and bitter oppression of Israel by Pharaoh, with the order to kill
all infant boys. This is the judicial background for the severe penalties
exacted from them by the Judge of all the earth. The culminating crime of
Pharaoh and his people was this : The supreme and only God, the Creator of all
men, had seen fit to choose one race to be to Him among the nations what a
firstborn son is to the father of a family, even the senior member of the circle
under the father. Pharaoh was enslaving that chosen race and had designed their
absorption into his people, by killing the boys and marrying the girls to
Egyptians. To this tyrant Jehovah sent the message : "Israel is My son, My
firstborn : and. I have said unto thee, Let My son go that he may serve Me ; and
thou hast refused to let him go : behold, I will slay thy son, thy firstborn"
(Ex. 4: 22, 23).
The haughty monarch of the ruling nation on earth was not prepared to see his
supremacy pass to this hated race of slaves and he doggedly rejected the demand.
After much patience, and when it had become evident that the king and his people
would not yield, the execution of the Divine decree was ordered, which Moses
announced in these words :
"Thus saith Jehovah, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt : and
all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh
that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is
behind the mill ; and all the firstborn of cattle." (Ex. 11: 4, 5).
1. God acts personally. It is to be noted that : A judgment so extensive and
terrific was superintended by God personally: "I will go out into the midst of
Egypt." This had been the case at four earlier crises recorded : (a) God had
Himself dealt with Cain : (b) "Jehovah sat as King at the Flood" (Ps. 29: 10) :
(c) when at Babel the whole race was set on its own exaltation, "Jehovah came
down to see the city and tower which the children of men builded" (Gen. 11: 5),
before He confounded their speech and scattered them: and (d) when two great
cities were to be destroyed by fire from heaven jehovah said : "I will go down
and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it [angelic
report concerning it, with application for judgment], which is come unto Me; and
if not, I will know" (Gen. 18: 2 1).
Lesser situations on earth might be left to angel or human rulers in the
execution of powers entrusted to them by God as the universal Sovereign, but on
such solemn and fearful occasions He personally superintended for the securing
of strict and impartial justice. See further Josh. 5: 13 - 6: 2 ; Ezek. 8. ; 9.,
esp. 3, 4 : Rev. 5. ; 6: 1 ; 19: 11-16 ; 20 ; 11: etc.
2. The Destroyer acts. The recognition of this personal presence of God is
essential to a true understanding of the events in Egypt that fateful night,
even as Jehovah said : "I will go out into the midst of Egypt," and as Moses
added, "Jehovah will pass through to smite the Egyptians," but he adds, "Jehovah
will pass over the door, and will not suffer the Destroyer to come into your
houses to smite you" (Ex. 11: 4; 12: 23). This great Destroyer is a distinct
figure in Holy Scripture. He acts here ; he smote Israel in the days of David (2
Sam. 24: 15, 16 : 2 Chron. 21: 14, 15) ; he destroyed I85,000 Assyrian soldiers
in one night (Isa. 37: 36) ; and in Rev. 9: 11, in connection with one of the
appalling judgments of the End days, his very name is given in its Hebrew and
Greek forms, Abaddon and Apollyon, both meaning Destroyer. All the ancient world
knew of him and dreaded him. To him they attributed the unexpected deaths of
men, as the Greeks said, "Apollo has shot him with his arrow." Abaddon is here
described as the angel ruler of the Abyss, the world of the dead. The word is
found at Job 26: 6 ; 28: 22 ; 31: 12 : Ps. 88; 11 : Prov. 15: 11 ; 27: 20 only.
In each case it is associated with Death and Sheol, the world of the dead ; and
the passages range from about 1000 B.C. to 1700 B.C., which includes the period
of the Exodus.
It was therefore a terrible threat that this mighty Angel of Destruction should
be let loose on Egypt and kill in every house. All the preceding plagues had
been inflicted by angels, as it is said of God: "He cast upon them [the
Egyptians] the fierceness of His anger, wrath and indignation and trouble, a
sending of angels Of evil " (Ps. 78: 49) ; not merely "evil angels," as A.V.,
but as R.V., "angels of evil," angels who because evil by nature would eagerly
inflict evil. This last judgment would be the culmination of the dread work of
the Destroyer and his hosts.
This is not past history only. Pharaoh and his servants had hardened their
necks, and had not obeyed the truth as to the true God, Jehovah, and His will,
brought to their knowledge by Moses. On the contrary they had obeyed
unrighteousness ; upon them had been poured out God’s "anger, wrath,
indignation, and distress." Romans 2: 8 denounces against all in every age who
so defy God "wrath and indignation, tribulation, and anguish," the same solemn
terms with which the Psalmist described the judgments on Egypt of old. And the
agency is the same ; for when the Lord comes down again for the judgment of His
foes who have not acquainted themselves with God, nor obeyed the good tidings of
the Lord Jesus, nor received the love of the truth that they might be saved,
then shall the same supreme judge who dealt with Egypt be accompanied by "the
angels of His power in flaming fire, rendering vengeance" (2 Thes. 1: 7-9 ; 2:
9- 12) ; even as He said, "so shall it be at the consummation of the age ; the
angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the righteous, and
shall cast them into the furnace of fire : there shall be the weeping and the
gnashing of teeth." It was thus in Egypt that awful night of old when "there was
a great cry in Egypt ; for there was not a house where there was not one dead"
(Matt. 13: 41, 42, 49, 50 : Ex. 12: 30).
3. Justice distinguishes. The words of our Lord just quoted from Matthew show
that when God executes judgment His wrath is guided with strict discrimination.
He distinguished between Abel and Cain : He saved Noah and his family : He
delivered righteous Lot from the overthrow of Sodom. In the days of Ezekiel He
set a mark upon each who sighed and cried over all the abominations that
blighted Jerusalem, and He forbade the destroying angels to touch these, though
no others were to be spared (Ezek. 11.). It must always be thus, and it was to
be so that night in Egypt.
But upon what ground in Divine law could the Israelites be rightly exempt?
Morally and religiously they were no better than the Egyptians. The strict laws
and severe penalties which Moses had to impose on them after their deliverance
from Egypt show that their moral life was in general as low as that of their
Egyptian tyrants. Slavery ever debases. Ere Joshua left the next generation,
which he had led to victory in Canaan, he reminded them that their first
ancestors had originally served false gods in Chaldea and that their immediate
ancestors had worshipped the gods of Egypt. For a time there were exceptions,
such as the parents of Moses and Moses himself (Heb. 11: 23-26). But forty years
after his flight he had to remind the God of Abraham that the patriarch’s
descendants in Egypt did not even know the name of Abraham’s God (Ex. 3: 13). It
is a natural tendency with slaves to accommodate themselves to the opinions and
practices of their oppressors, if they may thereby gain a lightening of their
lot. From Ezekiel 20: 7-9 we learn the same : for God tells the Israelites of
that time that, in the day when He made Himself known unto their fathers in
Egypt, He had been obliged to say to them "Cast ye away every man the
abominations of his eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt,"
but that at first the people rebelled against the moral deprivations and the
change of religion. Therefore they were legally under sentence of death with the
Egyptians, and on what ground could they be justly spared?
4. The Passover Blood. The answer given in the famous account found in Exodus
12. is that for each house a lamb without blemish was to be killed, and "they
shall take of the blood, and put it on the two side posts and on the lintel,
upon the houses wherein they shall eat it ... And the blood shall be to you a
token upon the houses where ye are : and when I see the blood, I will pass over
you, and there shall no plague be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land
of Egypt . . . ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is
in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that
is in the basin : and none of you shall go out of the door of his house until
the morning. For Jehovah will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He
seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, Jehovah will pass
over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses to
smite you" (Ex. 12: 5-7, 22, 23).
The term "pass over" in verse 13 is distinct from the "pass through" of verse 12
(A.V.), which distinction the R.V. indicates by its rendering "go through." The
latter means to go through in judgment ; the former to pass over and preserve.
Yet "passover" obscures the picture and the manner of deliverance. The real
sense is found in Isa. 31: 5, which speaks of a deliverance of Jerusalem yet to
come. Here Jehovah compares Himself and His preserving action to a mother bird
fluttering over her young, darting to and fro, to defend them from some beast or
reptile that would attack them : "As birds hovering, so will Jehovah of hosts
protect Jerusalem ; He will protect and deliver them, He will pass over and
preserve" (A.S.V.) ; or as Darby : "As birds with outstretched wings, so will
Jehovah of hosts cover Jerusalem covering, He will also deliver, passing over,
He will rescue"; or Delitzsch : "Like fluttering birds, so will Jehovah of hosts
screen Jerusalem ; screening and delivering, sparing and setting free," on which
this learned commentator writes : "The word pasoach recalls to mind the
deliverance from Egypt (as in ch. 30: 29) in a very significant manner. The
sparing of the Israelites by the destroyer passing over their doors, from which
the passover derived its name, would be repeated once more . . . Jehovah’s
attitude [is] . . . one resembling the action of birds, as they soar round and
above their threatened nests." Upon this Hebrew word Canon Cook (Speaker's
Commentary in loco) says : "In Egyptian the word Pesh, which corresponds to it
very nearly in form, means to ‘spread out the wings over,’ and ‘to protect’ ;
see Brugsch, ‘D.H.’ p. 512.
This gives significance to the phrase in verse 23 above that "Jehovah will not
suffer the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you." That great
Destroyer, being an evil angel prince, would have gone into every house blood or
no blood, but God Himself restrained him as to the houses sprinkled with blood.
Hence the prophet as he recalls the past says of Jehovah, "So He was their
Saviour" (Isa. 63: 8). And He spared and saved solely out of regard to the
blood.
It must not be supposed that this striking method of preserving a house from
danger of death was new at that time. On the contrary it was practised in early
Babylonia, whence both the Hebrew and Egyptian races had migrated. Prof. Sayce
writes :
"Still more interesting it is to find in the ritual of the prophets instructions
for the sacrifice of a lamb at the gate of the house, the blood of which is to
be smeared on the lintels and doorposts, as well as on the colossal images that
guarded the entrance."
And he shows that the most ancient customs may persist the ages through, long
after their meaning may have been lost, by adding :
"To this day in Egypt the same rite is practised, and when my dahabiah [sailing
boat on the Nile] was launched I had to conform to it. On this occasion the
blood of the lamb was allowed to fall over the sides of the lower deck."
(Religions 472).
It is evident that neither Moses, nor a supposed later redactor or imposter,
invented this story to serve some imagined religious end. God on this occasion
was reviving, purifying, and applying a primeval rite, one which we must presume
had formed part of an original body of instructions given by Himself as to how
sinful men could be granted Divine mercy without dereliction of Divine justice.
This means of grace was that life must be sacrificed that life might be spared,
an unblemished substitute dying in place of the death-doomed sinner. And in this
history of the Passover there comes the heaviest possible emphasis upon the use
of the blood as the agent of salvation : "When I see the blood" I will spare and
preserve.
Thus in the one case the blood cries for just vengeance, yet in the other case
protects from just vengeance.
Abel’s blood for vengeance
Pleadeth to the skies,
But the blood of Jesus
For our pardon cries. (E. Caswell).
On July 21st, 1914, with the Egyptian summer sun at full blaze, I stood alone,
in the stillness of the desert, amid the roofless, ruined houses of Pithom, the
treasure city built by Pharaoh’s cruelly oppressed slaves of Israel. One could
somewhat estimate the severity of their work in such heat ; and also, gazing at
the broken doorway of a small brick house, one pondered whether perhaps that was
a lintel that had been splashed with blood and where Jehovah arrested the steps
of that fierce Destroyer. Does my reader know in personal heart experience the
meaning and power of the events of that far off stirring night? or is it all to
him but one among other curious items of antiquity?
(back to the top)
3. - THE BLOOD GIVES ACCESS TO GOD.
Before morning dawned the whole redeemed people of Israel, with their cattle and
chattels, were on the march to freedom. At the Red Sea their old tyrant was
destroyed and they went through into the life of liberty, to walk with God in
the desert. Yet, though redeemed and liberated, in themselves they were very
much what they had always been ; vices and habits, stiff necks and hard hearts,
were still there. How then shall their holy God be able to bear with and bless
them? How shall their sins in the desert be pardoned? By precisely the same
process as they were forgiven that night in Egypt. God appointed a permanent
institution of worship and service, and this too had atoning blood as its legal,
sacrificial basis. Innocent substitutes were perpetually to forfeit life to
redeem the human lives forfeited by sin, and their blood was to be sprinkled
openly on the altar of sacrifice where God and the sinner met.
But as yet the time and the people were not ripe for open unrestricted access to
the immediate presence of God in the Most Holy Place of the building where He
graciously dwelt among them. This defect would one day be rectified, even when a
Sacrifice should have been offered adequate to the putting away of sin for ever.
Yet once in the year there was provided a foresight, an anticipation of that
better thing which was to come. There was appointed in Israel an order of
priests, and the head of this privileged order, the high priest, was the
official religious representative of the whole nation. Annually he was
privileged to draw aside the veil behind which Jehovah dwelt in glory and to
enter that sacred Presence. Yet as a sinner he was liable to die there ; the
Presence of God is a fatal spot for a sinner. But he took there precious atoning
blood, sprinkled it before and upon the golden cover of the ark above which
shone the Glory, and thereby he was rendered safe from destruction. In him all
whom he represented were kept secure.
The need for and benefit of that annual atonement, as distinct from and in
addition to the daily, weekly, and monthly sacrifices, was this : These latter
provided forgiveness for all sins of which individuals were conscious, which
they confessed and forsook, as well as for general corporate guilt and
defilement. But over and above such acknowledged transgression there remained
the accumulated guilt of the multifarious sins and failures which God alone
detected and which He must punish. This guilt and defilement would have
prevented Divine favour being upon the people : but God in grace made provision
for removing it by the atonement of this chief day of the year. The Chief Priest
laid his hands upon the head of the goat that was to bear away the sin, and
confessed "over it all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their
transgressions, even all their sins . . . and the goat shall bear upon it all
their iniquities unto a solitary land" (Lev. 16: 22, 21). And the blood of
accompanying sacrifices was taken into the holy Presence and sprinkled.
But this plenary atonement did not permit an Israelite to commit sin wilfully
and conceive that the annual sacrifice would protect him from penalty incurred.
No, he must do all that he knew of the will of God, must avoid conscious
transgression, must offer every personal atoning sacrifice prescribed for
failure recognized, and only so would his unrecognized transgressions,
iniquities, and sins be held covered by the annual atonement. For us today this
is the truth stated in 1 John 1: 6, 7 : "If we say we have fellowship with Him,
and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth : but if we walk in the
light, as He is in the light, we [we and God] have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." But when we know
that we have sinned it is vain and wicked to presume that the full atonement of
Calvary renders it needless for us to desist and be humbled, for the Scripture
goes on in verse 9 to assure us that it is "if we confess our sins He is
faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness." The plenary virtue of the death of Christ is not available
that the Christian may be careless and presumptuous. In all times and for all
persons the holiness of God demands this inflexible rule: "He that covereth his
transgressions shall not prosper ; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall
obtain mercy" (Prov. 28: 13).
This subject will be enlarged later.
(back to the top)
4. - WHY THE BLOOD SAVES.
Even if we did not or could not know the reason for any command of God it were
still our duty and safety to obey it ; but God desired men to be intelligent as
to His requirements and appointments ; therefore when He ordained in Israel the
sacrifice of blood He explained the ground of His orders. This is found in
Leviticus 17. Giving to Noah the ancient prohibition against eating flesh with
the blood in it God had said that the blood is the life of the flesh. This
prohibition was repeated to Israel by Moses seven times.* They as a people were
to maintain the rights of God by keeping His laws, which the other nations had
long since rejected, and this law against eating blood was prominent and its
re-enactment was emphatic. It was again solemnly stated that God Himself would
exact the penalty of death : "I will set My face against that soul that eateth
blood, and will cut him off from among his people" (verse 10). **
[*Gen. 9: 4: Lev. 3: 17; 7: 26, 27; 17: 10-14; 19: 26: Deut. 12: 16, 23, 24 ;
15: 23.]
[** This shows that the phrase to "be cut off from his people" meant death, for
this was the penalty of eating blood, as before announced to Noah (Gen. 9: 5,
6).]
The basis of this is now declared in three concise sentences (Lev. 17)
"For the life of the flesh is in the blood" (verse 11) ;
"the blood thereof is all one with the life" (verse 14) ;
"the life of all flesh is the blood" (verse 14).
After 3000 years man’s investigations have informed him that what the Creator
said to Noah and Moses was fact, even that the blood and the life are
inseparable. There is therefore physical reality under the notion of the savage
that by drinking the blood of his slaughtered foe he becomes possessor of his
vigour and courage. Blood transfusion is further proof that the blood and the
life are one.
Therefore, when on that dread night in Egypt blood was seen all round the door
of a house, that was visible proof that death must have occurred to provide so
much blood ; therefore life had been taken, the sentence of death had been
already executed in that house, and justice did not permit that the Destroyer
should exact the penalty again.
It was essential that there should be proof indisputable that Jesus, the Son of
God, the sinner’s Substitute, had really died. Without positive certainty of
this there could be no assurance that the penalty of sin had been met and
deliverance from eternal death secured. The Gospel narratives of the crucifixion
supply distinct proofs of His actual death, leaving no possible ground for any
such suggestion as that perhaps the Sufferer sank into a coma, was taken down
only apparently dead, and later revived in the tomb. Had this been so there had
been no atoning death and no life-imparting resurrection : we should all be
still in our sins. But the details given exclude this notion. (1) At the moment
of His death the Lord was still strong and conscious, for He "cried with a loud
voice" (Matt. 27: 50: Mk. 15: 37: Lk. 23: 46). (2) He dismissed His spirit by
His own act, saying, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (references as
before). (3) He bowed His head of His own will : it did not sink helplessly as
in a faint or coma (John 19: 30). It was when the centurion saw that the
Crucified "so gave up the spirit" that he was convinced that somewhat
supernatural was involved. He had seen many die, but never a death like this
(Mk. 15: 39). But (4) the final proof that the Saviour had literally died was
that, upon the piercing of His side there flowed out a stream of blood and water
(John 19: 34). John most explicitly asserts that he saw this take place and gave
true witness to the fact; and on another occasion he emphasized that "Jesus
Christ came not in [the power or virtue of] water only, but in [that of] the
water and in the blood" (1 John 5: 6).
Of course, God the omniscient did not need visible proof that the lamb had been
slain in the houses of the Israelites or that Jesus had really died. As to the
latter fact, He had received back the surrendered spirit, devoid of which the
bodily life of man cannot be maintained. But the Supreme Ruler carries on the
administration of the universe under the scrutiny of men and angels, and of
these many are His enemies and critics. No ground must be allowed for these to
complain that His government is not always and wholly just. Fallen man and
fallen angels are ready so to complain. Adam promptly hinted that God was to
blame that he had been tempted : "The woman that THOU gavest me" led me astray
(Gen. 3: 12). Adam’s descendants are still all too eager to blame the Almighty
as to His ordering of affairs. Satan did not hesitate to suggest that God had
been unduly favourable to Job, making life too easy for him (Job 1: 9-11).
In particular, Satan, as the chief executioner of the Divine sentence of death
against the sinner (Heb. 2: 14 : "the one having the power of death, the
devil"), must be left no right to complain that some are withdrawn from his
sphere of action without warrant in law and against justice. And even as in
Egypt the blood was the proof of sentence having been executed and that the
Destroyer had no right of entry, so the blood of Jesus delivers the believer on
Him from the jurisdiction of the Devil. They are translated out of the sphere of
authority of the Prince of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love
(Col. 1: 13).
Thus by means of death Christ annulled the power of Satan over those who rely on
Him and delivers them from fear of death ; for these "fall asleep through Jesus"
(1 Thes. 4: 14) and are in His charge and company as was the repentant thief (Lk.
23: 43), for they "die in the Lord" (Rev. 14: 13). Of this real and blessed
deliverance by death the blood of the Victim is the justification, being proof
that death, the penalty of sin, had been exacted, for Jesus on the cross had
made Himself answerable (Isa. 53: 7, Lowth, Newberry).
When the debt is paid the court bailiff loses right of entry and execution. If
by a miscarriage of justice an innocent person was executed for a crime, and
later the real culprit should confess or be discovered, the latter would escape
execution. The law would hold that its full penalty having been actually paid
another could not be made to meet it. And
“God will not payment twice demand,
First at my bleeding Surety's hand,
And then again at mine."
The blood is the proof of death, and death delivers from death. As an epitaph
reads :
“Unless the death of death
Had given death to death
By His own death,
The gate of eternal life had been closed.”
(back to the top)
5. - WHOSE BLOOD SAVES?
In the moral grading of creation a beast ranks lower than a man. If a murderer
were to offer to redeem his life by the slaughter of a thousand sheep or
bullocks justice would reject the proposal. Therefore "it is impossible that the
blood of bulls and goats should take away sins" (Heb. 10: 4). The sacrifices
from Abel onward had no inherent saving virtue. They did indeed secure a real
benefit to the devout offerer : "Jehovah had respect unto Abel and to his
offering" (Gen. 4: 4). On the basis of such sacrifices He made an eternal
covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15.). Out of regard to the blood of the lambs He
spared the firstborn in Egypt (Ex. 12.). The burnt offering was accepted by God
as atonement for the offerer (Lev. 1: 4), and the sin-offering was accompanied
by the guarantee of forgivenness (Lev. 4: 20, 26, 31, 35 ; 5: 10, 13, 16, 18).
Yet because the life offered was not a just equivalent for the life forfeited
the former could not provide for the latter a complete redemption, and the
offender, though pardoned for that offence, did not attain a permanent
righteousness before God. Hence those sacrifices needed to be constantly
repeated, because the worshipper did not acquire consciousness of having been
completely cleansed from sin (Heb. 10: 1 -4). The inadequacy of those sacrifices
could have been justly inferred from God’s declaration to Noah that nothing less
than the shedding of the murderer’s blood could expiate his guilt for having
shed a neighbour’s blood (Gen. 9: 5, 6) ; human life could be balanced only
against human life, for man having been made in the image of God transcends in
dignity the lower creatures, the death of which cannot therefore in law
correspond to his death which that law demands against his sin. This was made
specially clear under the law of Moses by there being a long catalogue of major
crimes for which no sacrifice could be accepted to deliver the culprit from the
capital penalty. Murder, adultery, idolatry, blasphemy, and sabbath breaking
were among these crimes.
The holy God could grant that former measure of pardon without dereliction of
justice because He foreknew that in due course a Sacrifice would be offered
which would carry that inherent saving virtue which all other sacrifices lacked.
These were but anticipatory of that, and derived from it what benefit they
brought. Any discounting of the future by man is of necessity a speculation
since he cannot guarantee the future ; but this is not so with God, for He can
certainly bring to pass the event on which He counts and in anticipation of
which He acts. His lamb was foreknown before the foundation of the world (1 Pet.
1: 20). The absolute certainty of His atoning death justified God in "passing
over sins done aforetime," that is, before the sacrifice of Christ at Golgotha
(Rom. 3: 25). On this principle David, upon repentance and confession, was
pardoned for adultery and murder and the capital penalty was remitted (2 Sam.
12: 13). This forbearance of God was justified solely, but fully, by the atoning
death of His Son.
From the same declaration of God to Noah it could have been further inferred
that the substitute needed for the sinner must himself be man, since only human
life could answer for human life. This had been announced by God in Eden when He
promised that the foe of man should be crushed by "the seed of the woman" (Gen.
3: 15). Yet no mere man could suffice, for only one human life could be redeemed
by a life which was only human ; by strict justice one man could be the
substitute for but one man. It was therefore a necessity in Divine law that the
promised Substitute should be of a moral rank and worth that should surpass the
worth of all mankind, not of one or a few or even many sinners, but Who should
be a "propitiation for the whole world" (1 John 2: 2). This demand could be met
only by the Creator in person, since He alone transcends in moral dignity His
whole creation and could alone offer the indispersable plenary sacrifice.
Therefore God in love assumed humanity in the person of His Son, and was born of
a woman, becoming Jesus Christ the Son of God.
But as no sinner could offer his life to redeem another sinner, his own life
being already forfeited by his own sin, therefore this Redeemer-Man must be
without sin, inherited or committed. This necessitated such a birth as should
prevent the transmission to Him of a sinful nature and grant to Him a pure
nature which, being without sin, could live without sinning. His birth of a
virgin by the direct act of the Spirit of God was a necessity. Without deity the
Substitute could not act for all the race of man ; without humanity He could not
represent mankind at all ; without sinlessness He could not atone for sinners.
To deny either of these features is to leave the human race without a Saviour,
exposed to the inflexible justice that demands death as the inescapable and just
penalty of sin.
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate
Of Heav'n and let us in. (C. F. Alexander).
"But now once at the consummation of the ages hath He been manifested to put
away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. 9: 26). Whose blood saves? "Ye were
redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,
even the blood of Christ," "in Whom we have our redemption, through His blood,
the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His [God's] grace"
(1 Pet. 1: 19 : Eph. 1: 7).
(back to the top)
6. - WHOM DOES THE BLOOD SAVE?
(a) In the possibility, the whole human race, indeed the whole creation. It is
declared distinctly that the sacrifice of Christ cleanses the heavenly things,
defiled by the sin of angels (Heb. 9: 23), and that the whole creation is to be
relieved from the curse which sin has brought (Rom. 8: 18-25). This defiling of
the heavenly regions where God dwells by the sin of angels has its earthly
counterpart, in that the Holy Places of Tabernacle and Temple, where God dwelt,
had to be purified annually on the day of Atonement from the defilement
occasioned by the sins of Israel (Lev. 16: 16: etc.).
It is shown beyond doubt that the love of God, which provides eternal life for
sinners, is toward "the world" (John 3: 16), and that the Righteous One is the
propitiation not only for such as have already believed on Him, but "for the
whole world" (1 John 2: 2). It is false dealing with the Word of God to make
this last passage mean that He is the propitiation for the world of the elect.
In ch. 5: 19 of the very same Epistle the same Apostle uses again the same
contrast between believers and others when he says, "We know that we are of God,
and the whole world lieth in the Evil One." Evidently the "whole world" is all
of the human race in contrast to those who have been born of God. Who would
think of adding here that it is the whole world of the elect that are in the
sphere and power of Satan?
It is contrary to the infinite dignity of the Divine Substitute to imagine that
He could offer a limited redemption ; it is derogatory to the divine virtue of
His precious blood to attach any restriction to its scope. Since the Creator
transcends the creation, so must His sacrifice transcend its need. Therefore
that His saints should intercede for "all men . . . . is good and acceptable in
the sight of God our Saviour, Who wishes [thelo] all men [emphatic] to be saved
;" unto which end the one Mediator between the one God and men, Christ Jesus,
Himself man, "gave Himself a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2: 1 -6). As Anselm, in a
passage to be given later, long since argued, a payment which more than covers
the debt must needs justify complete remission of it.
Words could not be more explicit. Salvation through the blood of Christ is
available for all men. He who knows this has strong confidence as he announces
the good news to every man, and he feels also that he is "debtor" to all men,
for he holds a treasure intended for every man (Rom. 1: 14, 15).
(b) But this universal possibility can become effective to those only who repent
of sin and are willing to be delivered from its power and penalty, and who for
this purpose accept personally the benefit of the atoning blood of the Lamb of
God. "He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent *and unfeignedly
believe His holy gospel." God has not changed His mind as to the gifts and
calling bestowed on man (Rom. 11: 29). Therefore He uniformly respects the grant
to angels and men of freedom of action. Man sins willingly and therefore must
repent and believe willingly. God constrains but does not coerce. He persuades
but does not force.
The essence of the faith that saves is seen in the action of the man in Egypt
who splashed the protecting blood around his doorway. He accepted the
declaration of God that (1) death was due as the punishment of sin, (2) that it
would be executed, (3) that the death of the substitute would be accepted for
deliverance. His godly fear and his faith were displayed in his obedience to the
direction to shed and sprinkle the saving blood. By doing this he publicly
declared his danger and his faith, and God attested his faith by granting
deliverance. In our case also it is thus : "if we confess our sins He is
faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1: 9), "because if thou
shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart
that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved : for with the heart man
believeth unto righteousness ; and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be put
to shame" (Rom. 10: 9- 11).
This shows that obedience is of the essence of faith. Therefore the gospel
requires "obedience of faith," and "a great company of the priests were obedient
to the faith" (Rom. 1: 5 : Ac. 6: 7). Salvation includes of prime necessity
deliverance from the unsubdued will. Obedience alone can prove saving faith. God
commands all men everywhere to repent, to believe on His Son, and to love one
another (Ac. 17: 30 : 1 John 3: 23).
(back to the top)
7. - BENEFITS SECURED BY ATONING BLOOD.
(1) Atonement. The principal, because the basic, benefit of atoning blood is
that it atones. Of it God said : "I have given it to you upon the altar to make
atonement for your souls [lives] : for it is the blood that maketh atonement by
reason of the life," with which it is all one (Lev. 17: 11).
The Hebrew word translated "atonement" has the picture "to cover." Thus the ark
was covered with pitch (Gen. 6: 14), where the same noun and verb are used as
"atonement" and "atone." That which is covered is hidden from sight, and true
here is that saying "out of sight, out of mind." The same thought is expressed
by another word meaning to smear over, and so erase a record. It is used
negatively and positively as a term of judgment : positively, "let their name be
blotted out" (Ps. 109: 13, 14). In Neh. 4: 5 : "let not their sin be blotted
out" is parallel with another word meaning "to cover ... .. cover not their
iniquity." This word for "to cover" has the picture of clothing which covers,
and so conceals, the person of the wearer. It is therefore similar in meaning to
the former word for "to cover," to render unseen, and it is used in Isa. 44: 22
in connection with yet another picture of hiding from sight : "I have blotted
out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and as a cloud, thy sins : return
unto Me, for I have redeemed thee."
Thus there is a triple picture of the hiding of sin from sight, the pitch hid
the wood of the ark, the substance smeared on the book hides the record of the
offence, the cloud hides the earth from the view of one on the mountain top. By
words and pictures God has taken pains to encourage the repentant and believing
sinner to be assured that He removes the guilt which hinders fellowship and
demands punishment. It is the atoning blood which effects this saving change of
status Godward.
The first of the words for "to cover" has an unique application. One form of it
is used exclusively of the golden lid that covered the ark of the covenant in
the Most Holy Place. It hid from sight the tables of the law which man had
broken and which cried against him for vengeance. This covering is called "the
mercy seat" (Ex. 25: 17, and twenty six times later). In the Greek translation
of the Old Testament (LXX), used by Christ and the apostles, this word is
rendered by hilasteerion, which word is shown in the New Testament to point to
"Christ Jesus, Whom God bath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in
His blood" (Rom. 3: 24, 25) ; and a cognate used in 1 John 1: 2 says that "Jesus
Christ, the Righteous, is the propitiation for our sins." Therefore the true
covering that really hides from view the outraged law of God is His Son, Whose
divine nature was typified by the pure gold of which the lid of the ark was
made.
That the Hebrew word "to cover" is the equivalent of the Greek word
"propitiate," used in the Septuagint and the New Testament, shows that the truth
of atonement is in the New Testament though the word is not.
But though that golden covering sufficiently hid from sight the tables of the
law, this did not by itself secure the sinful people from the judgment of God,
for not gold but blood is that which shows that death, the full penalty of sin,
has been executed and the broken law repaired. Therefore that golden lid had to
be sprinkled annually with the atoning blood that erased the record of the sins
of the people and hid these from the sight of God as a thick cloud blots out the
landscape, being proof visible that the sins had been expiated by equivalent
penalty. The divinity of our Lord could not by itself save sinners, it being no
equivalent whatever for the forfeited life of men. It was indispensable that He,
being God, should become man so as to meet the whole legal demand of God that
death must follow sin. Therefore, as the passage quoted from Romans 3: 25 says,
"God set Him forth to be a propitiation ... in [the virtue of] His blood."
Israel’s high priest could only stand safely in that holy place by virtue of the
blood that covered the sins of the people. So Christ, having in grace assumed
legal responsibility for our sins, was while bearing them debarred the presence
of God and constrained to cry "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" But His death
discharged the penalty for both Him as well as us ; His blood shed proved that
the penalty has been met, and it is in the virtue of His own blood that He
entered once for all into the holy place in heaven itself, having by death
obtained a redemption of eternal validity and virtue (Heb. 9: 12).
That precious blood covers for ever the sins of those who truly repent and
unfeignedly believe. Upon this their submission God puts His laws in their
hearts as the rule of life and writes them in their minds as moral light and the
instinct of duty. Of such He says, "their sins and their iniquities will I
remember no more" (Heb. 10: 15-18). Blessed, indeed, is he whose transgression
is forgiven, and whose sin is covered (Ps. 32: 1), being hidden from the eye of
God, as the body is hidden by clothing. Precious, indeed, is the atoning,
covering blood of Christ, which only can hide ought from Omniscience and cause
the Infinite Mind to forget.
ATONEMENT includes other features connected with salvation.
(2) Propitiation. This word is not used in the English Old
Testament to translate any Hebrew word connected with atonement. It is used in
the New Testament to render certain Greek words with the same meaning, and these
Greek words were used by the Seventy to translate Hebrew words. Thus the truth
expressed by the word "propitiation" is found everywhere in the Bible. This
truth is that, on the ground of atoning sacrifice, the Holy One is propitiated,
is warranted and enabled to take a favourable attitude to the culprit He must
otherwise have rejected and punished.
Our Lord described a tax-gatherer coming to the entrance of the temple, standing
in humility some distance back, expressing contrition by smiting his breast,
acknowledging his utter wickedness, and appealing for Divine mercy by crying,
"God, be propitiated to me the sinner" (Lk. 18: 13). On the brazen altar before
him, and between him and the holy God, there was consuming away in the fire of
judgment the innocent victim which had died on his account, and the meaning of
his prayer was, "0 God, out of regard to the death of my substitute be
favourable to me!" The choice of the word "propitiated" showed that his prayer
was intelligent.
The appeal was granted because the lamb spoke to God of His Lamb Who would
shortly die for the tax-gatherer’s sins, and Who would do so by express
provision of God, for it was He Who sent Christ forth to be "a propitiation,
through faith, by His blood" (Rom. 3: 25). Thus the Son of God "became a
merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2: 17). "He is the propitiation
for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world," and "Herein
is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2: 2 ; 4: 10). He is the divine reality
typified by the propitiatory, the mercy-seat, in the tabernacle and temple,
where of old the atoning blood was sprinkled to secure the safety of Israel and
the continued favour and presence of God.
(3) Reconciliation. The tax-gatherer’s prayer "God, be propitiated to me" was an
appeal for a change of attitude on the part of God. Propitiation brings
reconcilisation. The Greek noun and verb (katallagee, katallasso), translated in
the New Testament "reconciliation," are not used in the Septuagint in connexion
with atonement, but in the New Testament are very definitely so connected.
The passages are :
(1) Rom. 5: 10, 11 : "For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be kept safe
(Moule) in His life ... through Whom we have now received the reconciliation."
(2) 2 Cor. 5: 18, 19 : "But all things are of God, Who reconciled us to Himself
through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation ; to wit, that
God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not reckoning unto them
their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation."
These statements make evident that
(a) God is the Reconciler ;
(b) Christ is He Who effects the reconciliation ;
(c) It is by His death that He effected this ;
(d) The scope of the reconciliation is universal, cosmical (kosmon katallassown)
;
(e) The gospel is the proclamation and appeal of this reconciliation ;
(f) The individual must personally avail himself of it by responding to the
changed attitude in God made possible by the death of Christ.
The meaning of the Greek word is certain. In 1 Cor. 7: 11 it is directed that a
Christian woman living away from her husband is to remain unmarried "or else be
reconciled to her husband." A change of heart is indicated in the Septuagint at
Jer. 48: 39 : "how has he changed! How has Moab turned his back!" - the former
bold, courageous spirit has given place to fright and flight. The Greek word is
the equivalent of the Latin permutatis (English "permutation"), which included a
change of sentiment, an altered attitude of one person to another. Similarly God
and man are changed in heart toward each other by the mediatorial action and
death of the Son of God. Apprehension by man of such divine love and grace by
God changes his distrust to confidence, his enmity to love, his rebellion to
obedience. And on God’s part, the satisfaction rendered to His law by Christ on
behalf of man removes the just displeasure and holy rejection of the sinner
which was the inevitable reaction of the Holy One against his sin.
Such change in man is easy to grasp but some refuse to admit of such a change in
God, for they stress that He is ever well-disposed toward man and loves the
sinner in spite of the sin which He hates. It is certain that the Greek word can
include such a change in God. It is used four times in the Greek of the
Apocrypha in 2 Maccabees : 1: 5 : "May God be at one with you v. 20 :The great
Lord being reconciled 7: 33: "He shall be at one again with His servants" 8: 29
; "They besought the merciful Lord to be reconciled with His servants."
Nor was such a change in God a new conception or limited to Hebrew, Greek, or
Latin thought. In early Egyptian times a suppliant, Mes-em-Neter, turned in
heart from false gods and prayed thus to the God of Right and Truth :
Behold, the god hath shame of me, but let my faults be washed away and let them
fall upon both hands of the god of Right and Truth. Do away utterly with the
transgression which is in me, together with [my] wickedness and sinfulness, O
god of Right and Truth. May this god be at peace with me! Do away utterly with
the obstacles which are between thee and me . . . grant thou that I may bring to
thee the offerings which will make peace [between thee and men] whereon thou
livest, and that I also may live thereon. Be thou at peace with me and do away
utterly with all the shame of me which thou hast in thy heart because of me.*
[* See The Book of the Dead, trans. Budge, 32.]
This remarkable prayer descends from within a measurable period after the Flood.
It shows how there lingered among men recollections of the true God, His
character and demands. The suppliant was aware of his own wickedness and
sinfulness and that these were obstacles to fellowship with God ; but he knew
that there were sacrifices which could remove these, and create peace between
God and men. He knew also that the God of Truth was ashamed of him the sinner,
and he longed that this shame on his account might be removed from the heart of
God ; yet this could be effected by the act of God alone.
Thus did this suppliant of ancient times in a vile heathen land know well that
there must be induced a change in God toward himself, the sinner, and that
offerings were requisite which could remove utterly his wickedness and
transgressions. How parallel is this to the statement concerning Jehovah that,
as He contemplated the corruption and violence of men before the Flood, He
changed His mind as to having created man and was grieved in heart (Gen. 6: 5,
6). This was a change of heart indeed from the day when He had seen that
everything He had made was very good, and it was a change which resulted in the
destruction of the unrepentant race.
The seeming mystery is resolved by the statement "if ye call on Him as Father"
remember that "without respect of persons He judgeth according to each man’s
work" (1 Pet. 1: 17). God is both father and judge. In the highest relationship
He is the heavenly Father of those who have been born again of His Spirit upon
faith in His Son : in the creatorial sense He is the father, the cause of
existence, of all spirits (Heb. 12: 9 : Eccl. 12: 7). This includes all orders
of beings, heavenly as well as earthly, for from Him "every fatherhood in heaven
and on earth is named" (Eph. 3: 15), which fact Paul kept in mind when
approaching Him in prayer.
Now in the former sense God, the Father of all, loves with Divine affection all
souls that He has made ; it is His nature to do so. On the other hand, as the
Ruler and Judge of all, and for the well-being of all, "God is a righteous
judge, yea, a God that hath indignation every day" (Ps. 7: 11). It cannot be
otherwise as to either attitude ; neither excludes the other, a truth which
Peter pressed upon the children of God in Christ to whom he was writing. Cases
have been known where human judges magnified the law and made it honourable by
fining culprits according to law, and then gratified their innate instinct of
mercy by themselves paying the fine. As humane, such a judge is merciful at
heart ; as righteous, his mind is set against the criminal. His own payment of
the penalty changes this latter and just attitude and liberates the quality of
mercy, so that without failure of justice he can discharge the offender. The
satisfaction of law made by the voluntary payment reconciles him as judge to the
law-breaker against whom his heart as judge was definitely antagonistic.
The fact mentioned above (d) that the reconciliation affects the cosmos, "God
was in Christ world-reconciling unto Himself," must surely imply that the change
meant here is on God’s part, since the cosmos, whether fully universal or the
whole of mankind, is not a corporate entity with a single heart capable of a
collective change of feeling towards God. But the sacrifice of the God-man,
being of universal validity, gives to the universe collectively a new aspect
before God and warrants a change of treatment from strict justice to the offer
of mercy. Yet as before remarked under 6., "Whom does the blood save?" this
universal opportunity of mercy benefits each individual only upon individual
faith.
The Scripture says that the Lamb of God "taketh away the sin of the world" (kosmos).
If this is not universal then that region of the universe not affected must
remain for ever defiled and unreconciled. Apart from the blood of Christ the
heavens must, in that case, remain for ever unclean in God’s sight, which is
contrary to Heb. 9: 23. That typical Most Holy Place in Israel, the dwelling of
God, was cleansed by sprinkled blood.
We must indeed keep in mind R. B. Girdlestone’s words :
"When we speak of Christ reconciling His Father to us (see the second article of
the Church of England) we are not to picture up an angry judge being propitiated
by a benevolent Son - this would be an entire misrepresentation of the Christian
Faith. Rather we should regard the Son as sent by the Father to die for the sins
of the world, in order that He might remove the bar which hindered the free
action of Divine love on the heart of man." (Old Testament Synony.MS, 217.)
Therefore Griffith Thomas rightly says :
"There is practical unanimity among scholars that reconciliation in St. Paul
means a change of relation on God’s part towards man, something done by God for
man, which has modified what would otherwise have been His attitude to the
sinner. Thus, reconciliation is much more than a change of feeling on man’s part
towards God, and must imply first of all a change of relation in God towards
man. It is this that the Article [No. II] was intended to express by the phrase,
"To reconcile His Father to us." If it should be said that such a change in God
is unthinkable, it may be answered that even in forgiveness, if we are to
understand it aright, there must be some change of attitude, for God cannot
possibly be in the same attitude before as after forgiveness (The Principles of
Theology, 53).
Upon the passage quoted above from 2 Cor. 5: 18, Alford wrote :
"Observe, that the reconciliation spoken of in this and the next verse, is that
of God to us, absolutely and objectively, through His Son : that whereby He can
complacently behold and endure a sinful world, and receive all who come to Him
by Christ. This, the subjective reconciliation - of men to God - follows as a
matter of exhortation", ver. 2o.
On Romans 5: 10 Moule says:
"When we were hostile to His claims, and as such subject to the hostility of His
Law, WE WERE RECONCILED TO OUR GOD THROUGH THE DEATH OF His SON (God coming to
judicial peace with us, and we brought to submissive peace with Him) ; [and in a
Note he adds] Katallassein, Katallagee. It is sometimes held that these words
denote "reconciliation" in the sense of man’s laying aside his distrust,
reluctance, resistance towards God, not of God’s laying aside His holy
displeasure against man ... But Katallagee (and its verb) is as a fact used in
the Greek of the Apocrypha in connexions where the thought is just that of the
clemency of a king, induced to pardon. [Two of the passages cited above from 2
Maccabees are given] ... And there is no place in the New Testament where the
meaning, conciliation of an offended party, would not well suit katallassesthai,
etc. The present passage (Rom. 5: 10, 11) would be practically meaningless
otherwise. The whole thought is of divine mercy, providing a way for accepting
grace." (Expositor's Bible, Romans, 138, 141.)
The passages in 2 Maccabees support Moule’s statement that the Greek words can
carry the thought of God being reconciled to the sinner. His remark that this is
implied in Rom. 5: 11 seems just ; for reconciliation is not presented in this
verse as something wrought in man but as something that man "receives," as a
benefit offered for faith to accept. In the preceding verse the other aspect may
be in view : "we were reconciled to God," though this can mean that we, His
enemies, were made acceptable to God "through the death of His Son."
Upon the Greek words katallagee, etc., H. P. Liddon wrote that they must be
taken passively, not merely or chiefly actively -
The reconciliation is accomplished, not only in the hearts of men, but in the
Heart of God. Men are reconciled with God in Christ, in such sense, that God,
seeing them in union with His Beloved and Perfect Son, abandons His just wrath
which their sins have kindled, and admits them to His favour and blessing. This,
the constant faith of the Church, was scientifically worked out by S. Anselm of
Canterbury in his Cur Deus Homo [Why was God made Man?]
[The conclusion of Anselm’s demonstration is given in his chap. 20.
So, the mercy of God, which whilst we were considering God’s justice and man’s
sin, seemed to you to vanish away, we now find to be so great and so perfectly
consonant with justice as that neither greater nor juster could be conceived of.
For what can be understood as being more merciful than that God the Father
should say to the sinner who was condemned to eternal torments, and who had
nothing wherewith to redeem himself Take My Only-Begotten Son, and offer Him for
thyself" ; and the Son Himself [should say] : "Take Me, and redeem thyself?" But
they do, as it were, speak thus when they call and draw us to the Christian
faith. And what can be more just than that he [God the Father], to whom is given
[by the Son] a payment greater than all that is owing to him, should, if this be
given in payment of what is wrong, remit the whole debt ?]
Liddon adds :
Now although it is true that the essential nature of God is unchangeable Love,
yet the living action of God’s love in the human world has been hindered and
impeded by sin. In reality God’s Love is identical with His Righteousness. But
sin has produced an apparent antithesis between these Attributes. Although God
eternally and unchangeably loves the world, His actual relation to it is one of
opposition, because the Unity of His Attributes is disturbed and the action of
His Love ad extra [to that which is outside His own being], is restrained by
sins. The orgee tou Theou [wrath of God] is an expression which implies, that in
virtue of the Eternal necessities of His being, God’s relation of Love to the
human world is unsatisfied, owing to the agency of sin, since sin contradicts
His essential nature. It is not then His unchangeable Character, but His
relation (produced by sin) to the world of men, that is really affected by the
katallagee [reconciliation]. No mere man could affect that relation by his
personal conduct. Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, Who also as the Pattern
or Ideal Man represented the whole human race, could, and did, by the consummate
expression of His obedience on the Cross, establish a new relation between the
active manifestation of the Love of God and all those who by faith are
associated with His own supreme self-sacrifice. (Explanatory Analysis of St.
Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 101, 102.)
Blessed indeed is he who knows from his own joy in God that he has been
reconciled to Him by the death of His Son ; happy is the man who can exultingly
sing Wesley’s ecstatic lines
My God is reconciled,
His pardoning voice I hear;
He owns me for His child,
I can no longer fear ;
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And Father, Abba, Father! cry.
A further element in salvation is described by the term (4) Forgiveness. The old
covenant repeated often the guarantee of God to the offender that, upon the
appointed sacrifice having been offered, and its blood sprinkled, "the priest
shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven" (Lev. 4: 20, 26; etc.).
Under the new covenant, written for the assurance of the believer, it stands
that "in the Beloved we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness
of our trespasses, according to the riches of His [God's] grace." (Eph. 1: 7).
Now the criminal whom the king pardons is not executed.
But the atoning blood of Christ secures more than pardon, even
(5) Justification. "We are justified freely by God’s grace through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation,
through faith, in His blood," in order that God "might Himself be righteous, and
the Declarer righteous of him that hath faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3: 24-26).
A judge may declare that the man before him was justified in law in doing the
deed in question, that is, that in doing it he acted within his legal right and
is righteous before the law. But the judge cannot declare a man righteous who
has broken the law, riot until he shall have rendered full satisfaction to the
law by meeting its full penalty for his trespass. Thus a bankrupt may secure
discharge from further proceedings to recover debts, but the record that he
failed to meet his liabilities stands against him and his character is thereby
impaired before the law. He is let off payment because he has no resources that
can be passed to his creditors, but the law does not justify him for having
failed to pay twenty shillings in the pound. But should he later pay the debts
in full, with interest, the court record against him is withdrawn, the former
failure is cancelled, and thenceforth he is regarded by the law as a righteous
man, as if he had not before failed. And this will be the case just as
completely should another have provided the payment in full. Thus the adverse
record is "blotted out," and the former default is no more remembered
officially.
This is justification ; the acquiring by the bankrupt of a new and perfect
standing in law. Plainly it is more than simple forgiveness. A debt may be
forgiven, and the creditor suffer the loss ; but this does not put the debtor
upon the same morally satisfactory footing as if either he had never defaulted
or that he or a mediator or surety for him, had satisfied the creditor by
payment in full.
The sacrifices offered under the law of Moses could not provide for the sinner
more than forgiveness. They did not in themselves adequately compensate the
Divine law that had been infringed, and moreover the more heinous crimes were
not within the range of that sacrificial system. Only the blood of the Son of
God could meet fully the claims of God; but He having died, the glorious
proclamation could be made, "Be it known unto you therefore, brethren, that
through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins : and by Him every one
that believeth is justified from all things from which ye could not be justified
by the law of Moses" (Ac. 13: 38, 39). Against one that the law has declared
righteous no proceedings can lie.
(6) Remission. The text last quoted speaks of remission of sins. The force of
the word is seen in the commercial phrase "to make a remittance," to send
something away to another person and place. On the day of the annual atonement
in Israel, the live goat, to which ceremonially the sins of the people were
transferred, was sent away from the camp into the wilderness, and "the goat
shall bear upon him all their iniquities into a solitary place" (Lev. 16: 21,
22). Thus, in the fulfilment of the type, did the holy Sin-bearer go out into
the darkness of being forsaken by His God and take away our sins into that
solitude. "Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission" (Heb. 9: 22), but
in Christ "we have redemption through His blood, the remission [same word] of
our trespasses" (Eph. 1: 7) ; for He is "the Lamb of God that taketh away the
sin of the world" (John 1: 29), because He "put away sin by the sacrifice of
Himself" (Heb. 9: 26).
Sometimes an estate owner knows that his tenants are unable to pay their rent
and he decides to bear the loss himself. He therefore "remits" all or part of
what is due. He suffers loss and they escape payment. Thus did God in Christ
suffer for our sins and these are remitted. By faith in God’s announcement of
this remission we receive assurance of salvation, for the messenger of the Lord
is sent "to give knowledge of salvation unto His people in the remission of
their sins" (Lk. 1: 77).
Another vast benefit secured by atoning blood is
(7) Redemption. An Israelite might mortgage his house, land, or crops, but the
law gave a right of redemption. Or he might even have dedicated a field unto
Jehovah, but right of redemption was granted. Or he might have mortgaged his
liberty and labour, and become a bondservant. In some cases his nearest kinsman
was required by law to redeem him. The regulations are found in chaps. 25. and
27. of Leviticus, and the proceedings as to redeeming land are shown in the
pleasant history of Naomi and Ruth. The relative who thus intervened was known
as the goel, the kinsman-redeemer, and was a forerunner of Him Who became man
that He might redeem men.
The essence of all such transactions, ancient and modern, is that a person or
article was under some control, had passed under bondage to another, and the
redeemer released him or it from that control, and restored freedom. And
further, this liberation could be effected only by payment of an adequate price.
The chief New Testament word for this transaction (lutroo) meant originally to
release captives, taken in war or by robbers, by means of a ransom, and then to
manumit a slave. Thus did Christ, having by incarnation become our kinsman, act
as our Kinsman-Redeemer, and "give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20: 28:
Mk. 10: 45). No less price could redeem our forfeited life ; no more could be
demanded. Man is in a threefold bondage : (a) to his sins, which enslave him ;
(b) to the law of God that condemns him for his sins ; (c) to death, their
penalty. From this bondage Christ sets free the believer in Him.
(a) Tit. 2: 13, 14 : "our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ; Who gave Himself
for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity," that is, from the iniquities
themselves, not only from the consequences. This is the point of the first
statement regarding Him found in the New Testament : "thou shalt call His name
JESUS ; for He is the one that shall save His people from their sins" (Matt. 1:
18).
(b) Gal. 3: 13 speaks of the curse of the law pronounced upon all who break its
precepts, even the sentence of death : but "Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the law having become a curse for us ; for it is written, Cursed is every one
that hangeth on a tree." Through sin each man was fallen under this dread
condemnation of the law of God, but Christ in wondrous grace and condescension,
consented to be "born under law, that He might redeem them that were under law"
(Gal. 4: 4, 5). There is here no article ; simply "under law" ; not "the law,"
as if meaning the Mosaic law ; Christ was "born under law, that He might redeem
them that were under law ;" and ver. 8 shows that the passage is directed to
Gentiles, idolators, not only to Jews : "ye were in bondage to them that by
nature are no gods." All men are liable to the law of God that death is the
penalty of sin.
(c) A different word for redeem is used here exagorazo. It
carries two thoughts ; (1) the publicity of the transaction, for the root
agorazo meant to buy in open market (agora, market place) ; and (2) the
completeness of the purchase, for the prefix ex gives the emphasis of our phrase
"I bought him out, I acquired all his holding in the Company ;" and therefore
the sacrifice made by Christ sets the believer wholly free from the grip of the
outraged law by completely satisfying its demand on the sinner.
This verb is found elsewhere in the New Testament at Eph. 5: 16 : Col. 4: 5,
"redeeming the time." At whatever cost of care and sacrifice the believer, being
himself redeemed completely from sin and doom, is himself to redeem completely
every minute from being mis-spent and wasted. He is to buy up every opportunity
to do the will of God. This leads us to notice a fourth sphere and aspect of
redemption.
(d) 1 Pet. 1: 18 : "ye were redeemed (lutroo) not with corruptible things, with
silver, or gold, from your vain manner of life, handed down from your fathers,
but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the
blood of Christ." Men everywhere have thought it natural and sufficient to live
as did their forbears. Nor is there virtue in change for its own sake. But the
Christian is under a sacred and imperious obligation to remember that man’s ways
are not God’s ways (Isa. 55: 8, 9) ; that nothing that originates in the world’s
system of life is of God (1 John 2: 16) ; so that to follow the way our fathers
took is surely to miss the way of God. And this is a "vain manner of life" - it
produces no true satisfaction now and its vanity will be fully evident when the
world passes away and sinners have only to say
My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of life are gone
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone. (Byron).
To save us from this lamentable fate the Son of God shed His precious blood. He
bought us out of that wretched enslaved condition that we should live worthily
for Him and eternity. The redeemed slave who continues in bondage is false to
himself and his Redeemer.
Thus in redemption there are bondage, purchase, and freedom, and naturally the
chief emphasis is on the last. It was by no means the thought of God that the
blood of the passover lamb should merely deliver from the Destroyer yet leave
the delivered still slaves in Egypt. His message ran : "I am come down to
deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that
land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey" (Ex.
3: 8). At the time, this last sentence was a proverbial phrase for abundant
fruitfulness, the exact and full opposite of a desert. It is upon the goal,
rather than upon the price and process of redemption that Scripture enlarges.
The infinite cost is indeed declared - the precious blood of Christ ; but the
stress falls upon the full outcome of the redemption.
Thus our Saviour Jesus Christ redeemed us from all iniquity (the past life) in
order that a present effect may flow out, even that He may "purify unto Himself
a people for His own possession, zealous of good works" (Tit. 3: 14). And Peter
teaches that our redemption by the blood of God’s Lamb demands that we shall
gird up the loins of our mind, be sober, and "set your hope perfectly
[undividedly] on the favour that is being brought unto you [the divine process
is already in movement] at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet.1: 13).
Present holiness is the pathway to future glory, which they shall reach who
press through the wilderness to Canaan.
Moses was sent by God to Israel to be their ruler and redeemer (lutrotees). They
who submitted to him as ruler, by obeying his directions and following his lead,
were delivered and liberated. The redemption which brings first the forgiveness
of transgressions is with a view to the day of redemption, and demands that we
shall not grieve the blessed Spirit Whose indwelling is the seal of God’s
proprietory rights with a view to redemption. Thus redemption is a past fact as
to the matter of purchase, but also a future hope as to full development (Eph.
1: 7, 14 ; 4: 30). It may be that Paul meant to recall to the Ephesians the
custom at their port that a merchant or builder could buy timber, paying the
price that freed it from the ownership of the vendor and himself acquiring that
right ; whereupon he sealed each plank with his seal, and in due time he or his
agent upon producing the seal could remove the timber. The payment of the
purchase price was vital, but the object of the buyer was personal possession
and use.
Similarly in Romans 3: 24, redemption is connected with our justification, but
chap. 8: 18-25 looks on to the goal, when the body also shall be emancipated
from present frailty and pain, and in heavenly liberty and glory shall be a
house suitable to the sons of God. Of this sublime consummation the indwelling
Spirit of God is firstfruits and gives foretastes, but we still groan, waiting
for and expecting our "adoption, the redemption of our body." Thus Christ Jesus
is made unto us from God wisdom on all the chief necessities of our case, and
the means of fulfilment of all the great and gracious desires of God ; He is our
righteousness before God, our justification ; He is our sanctification, in
present liberty from the tyranny of sin ; and He is our redemption, the
Fulfiller to the utmost of God’s purpose that men of faith shall be glorified (1
Cor. 1: 30). For Christ is "the Mediator of a new covenant, that a death having
taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first
covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of eternal
inheritance" (Heb. 9: 15). The purchase price of this glorious programme and
prospect was His own blood, and as this effected a redemption that is eternal
(Heb. 9: 12), He rests for ever from that work, but carries out and develops its
results unto their full completion. The pathway to this lies through many
tribulations (Ac. 14: 22), and we must suffer with Him if we would be glorified
with Him (Rom. 8: 17) ; but when, as this age draws to its end, these sufferings
for His sake reach their greatest intensity, then may we "look up" hopefully,
and "lift up our heads" with joy and confidence, for then will our redemption
have drawn nigh (Lk. 21: 28).
This mighty scheme, proposed by Divine love, devised by Divine wisdom, based
upon Divine sacrifice, will be consummated by Divine power. Its climax will be
the glorifying of the church of God with the Son of God in His proper heavenly
realm ; but there is included a repentance, recovery, and re-establishment of
Israel in their land and honour as God’s chosen people for the earth. For this
"redemption of Jerusalem" the pious in Israel were looking and of it they spake
often one to another (Lk. 1: 68 ; 2: 38 ; 24: 21), as the prophets had done
before them.
Nor shall only the church, Israel, and other nations benefit, but the whole
creation shall at last "be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
liberty of the glory [a liberty proportionate to the glory] of the sons of God"
(Rom. 8: 19-21). For, as before shown, the redeeming virtue of the blood of
Christ has no limits, except in those who reject its saving grace and refuse to
be reconciled to God. For that grace constrains but does not compel (Lk. 24: 23
contrast R.V. and A.V.).
(8) Sanctification. Gen. 2: 3 states that "God blessed the seventh day and
hallowed it." Exodus 13: 2 tells that God said "Sanctify unto Me all the
firstborn." In the Hebrew "hallow" and "sanctify" are the same word, as in the
A.V. The force of the word is seen in Lev. 26, which refers to the sanctifying
unto the Lord a house (14), or land (16), that is, it was devoted to the service
of God and could not be used for a secular purpose while so devoted. Conversely,
no one could voluntarily so devote the firstling of a beast or the tithe of his
produce because these were already, by statute, the Lord’s property. The meaning
therefore is that the person or thing sanctified was set apart from common use
to be devoted to God, it ceased to be common, profane, secular and became
sacred.
It is to be observed that this primary meaning of the term is irrespective of
the inherent quality of the object sanctified. The firstborn child or animal
might prove healthy or weakly, the produce of the consecrated field might be
rich or poor, but the law of the consecration read "He shall not alter it or
change it, a good for a bad or a bad for a good" (vers. 10, 33), under penalty
that both should be deemed sanctified.
The Hebrew word and its cognates come some 260 times. In the Greek Old Testament
they are represented by Greek words of the same primary meaning, and which are
used in the New Testament in the same sense.
In the setting apart unto God for sacred use something that had before been
common the atoning blood took a primary place. It is written of the altar of
burnt offering that "Moses took the blood, and put it upon the horns of the
altar round about with his finger, and purified the altar, and sanctified it, to
make atonement for it" (Lev. 16: 15) ; and of the person of the priest likewise
we read in the same chapter that "Moses took of the anointing oil, and of the
blood which was upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon Aaron, upon his garments,
and upon his sons, and upon his son’s garments with him, and sanctified Aaron,
his garments, and his sons, and his son’s garments with him" (ver. 30).
Thus the spot where in grace the Holy One met the guilty with pardoning mercy
was sanctified for the purpose by the blood that atoned for guilt. The cross of
Christ would not have become the meeting place in peace for God and man had not
the Redeemer there atoned for sin by the blood He shed to cover sin. Therefore
it is said that "Jesus sanctified the people by His own blood" and that "we have
been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all"
(Heb. 13: 12 ; 10: 10). He who has accepted the atoning blood of Christ is to
remember that, not only has he thereby received pardon for his sins, but he has
thereby consented to regard himself henceforth as set apart unto God as a vessel
dedicated wholly to sacred use, as it is written, "Whatsoever ye do, do all to
the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10: 31, and see Col. 3: 17).
Here it is necessary to recall what has just been mentioned, that this setting
apart unto God does not depend upon the personal condition of the one thus
sanctified. At his consecration as priest Aaron was not altered in actual
character by that solemn ceremony. He was the same man, still "compassed with
infirmity" (Heb. 5: 2) ; but he had been set apart entirely for God, which very
fact must itself have conduced to greater watchfulness over his heart and
conduct, in order that he might walk worthily of his high and priestly calling.
For he bore upon his forehead a golden plate inscribed "Holy [set apart] to
Jehovah" (Ex. 28: 36).
The believer is not to wait until he feels some marked change in his nature
before dedicating himself unto God ; he is to accept the searching and ennobling
fact that, by having accepted atonement by the blood of Christ, he has already
been set apart to God to do His holy will. Himself, his garments, his
surroundings are to be regarded in detail as sacred, as belonging to God. It is
in this sense that all believers are called "saints," dedicated ones.
Of this sense of the word "sanctify" the highest and quite unique example is
that of the Son of God. He said of Himself that the Father had sanctified Him
and sent Him into the world, and added, "Sanctify them in Thy truth . . . And
for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified
in truth" (John 10: 36 ; 17: 17, 19). It was clearly no question of His personal
character being purified, for He was inherently without sin or imperfection. The
sense is that the Father had set apart the Son for a definite service on earth
and the Son had correspondingly set Himself apart to render that service. The
thought is that of consecration and dedication, and He prayed that the truth He
had taught His disciples might work effectually unto their dedication of
themselves to God and His service.
There is yet more. Atoning blood is the basis of and preparation for the
anointing oil. When the backslidden leper in Israel had been pardoned and healed
his renewed fellowship with God, His people, and his family was secured by
ceremonial cleansing. In this three elements were employed, blood, oil, and
water. Blood and water commingled were sprinkled upon him. The part played by
the water we shall notice later. The blood was put upon his ear, hand, and foot,
to signify that his mind, work, and walk were now dedicated to God : the ear to
fill the mind with thoughts of God, the hand to serve Him in every act, the feet
to walk in His ways. But what son of Adam can assure such undivided devotion to
God? The oil was then put where the blood already was, to signify that the grace
of the Holy Spirit of God would be available to make actual what the blood had
made possible (Lev. 14.). The same ceremony formed part of the consecration of
the priest, oil being put upon the blood and poured upon the head (Lev. 16.).
A national fulfilment of this type awaits Israel in the day when they shall
repent of their national backsliding from God, with its culminating wickedness
in the murder of their Messiah, for thereupon God will sprinkle upon them "clean
water" (Lev. 14 : Num. 19), that is, water by which the blood will be applied,
the Spirit bringing home to the conscience the saving virtue of the death of
Christ ; and then will God put within them His Spirit, Who will cause them to
listen to God’s commandments with an understanding mind and ready heart, so that
by the Spirit’s strength they will do the will of God, and will walk gladly in
His ways (Ezek. 36: 24-27).
But a present fulfilment is available already for such as repent of their sin,
abandon it, and accept the cleansing of the conscience, so having the heart
sprinkled from a consciousness of evil because of appreciating and appropriating
the atoning virtue of the blood of Christ. Pentecost follows Calvary ; the
Spirit is granted to the believer who devotes himself unreservedly to Him Whose
blood has redeemed him from all iniquity. This was the attitude of heart of the
hundred and twenty upon whom the Spirit was poured on the day of Pentecost ; and
ever since then God has given the Spirit to them that obey Him (Ac. 5: 32). Such
show that they have been anointed with the Spirit by witnessing for Christ,
talking of Him with the tongue and displaying Him in their spirit and ways.
Thus is there not only sanctification by the blood of Christ but a further
"sanctification of the Spirit" (1 Pet. 1: 2). He it is Who so presents Christ to
the heart that the obedient find every spiritual need met, every godly desire
satisfied in Him; with the consequence that in the power of the heavenly
anointing the dedication to Him which is demanded by the atoning blood is
rendered out of love and gratitude.
The oil was put only where blood had first been put. Pentecost did not precede
Calvary, could not do so. No one can receive the Spirit who has not first
received Christ as Redeemer by His blood. But by the indwelling Spirit of
holiness the believer can fulfil the just demand of God "Ye shall be holy, for I
am holy," a call given four times to Israel in the book of Leviticus (11: 44, 45
; 19: 2 ; 20: 7, 26), and repeated to Christians in 1 Peter 1: 15, 16.
The atoning blood is the basis of holiness, of a life fully consecrated to God,
and the Spirit, typified by oil, is its power.
(9) Access. This subject is now resumed. The dignity of the king, as superior to
all his subjects, has caused it to be regarded as a special honour to have
access to his person, especially on State occasions. From the book of Esther we
know that in Persia it was at risk of death that one should approach the king’s
throne in the inner court of the palace without having been first invited (Esth.
4: 11). So far did this seclusion rule in that Persian empire that there were
only seven princes who had almost unrestricted right of access to the sovereign,
they "saw the king’s face and sat first in the kingdom" (Esth. 1: 14). From
Herodotus we learn that the original seven of these acquired this honour by
special devotion to his cause. They had risked all to drive an usurper from the
throne and secure it for the true heir.
The same principle of seclusion ruled in Israel in relation to entering the
inner sanctuary of the tabernacle where God was present in a ray of glory. As
before noted, even the consecrated high priest was forbidden to enter more than
once a year, on the day of atonement (Lev. 16: 2). The high and heavy veil
screened that Presence from all beholders, "the Holy Spirit this signifying,
that the way into the holy places hath not yet been made manifest, while the
first tabernacle is yet standing" (Heb. 9: 6-8). "The holy places," not here
only the most holy place, because while the priests and Levites could enter
daily the courts, and the priests the outer room of the sanctuary, the rest of
the people, being the vast majority of the nation, were forbidden even this
measure of approach to God. It was under penalty of death that any one of them
ventured to draw near to God (Num. 1: 51 ; 3: 10: etc.). Even Levites forfeited
their lives when they presumed to act as priests (Num. 16), and later the king
himself was stricken with fatal sickness when he entered the holy place to offer
incense, a priestly act (2 Chron. 26).
How striking is the difference revealed in the New Testament. The people of God
of this age are exhorted to "draw near with boldness unto the throne," to find
it a "throne of grace," where they can obtain mercy as to failures and grace to
help as may be, needed (Heb. 4: 16). Of this mighty change the rending of the
veil of the temple at the death of Christ was the public notice, the Holy Spirit
signifying thus that from that hour the way into the holy places is made
manifest, is thrown open to every believer.
Two principal facts contribute jointly to this marvellous change and mighty
privilege : the Mediator and His precious blood. Jesus stated an unchanging and
universal fact when He said : "I am the way ; no one cometh unto the Father but
through Me" (John 14: 6). No one can have access to the sovereign of England at
a court function unless provided with an invitation issued by the Lord
Chamberlain of the Household. This official might say, "I am the way; no one
comes unto the Queen but through me."
Moreover, even the high priest in Israel durst not enter the Presence of God
unless he took with him the blood that removed the guilt that debarred man
access to God ; without atoning blood he would have died there, paying the
penalty of sin. "Christ also suffered for sins once, the Righteous One for the
unrighteous ones, that He might bring us to God" (1 Pet. 3: 18) ; not only that
He might bring out to us the pardon of God, but that He might take us in to God.
"Being therefore justified by faith let us have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ ; through Whom also we have had our access into this state of
favour wherein we stand before God" (Rom. 5: 1, 2), and "have boldness to enter
into the holy places in [the virtue of] the [atoning] blood of Jesus" (Heb. 10:
19-22).
The veil is rent ; Lo ! Jesus stands
Before the throne of grace,
While clouds of incense from His hands
Fill all that glorious place.
His precious blood He sprinkles there,
Before, and on the throne ;
And His own wounds in heaven declare
His work on earth is done.
Within the holiest of all,
Cleansed by His precious blood,
Before Thy throne Thy children fall,
And worship Thee, our God.
Boldly our heart and voice we raise,
His name, His blood, our plea ;
Assured our prayers and songs of praise
Ascend by Him to Thee.
(J. G. Deck)
Blessed is he who can thus sing, not merely as recital of privilege, but out of
real heart experience of the presence of God. It was one who, though a king,
could not act as priest, who envied that honour and exclaimed
Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causest to approach,
That he may dwell in Thy courts.
(David, Ps. 65: 4).
David could only visit the great public court : priests could dwell before God.
It is possible that prayer may be only like the sending of a petition to the
king, instead of talking with him in his very presence. "Let us draw near ;" let
us learn how to realize this as a genuine experience of the spirit. Being asked
if he knew the way to heaven a plain man replied, "I lives there!"
(10) Victory. And when this becomes fact, what then? Then, of course, the
spiritual anticipation and counterpart of pearly gates and golden streets and
golden harps! Then peace like a river and joy like a fountain, because,
“The Father’s face in radiant grace
Shines now in light on me.”
Yes, and of this we might and ought to know much more. We ought to be able to
sing with ecstasy
And oh, to know this place is mine!
Though yet by faith, in measure small:
To breathe its air, to sip its wine,
To dwell where God is all in all- -
This, this is LIFE, before the throne,
And all is death save this alone.
Yet this is only one aspect of being seated with Christ in heavenly places. The
same epistle that early lifts us there, closes by dwelling upon the dread fact
that in those same heavenly places we wrestle against wicked spirits (Eph. 2: 6
; 6: 12) ; and he who most abides there in Christ knows most of this conflict.
In Egypt Israel did no fighting : they were slaves. During forty years in the
desert they fought only two battles with outside foes : in the one they
conquered by faith and prayer in the other self-confidence brought defeat (Ex.
17: 8-15 Num. 14: 39-45). In those years their own fleshly lusts were their
entanglement. The devil does not need to bother much about Christians who live
after the flesh. But as soon as Israel crossed the Jordan (typical of our
passing out of the flesh into life in the Spirit), on those uplands of Canaan
they must needs fight for their promised land and dispossess by force the giants
and others who disputed possession. Ours is no sham fight, no mimic warfare. The
Greek word palee, translated "wrestling" in Eph. 6: 12, pictures antagonists
locked in deadly embrace, swaying hither and thither as each strives to throw or
kill the other. This is its only place in the New Testament, which lends
strength and vividness to the passage. I must defeat Satan or be defeated. To
say that every believer is a conqueror is false and foolish, a help to being
defeated.
Nor is this warfare located only in the inner man of the Christian ; it has also
the character of legal proceedings in Court, the Court of heaven. It is the
throne to which we draw near. In Bible times the king sat thereupon as the
supreme judge. It was the final Court of appeal (1 Kin. 2: 12 ; 3: 16). From
very early times we see this High Court of heaven in action (Job 1. and 2.: 2
Chron. 18: 18-22 : Dan. 4. ; 7: 9, 10, 26 : Lk. 22: 31, 32). This situation
continues on till the close of this age, for Rev. 12: 7-12 tells of the casting
of Satan out of that heavenly realm, until when he continues as the Accuser of
God’s people, even as he was of Job. This casting down is to be a little before
Christ establishes His kingdom on earth.
Of this continuing reality few believers are aware, or few teachers either. It
means that Satan, the Adversary of God’s church (Lk. 28: 1 -8 : 1 Pet. 5: 8-10),
is the ProsecutorGeneral of the universe, and either invents calumnies, as he
did against Job, or bases charges on the sins of believers. If he carries the
day in that Court, then, as Peter and the other disciples found, the Christian
is left to him to be disciplined, as corn is tossed in a sieve. The end intended
and permitted by God is the removing of the chaff, but the tossing will be
severe (Amos 9: 8-10).
How urgent therefore is the question of how the attack of the Prosecutor is to
be defeated and the character cleared before that Judge and Court. A main object
of Satan in tempting the believer into sin is to stop his mouth, to prevent him
witnessing of Christ and his salvation. The battle on earth is therefore mainly
that the Christian shall so live that he shall be able consistently to talk of
Christ and invite Satan’s slaves to secure their liberty from his thraldom and
doom ; as it is written : "they overcame him ... because of the word of their
testimony," in giving which they were prepared even to die, "they loved not
their life even unto death" (Rev. 12: 11).
But how are they, or their Advocate before that Court on high (1 John 2: 2 : Lk.
22: 32 : Heb. 4: 14), to defeat the Accuser’s plea that the failures of
Christians ought to be punished. In that Court they must rely solely upon the
argument that the due penalty of their sins as believers has been already met by
the death of their Substitute : "they overcame him because of the blood of the
Lamb" (Rev. 12: 11). The Lord’s words to Peter, "Satan obtained you by asking" (Lk.
22: 31, mgn.), represent a technical legal word (exaiteo) meaning to demand that
a culprit be punished. If a Court orders that a certain sum be paid by a given
date and it be not paid, a demand can be made that the defaulter be punished for
having disobeyed the Court. The answer in law would be to show that the order
had been obeyed and the sum paid. This would be an equally valid answer
irrespective of who had made the payment, the debtor or a surety.
There is no other possible way of overcoming the Accuser than to plead the blood
of Christ ; but this plea, when presented by the repentant believer, and
endorsed by the heavenly Advocate, cannot fail. But it must be remembered that
this plea cannot be urged or accepted so long as the sin remains unrepented,
unforsaken, unconfessed. Our Advocate is not there to enable us to continue in
any sin, but to deliver us from the Accuser if we walk in the light of God's
will. This has been shown in section 3. above on 1 John 1: 6, 7. On this
condition victory is assured through the blood of the Lamb.
(2) A Kingdom of Priests. Deliverance from the Destroyer by the blood of the
Passover lamb opened the door for Israel to enter upon the life of freedom
marked by faith and obedience. God could now go on to train them for the
purposes which He had in mind for the sons of Abraham His friend. One of the
earliest of these purposes to be made known, and the highest of them, was
declared in these words : "Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians," which
shows that with Me nothing is impossible ; "and I bare you on eagles wings,"
showing My love, and strength, and care ; "and brought you unto Myself," so that
I should have one people of the earth as My possession from among the apostate
nations of the world. "Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep
My covenant, then ye shall be Mine own possession from among all peoples : for
all the earth is Mine." Thus this first great promise to persons already
redeemed was prefaced by a condition, and its fulfilment demanded their
obedience and faithfulness. This was not under the law of Sinai, for it preceded
that event. It did not in the least alter their past redemption and deliverance
from both the Destroyer and Pharaoh, but it did affect their future, which was
"ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation" (Ex. 19: 4-6).
"A kingdom" - that is, a governing body, as it was said of a queen, "thou art
come to the kingdom" (Esth. 4: 14), and of a king, "Darius the Mede received the
kingdom" (Dan. 5: 31). But these rulers were to be also a body of priests, thus
royal priests. This was not a new idea. It was the general practice of the
nations that the king should be the chief priest of his people. Melchizedek was
a fairly recent instance from the time of their father Abraham. It was therefore
the grand privilege of Israel to be a royal nation to rule all the earth for
God, and a priestly people to instruct the rest of mankind in His law, to
minister to them His grace, and to lead them in His worship. Thus should they
serve the promise made to their first father that in him all the families of the
earth should be blessed (Gen. 12: 3). This would be the restoration of the
Divine purpose in the creation of Adam, for he also had been appointed to rule
the earth for God, but had broken down.
But beyond this lay the nobler thought, that this programme would bring Israel
into close association with the Son of God, Who Himself, from the beginning of
creation, had been its appointed Sovereign and the Priest through Whom God held
relations with all His creatures, heavenly and earthly. A Royal Priest,
combining both offices in one Person, is the ideal to which God works, and which
He will restore in heaven and on earth. For though Israel failed at that time in
obedience, and the dignity offered has never been realized, yet it shall find
fulfilment in the day of their national repentance and recovery. For the prophet
saw and declared Israel’s national supremacy, saying, "the nation and kingdom
that will not serve thee shall perish," and their priesthood, saying, "ye shall
be named priests of Jehovah ; men shall call you ministers of our God." But this
can be fulfilled only when that also shall be true of them which the same
prophet said, "My people also shall be all righteous" (Isa. 60: 12, 21 ; 61: 6).
Yet even so, this will fulfil the plan of God for the earth only. But He has
said that He has put all things under man’s feet (Ps. 8: 6). Truly, as it is
said in Heb. 2: 8, we "see not yet all things subjected to him," man, although
in His purpose God has "left nothing that is not subject to him" (man : ver. 7).
But we do see the promise receiving fulfilment in one man, the man Jesus,
already on the throne of God. And God is now working by His Spirit through the
truth to "bring many sons unto glory" (ver. 10), to share the glory and
authority and royal priesthood of His Divine Priest King. And this shall include
authority over the heavens as well as the earth, for "know ye not that the
saints shall judge the world? . . . Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" (1
Cor. 6: 2, 3).
For the church as for Israel the realization of this supreme dignity and service
is conditional, for it is "if so be that we suffer with Him that we may be also
glorified with Him" (Rom. 8: 17), and "if we endure we shall also reign with
Him," and obtain, not only salvation, but "salvation with eternal glory" (2 Tim.
2: 10-13). As the salvation of Israel from temporal death in Egypt was not
affected by their failure to reach God’s later ideal for them, so neither is our
salvation from eternal death affected by failure to attain to God’s higher ideal
for us. And the reason is this, that salvation is secured by faith, and is
granted on the ground that life answers to life, death for death ; and the
deliverance thus effected is irreversible in law. It is atoning blood that
rescues completely from doom, and so it is the door that opens into the way of
life, with its noble possibilities. Therefore this royal priesthood is connected
with redemption, as it is written, "Unto Him that loveth us, and loosed us from
our sins in His blood; and He made us to be a kingdom, priests unto His God and
Father ; to Him be the glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen!" (Rev. 1: 5,
6).
Every royal priest in that heavenly company will declare
"I stand upon His merit,
I know no other stand,
Not e’en where glory dwelleth,
In Immanuel’s land."
And the four and twenty Elders, the present royal priests, who will then give up
their crowns, when the Conqueror and His fellow-conquerors shall take the throne
(Rev. 3: 21), will endorse that declaration and will say to Him,
"Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast
slain and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue,
and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests
; and they reign upon the earth" (Rev. 5: 9, 10).
Thus the atoning blood of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, is the eternal basis
of all God’s gracious work with a sinner, from its commencement in salvation
from doom to its crown and completion in the glory of heaven. Rightly do we
sing:
Precious, precious blood of Jesus,
Shed on Calvary ;
Shed for rebels, shed for sinners,
Shed for me.
Precious blood that hath redeemed us,
All the price is paid ;
Perfect pardon now is offered,
Peace is made.
Precious blood! by this we conquer
In the fiercest fight,
Sin and Satan overcoming
By its might.
Precious blood, whose full atonement
Makes us nigh to God !
Precious blood, our song of glory,
Praise and laud!
(F. R. Havergal).
(back to the top)
8. WHAT THE BLOOD DOES NOT DO.
IN the matter of deliverance from the Destroying Angel in Egypt the atoning
blood sufficed by itself. The repentant tax-gatherer "went down to his house
justified" solely by the virtue of the sacrifice on the altar (Lk. 18 13, 14).
Thus for the redeemed Israelites the blood was the commencement and basis of all
future relations with God, it was the doorway out of estrangement into a life of
faith and communion. Moreover, all through the life thus entered there continued
various sprinklings of blood, showing that it remained perpetually the basis of
intercourse with God. Nor is the place and efficacy of atoning blood at all
diminished by the abrogation of repeated sacrifices and sprinklings through the
one complete and final sacrifice of the cross, because the virtue of that death,
and of the blood of Christ there shed, is eternal and is the perpetual basis of
all communion with God.
Nevertheless the door is not the road or its goal, the foundation is not the
superstructure, the blood by itself serves its ends but not all ends;
deliverance from the judicial penalty of sin is not the same as deliverance from
the practical power of sin, freedom from servitude in Egypt must advance to
conquest in Canaan, turning from idols is to develop into service to a living
and true God. For the numerous phases and necessities of this developing life
the blood is ever the basis but is not by itself sufficient. There are things
which blood cannot do and does not do, which it is not its function to do. In
particular, as all histories and types show, it does not (1) dispense with the
obedience of faith, or (2) with need of bread, or (3) do the work of water. or
(4) take the place of oil, or (5) act as fire and serve the ends of discipline,
or (6) do the work of the sword.
1. Blood does not dispense with faith and obedience.
The sprinkling of the passover blood opened the door to escape from Egypt, but
the redeemed people had to take the next and immediate step of faith by obeying
the order to march off that same night. If they had not so acted they would not
have escaped from thraldom into freedom, though delivered from the Destroyer by
the blood. Pharaoh would have held them still. It was no small faith that
strengthened them for their hasty and complete flight. Pharaoh was active and
angry, his chariots and cavalry were at hand, they had no unity or arms to
resist an attack; but faith obeyed and set forth, trusting that God would
protect, and make the enterprise successful.
How many there are today who have rested their hope of safety from eternal death
upon the precious blood of Christ, but have failed to break with the world, and
so they continue entangled by its pleasures and enslaved by its Prince. Either
they never heard the call and command to break every yoke with unbelievers, or
they have lacked the energy and decision of faith to do this. Protected by the
blood they yet remain enslaved by the world, the flesh, and the devil. The
apostle rejoiced greatly in the continuing faith of his children in the faith
(Eph. 1: 15: Col. 1: 4; 1 Thes. 1: 3), and gave thanks to God when he knew that
it "grew exceedingly" (2 Thes. 1: 3). He was keenly aware of the practical
dangers attendant upon a failure of faith in children of God. He stressed
heavily that the disasters that overwhelmed Israel in the wilderness, though
they were the redeemed of the Lord, can have counterpart in the experience of
Christians, for, he says, "these things happened unto them by way of example
[Greek, figure]; and they were written [put into God’s historical records] for
our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are come" (1 Cor. 10: 1 -13).
These disasters befell "most of them" that had been redeemed by the blood of the
lamb and brought into liberty and fellowship with God. They were sufficiently
spiritual to know that manna and water had spiritual counterparts and to partake
of these latter: "they did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink
the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that went with
them: and the rock was Christ."
In the face of these explicit assertions of Scripture as to the spiritual state
of those concerned, and in the face of the direct application of their
experiences to Christians in Corinth, it is wholly without warrant to say that
they were not real believers and that the application here made is to mere
professors of this age, not to true believers. Such treatment of Scripture would
mean that all but a very small number of the Corinthian Christians were either
hypocrites or self-deceived, for of those who were examples for them only three
or four of the men who left Egypt did not die in the desert. Jude refers to the
same ancient events and says, "I desire to put you in remembrance, though ye
know all things once for all, how that the Lord, having saved a people out of
the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not" (verse 5). This
is exactly how Paul warns us in the passage cited, saying, "Neither murmur ye,
as some of them murmured and perished by the destroyer" (verse 10).
Therefore there is such a thing as being saved from the Destroyer in Egypt and
yet falling under his power in the desert. The blood saves from being condemned
at the same time as the world, but did not prevent carnal Christians in Corinth
from losing their present life under the chastisement of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:
29-32). To have received eternal redemption from eternal doom by the blood of
Christ does not dispense with the need of continuous faith and obedience by the
redeemed, if such are to enjoy present communion with their holy Father and
escape severe chastisement. To exactly the same effect are the solemn warnings
in the parables of Christ and those in Hebrews. The whole Word of God emphasizes
the urgent need of a continuous faith and ceaseless obedience in the redeemed of
the Lord. Hence the force of the continuous tense in "eth": heareth, believeth,
eateth, drinketh, and the like words. See John 4: 13, 14; 6: 54, 46: etc. No
backslidden Israelite or backslidden Christian ever has escaped loss and
chastisement through redemption by the blood.
2. Blood does not take the place of food.
The same night that Israel sprinkled the blood they strengthened themselves for
the coming hard trek by eating of the lamb and the unleavened bread. Nor did
this initial meal suffice for long: they took dough to make bread for the next
meals (Ex. 12: 7- 11, 34). Nor could this provision last for all the journey;
shortly, bread out of heaven was given. Nor was one supply of this heavenly food
adequate: the manna had to be gathered and eaten repeatedly and unfailingly. For
us Christ is the Lamb and the unleavened bread and the manna, to be appropriated
by faith as the soul’s vital force (1 Cor. 5: 6-8: John 6) ; and he who would
run and not be weary, walk and not faint, mount above obstacles on eagles’
wings, must nourish his soul daily in the words of the faith, even the words of
the Lord Jesus, whether spoken by Old Testament prophets, or Himself when here,
or by apostles and prophets who spake by the Spirit. One may be sincerely
relying upon the blood of Christ for salvation from perdition, yet be feeble and
sick spiritually by not feeding upon Christ in the Word.
(back to the top)
3. Blood does not do the work of Water.
It may be thought needless to argue something so self-evident. In fact there is
the most urgent need to do so and at length, for Evangelical theology and belief
are almost universally false on this point. This is to be seen especially in
hymns, though also in many competent writers.
“There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there have I, as vile as he,
Washed all my sins away.”
It is to be asserted categorically, and with the utmost emphasis, that no such
fountain or flood of blood exists, that to be plunged in blood is a purely pagan
idea, and that no person or his sins ever have been washed in blood. The whole
conception is both obnoxious and mischievous. The heathen had a most offensive
rite, the tourobolium, in which the man was deluged with blood from above, but
God never sanctioned any such ceremony nor does His Word admit even the idea.
The one verse that could be fairly quoted for the conception was Rev. 1: 5 in
the A.V., "Unto Him that . . . washed us from our sins in His blood." The
Revisers, following the better Greek text, read "loosed us from our sins," set
us free, liberated us from our sins, as a debtor is freed from his debts by the
payment of them. The difference between the two Greek words is only one letter.
To free is luo, to wash is louo. Whether the introduction of the first "o" was
the accidental mistake of a copyist, or a conscious correction by him to
accommodate the verse to a popular conception which he thought true, or a
deliberate perversion to inculcate error it had the baneful effect of forcing
this verse into plain contradiction with the whole typology and theology of Holy
Scripture and of hiding indispensable truth.
There is one other statement, also in Revelation (ch. 7: 14), often misread and
misused to the same effect: "they washed their robes, and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb." This does not say that these washed and whitened their robes
in the blood: there are here two separated verbs describing two operations,
"they washed their robes, and whitened them in the blood," the "and" being
disjunctive as well as conjunctive; the two operations belong together but the
latter is additional to the former. This is indicated by the comma after
"robes." We shall see the force of this when considering certain types, and that
the washing was with water and the blood was applied by sprinkling.*
[* Rev. 1: 5 and 7: 14. "The idea of washing or whitening robes in blood is
therefore not present, whether en to haimati tou arniou [ ‘in the blood of the
Lamb’] goes with eplunan ... kai eleukanan ['washed ... and whitened'] or with
eleukanan ['whitened'] only." - F. F. Bruce.]
The passage from the Old Testament upon which the hymn quoted is doubtless based
is Zech. 13: 1 : "In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of
David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness." This
does not say "a fountain of blood." "In that day" looks forward not backward: it
points to the future when Messiah shall return to deliver Jerusalem and Israel
from Antichrist - see the paragraph preceding and the whole context. Is Calvary
to be then re-enacted? Is the blood of Christ to be shed again? Must not the
meaning be other than this? An Old Testament figure must be interpreted in
harmony with previous Old Testament types, pictures, and teaching.
(1) When Israel was redeemed from the Destroyer it was by blood alone. The
people were not required to wash their persons or garments. The taxgatherer
"went down to his house justified" (Lk. 18: 14) by virtue of the altar and the
blood alone; he did not have to wash at the laver. Thus the blood by itself
saves from damnation and justifies the penitent believer. This is the Scriptural
denial of the doctrine that eternal salvation depends in part upon outward
sanctification, so that no one can be assured of salvation until he has
persevered in holiness to the end of life. The point is stressed by both the
type and the express statement of Christ.
(2) But no sooner had the people redeemed by blood entered the life of
fellowship with God in the desert than the necessity for water arose: they went
three days in the wilderness and found no water (Ex. 15: 22). Anyone who has
tramped the desert for one day, under the Egyptian sun, will know how hard it
was to go three days without water, and will not throw stones at them for
murmuring.
And the first water they reached was bitter (Ex. 15: 23). The type teaches that
something more and better than earth’s supplies is needed for spiritual
refreshment. God changed that bitter water and made it drinkable and healthful.
God has skill to turn life’s bitter experiences into soul-refreshment,
health-giving and vivifying; for still He uses such occasions as He did then, to
grant "precious and exceeding great promises, in order that by means of these we
may become partakers of divine nature" (2 Pet. 1: 4). This will bring us, as
Israel, to an Elim, where the heart may encamp and repose (Ex. 15: 27).
But in a desert the need of water is perpetual and the lack of it easy occasion
for a grumbling spirit (Ex. 17: 1-7). Oh, how readily the redeemed soul reaches
its Massah and Meribah, testing God instead of trusting Him, chiding instead of
praying. But as has been noticed above, their gracious God provided henceforth
water from the Rock which accompanied them the rest of their journey (1 Cor. 10:
4). That Rock was Christ, smitten on the cross once for all, water of life being
thus made permanently available and free. Now the blood that had redeemed had
been shed once for all in Egypt; the water that slaked their thirst flowed
constantly. Blood did not flow to quench their thirst. Only a pagan savage would
offer his friend blood to drink.
The Lord Jesus is He Who shed His blood to redeem: He it is Who also gives the
living water. In John 3 we hear Him tell Nicodemus that it is Himself lifted up
on the cross to whom the sinner must look in order to receive the gift of
eternal life. To Nicodemus He spoke of the cross, for He was showing that the
source of eternal life lies in His own death; but in the next chapter (4), when
showing a sin-parched thirsty soul how this need could be met, He did not speak
of blood but of water. They are many who have reached John 3, having experienced
the new birth by faith in the death of Christ, but who have not advanced to John
4, for they have no experience answering to the Lord’s rich promise, "whosoever
drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst" (verse 14). The
promise is emphatic: "for ever shall in no wise thirst," and the reason is
notable, "the water that I shall give him shall become in him a spring of water
always welling up unto eternal life." Here is an inward experience that never
could have been possible had the blood not covered our sin but which manifestly
is something additional to this latter, and which many never reach though
knowing they are redeemed and pardoned. And they will remain thirsty and weak as
long as their attention is confined to the blood; it is water they need. What
water typifies, wherever it is spoken of figuratively, is shown in the Lord’s
words spoken in the temple, as explained by John "Jesus stood and cried, If any
man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth into [vital union
with] Me, out of his innermost being shall flow torrents of living water"
(Variorum Bible). " "But this spake He of the Spirit which they that believed on
Him were to receive" (John 7: 37-39).
Better class houses in the East are frequently built as a square, with windows
and doors opening only on to an interior court, save perhaps in some cases a
door into a walled garden, and the heavy door leading to the street. If now a
tumult arises in the town the occupants can retire into their house, bar the
stout door, and stay within till quiet returns. Only they must be well stocked
with food, and still more must have their own well in the inner court. Thus can
the believer be inwardly secured and fortified against the tumults that disturb
the outer life: by the indwelling Spirit he can have his full supply of peace
and joy springing up in his own heart, and so copiously that the streams will
overflow to others, as Jesus promised. Only those redeemed by blood can
experience this; nor will such know it save by drinking continually of the
water, by living constantly in communion with the Holy Spirit.
(3.) The second principal use of water is for washing. Both the person and the
clothing require this. For this purpose water is the natural and only suitable
agent.
(a) Lev. 14. The leper in Israel was a redeemed man under Divine chastisement
for his sin. It was distinctly guaranteed to them that if they would obey the
commandments and keep the statutes of their God the diseases of Egypt should not
touch them (Ex. 15: 26). Therefore the healing and cleansing of a leper in
Israel pictures the penitence, pardon, and restoration of a backslidden
believer. In this restoration the first act was by God; He healed the leper of
the disease. The second act was that "living," that is, running water, not
stagnant water, was brought, a bird was so killed that its blood dropped into
the water, and this mixture of water and blood was sprinkled upon the healed
man. These two operations have spiritual counterpart, (1) "By His stripes we are
healed" (Isa. 53: 5), not simply forgiven but healed. The defiling, weakening
effects of sin are cured; its outflow is removed, its display restrained. Then
(2) there is the further stage that the heart is sprinkled from an evil
conscience (Heb. 10: 22). This means that the Holy Spirit brings home to the
conscience the saving power of the blood of Christ, and the believer has no more
consciousness of being guilty, defiled, banished. When the leper had been
sprinkled the stain of the blood in the water would be visible on his garments.
That would assure him and show to others that he had been forgiven and was being
restored to fellowship with God and His people. He would now have no feeling
that he must flee to outside the camp, nor could any other command him to do so.
The blood stains set him free; the setting free of the living bird, also stained
with the blood, was the symbol (verse 7).
But (3) there was a third stage in the restoration. Cleansing was not yet
complete. The man had now to wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and bathe
himself in water. Every external sign of defilement, the whole output of sin,
had to be removed. The blood was sprinkled upon him by another, the priest; the
washing he had to do himself. God supplied the water; the man had to use it, to
apply it to himself. The Lord gives the Spirit; the believer has to receive and
apply His empowering grace.
It is obvious that the clothing is not the man. Garments are articles we make,
and put on or put off. They represent those qualities of character and practice
which we form and wear; they are the externals which both reveal and conceal our
real self. They must be kept unspotted (Jas. 1: 27), they must be washed when
necessary (Rev. 7: 14); it is possible, and far better, to keep them undefiled
(Rev. 3: 4). This making clean and keeping clean of our outer life is wrought by
the grace of the Spirit of holiness, the heavenly "Water."
To the formerly grossly immoral heathen at Corinth who had believed on Christ
Paul wrote: "Such were some of you : but ye washed yourselves (R.V. mgn), but ye
were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the
Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6: 9-11). And later he exhorted them thus: "let us
cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit [of outer life and
inward state], going on perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Cor. 7: 1).
The former passage shows that continued action of the Redeemer and the Spirit
pictured by the commingled water and blood sprinkled on the leper, preceding the
man washing and bathing himself. The latter verse cannot point to this initial
step in the cleansing, because the participle "perfecting holiness" points to a
ceaseless process to be continued perseveringly till its perfection is reached.
It is to this that we are called to attend, for if the sprinkled man had not
gone on to wash his clothes and bathe his person he would have blocked his own
progress and debarred himself reunion with the family circle and also approach
to God. Though penitent, pardoned, healed, and sprinkled with the blood, he
could not resume communion with God or the godly, save by diligent use of the
water.
The Scripture solemnly and repeatedly warns believers that if the marks of the
old life are not removed, if they continue to allow the old defiling practices,
they will thereby forfeit any inheritance in the kingdom of God. The leper,
though healed, could not re-enter upon his inheritance in Israel merely because
of the sprinkled blood, but only after the additional washing with water. An
inheritance is not a man’s life; a living man may forfeit an inheritance (1 Cor.
6: 6- 1 0: Gal. 5: 19-2 1: Eph. 5: 5). The solemn repetition of this warning in
three epistles shows that it was a regular theme in apostolic ministry. It were
well if it regains this place.
All this shows the vast and important part water has in the life of the
redeemed. The atoning blood has its indispensable initial place and work, but it
cannot do the work of the water. Calvary leads to Pentecost but cannot
substitute it. Pentecost itself is the initial act of bathing, but it does not
dispense with daily washing. Therefore to even the inner circle of faithful
followers the Lord said, "He that is washed all over needs not save to wash his
feet, but is wholly clean" (that is, by keeping his feet washed. Darby, New
Translation, John 13: 10 and note a). The force of this will be seen in Lev. 8.,
the consecration of a priest.
(b) Leviticus 8. The Priest. The tax-gatherer was justified by the blood through
faith without the use of water; but he went down to his own house, he could not
go up into God’s house, for he was not a priest. The banished leper was healed
and cleansed, first by blood and water, the former applied to him once for all,
by sprinkling, the water by himself and repeatedly. This restored him to
intercourse with God and His people. But he also could not go into God’s house
and serve there. He was not a priest.
To the priest were granted the higher dignities of entering the house where God
dwelt, of presenting the showbread and feeding upon it, of burning the incense
of worship, of interceding for the people without, and of going forth from that
sacred Presence with power to bless others (Num. 6: 22-27).
The perfect sacrifice having provided eternal redemption, the Great Priest over
the house of God being permanently before Him, the veil is rent, that Holy Place
is open to every believer and its heavenly privileges are available to all. Such
is the essence of the exposition in Hebrews. Yet what proportion of Christians
are experimentally in the power of this? A clerical caste of clergy and
ministers, reserving to themselves the conduct of Christian worship, is a
terrible and devastating hindrance to general priestly growth and experience.
But even in spheres where this barrier is not allowed, where liberty to function
as priests is found, there are all too many who are not in their very soul
conscious of the immediate nearness of God, they do not in spiritual experience
"draw near unto the throne of grace." Every British subject has the right to
submit a petition to the Crown, but not every subject has access to the
Sovereign in person. Many send prayers up to God, and are heard, but this is not
the same as drawing near to God in the power of the Spirit.
In Israel all the devout could stand at the gate and look beyond the altar to
the house; they could all present, their petitions and secure God’s answer, as
did Solomon (1 Kings 8.), or Hanna who there prayed and praised (1 Sam. 1. and
2.). And this is as far and as near as many Christians get. They attend public
worship and never open their lips to lead it. They say Amen to prayers but do
not pour out intercessions for others; they sing hymns but do not offer their
own praise; nor do they go forth from the realized presence of God to distribute
His bounties to needy hearts, saved or unsaved. Moreover it is, alas, sadly
possible for one to engage publicly in all these outward functions of the house
of God without being in His presence in heart consciousness and without leading
others there. Priests by position, such are not priests by practice. Why is
this?
It is principally because though they know the sprinkling of blood they do not
regularly wash with water. They have received Christ but not the Spirit, they
have reached Calvary but not Pentecost, they stand at the altar and stay there.
And a principal reason for this arrested progress is that, by sermons, books,
and especially hymns, they have been taught that at the altar and by the blood
they have secured all that can be known on earth. The function of the water has
been attributed to the blood, and they seek no more. The necessity and the
blessedness of the laver they do not discern. This has conduced to permanent and
lamentable impoverishment of soul, so that only few of the saved act as priests.
Leviticus 8 shows the first stage of the remedy. The priest to be consecrated
was
1. Stripped of his former clothing.
2. Bathed in water.
3. Clothed with priestly garments, the crowning item of which was a golden plate
on his forehead inscribed "Holy to Jehovah" (verse 9: Ex. 28: 36).
4. He was anointed with oil.
5. Sacrifices followed and the blood was sprinkled.
At the cleansing of the leper (Lev. 14) the sprinkling of blood came first and
washing with water later; at the consecration of the priest, water and oil were
used first, and afterward the blood. Why this difference? Because Aaron and his
sons, the priests, were already on a right footing before God as His redeemed
people: but for access to His holy presence in priestly service a right standing
by blood was not all that was demanded; they must also be thoroughly clean
outwardly, attired suitably, wholly dedicated to God, and empowered by His
Spirit, the holy anointing Oil.
Peter wrote to his fellow-believers as a "royal priesthood" (1 Pet. 2: 9). He
says they had already "obtained a like precious faith with us in the
righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Pet. 1: 1). Their standing
as justified was secured; but addressing them as priests he says that they have
been chosen by God "in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience, and
sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1: 2). Here is the same order:
first, sanctification by the Spirit; second obedience (as signified by the
engraving on the high priest’s forehead); and then the sprinkling of blood.
Unless this order, in its present spiritual significance, is known
experimentally by the power of the Spirit of God the man may be saved and safe
because of the atoning blood, but he will not be really a priest unto God.
One may be a clergyman, minister, elder, deacon, evangelist as to position in
the church of God, he may be a teacher, preacher, Sunday School worker, but he
will not be a priest unless he has "put off the old man with his doings, and has
put on the new man, which is ever being renewed unto knowledge [experimental,
not merely theoretical knowledge, epignosis] after the image of Him that created
him" (Col. 3: 9, 10). In the sight of God the "old man" is morally ugly and
deformed, his clothes are filthy rags, and he cannot be tolerated before the
throne on high, where nothing that defiles can enter. A believer who displays
the tempers, cravings, conduct of the "old man" has not begun to be a priest
unto God, for he has not stripped himself of his old garments, nor been bathed
and purified outwardly, nor put on the new garments, the "new man," on which
person and clothes alone the holy Oil can be poured.
But why must there be still the sprinkling of blood even though there has been
that stripping, purifying, clothing, and anointing? The reason is a rebuke to
the unwarranted notion that practical sanctification can ever reach absolute
perfection in this life and the Christian be sinless in heart and ways. Though
the believer has once and for all disowned his "old man" by reckoning that he
died on the cross with Christ (Rom. 6: 6), and constantly reckons himself dead
unto sin; though he has once for all turned his back on the world as his moral
sphere of life, as Israel forsook Egypt; though he is living daily and carefully
and usefully in the communion of the Spirit of God; yet he has to remember that
the all searching eye of the Searcher of hearts sees iniquity in even the holy
things of His people; not only in their unholy ways and works (Ex. 28: 38).
Hence the strong words of George Whitefield: "you must be brought to see that
God may damn you for the best prayer you ever put up;" or that saying of the
godly Thomas Boston: "My Sabbath day duties were enough of themselves to damn
me." These expressions may be thought too severe, but such keen perception of
the degree to which sin can permeate and vitiate even our holy exercises is all
too rare. It is only because of our High Priest that we can ever be "accepted
before Jehovah," as the verse just cited shows. Paul’s words are to be pondered:
"I know nothing against myself" - his conscience was clear: this is the possible
standard beneath which no Christian should live - "yet am I not hereby
justified: but He that judgeth me is the Lord," and He may know something
against me of which I am unconscious (1 Cor. 4: 4).
This explains the statement as to the "great multitude coming out of the great
tribulation," standing before the throne of God arrayed in white robes (Rev. 7:
14). They had not lived as cleanly as those at Sardis who had not defiled their
garments (Rev. 3: 4). The garments of the former had been defiled, and needed to
be washed. This they had done betimes: "they washed their robes" - they had used
the purifying "water" and their garments were now clean; but not so absolutely
clean as to pass the scrutiny of the Holy One before whose throne they were to
stand. Therefore the blood of the Lamb was added to their imperfect labour to
make their garments perfectly clean before the throne; "they whitened them in
the blood of the Lamb." The homely counterpart may be mentioned that the
housewife first washes the clothes in water and then adds the bluebag or a
chloride to impart lustre to the Whiteness. The only other New Testament use of
this word for whiten is in Mark 9: 3, where it is said that the transfigured
garments of Christ were "exceeding white," which degree and type of whiteness is
described by the accompanying word "glistering;" which last word in its turn is
explained in Luke 9: 29 by the word "dazzling," to gleam as lightning, to be
"white as the light," as Matthew expresses it (Matt. 17: 2).
Such brilliance of holiness, such resplendence of character is beyond the utmost
effort of the most diligent saint: but the blood of Jesus "cleanses from all sin
;" it removes the faintest trace of the "old man" still lingering upon the
believer who walks in the light. But this application of the blood, that is of
the virtue of the atoning death of Christ, is after the diligent washing of the
leper’s clothes, after the bathing and robing of the priest. It is not that
initial attributing of the redeeming virtue of the atonement by which the sinner
or the backslider is reckoned justified. The legal righteousness thus obtained
secures safety before the law: to this must be added the actual, external
holiness by the Spirit and the Word if the justified man is at last to stand
before the throne.
And there is a yet higher privilege than "to stand before the throne." Those who
had not defiled their garments are promised by the King that "they shall walk
with Me in white; for they are worthy." "The conqueror shall thus be arrayed in
white garments," and be a constant, intimate companion of the Sovereign of the
universe (Rev. 3: 4, 5). For that King of glory has "fellows," or more exactly
"companions" (Heb. 1: 9). Therefore "take heed, brethren, lest haply there be in
any one of you an evil heart of unbelief... lest any of you be hardened by the
deceitfulness of sin: for we are become companions of the Messiah if indeed we
hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end" (Heb. 3: 12-4). The
beginning of our confidence in Christ secured our eternal standing as righteous
in law ; but it is the final stage, the end of our confidence, that will secure
the dignity of being the personal companions of the Lord in His glory; and this
stage demands the diligent use of the water as well as of the blood. This is
most firmly declared by all the types, prophecies, and promises. It arises from
the very holiness of God.
(c) The Laver. This last is the pre-eminent lesson of the laver in tabernacle
and temple. The directions as to its construction and use are as follows: "And
Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Thou shalt also make a laver of brass, and the
base thereof of brass, to wash withal: and thou shalt put it between the tent of
meeting and the altar, and thou shalt put water therein. And Aaron and his sons
shall wash their hands and their feet thereat: when they go into the tent of
meeting, they shall wash with water, that they die not: or when they come near
to the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire unto Jehovah: so they
shall wash their hands and their feet, that they die not: and it shall be a
statute for ever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout their
generations" (Ex. 30: 17-20).
(1) Its position was between the altar of burnt offering at the entrance gate
and the house itself where God dwelt, so that to reach the laver one must first
pass the altar.
(2) Its use was for priests, that they might habitually keep clean their hands
and feet, their practice and walk.
(3) The frequency of this washing was striking. On every occasion without
exception when a priest was about to enter the house to serve God or to go to
the altar to serve man he was to wash his hands and feet.
(4) The penalty of non-observance was death, twice denounced against
non-compliance with the regulation to wash.
On the very day of their consecration as priests Nadab and Abihu dared to enter
the house to burn incense using fire not taken from the altar of atonement and
therefore not sanctified by the atoning blood. They were slain by fire from
Jehovah (Lev. 10: 1,2: 16: 12). Thus was solemnly emphasized that blood is
indispensable to acceptable worship.
At the beginning of this dispensation Ananias and Sapphira dared to enter the
present house of God, the church, with defiled hearts and unclean hands, and
they too fell dead in the presence of God (Ac. 5: 1-11). Thus was solemnly
emphasized that the sanctification secured by "water" is indispensable to
acceptable service.
Under the Old Covenant it was asked
"Who shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah?
And who shall stand in His holy place ?"
And the searching answer was,
"He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart" (Ps. 24: 3, 4).
Under the New Covenant the apostle says, "I desire
therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting up holy hands, without wrath
and disputing [a pure heart]"(1 Tim. 2: 8).
The Corinthian Christians ere carrying on the public gatherings of the church,
but with hearts impure by strife, jealousy, and selfishness, and with bodies
defiled by immoralities and greed; and they were sick, ill, and dying
prematurely under the judgments of God (1 Cor. 11: 26-32). That place of
blessing, the table of the Lord, is a dangerous place to the carnal believer, as
was the altar of incense to Nadab and Abiliti.
Here then is the inexorable condition of priestly standing and service. Does
this explain why, though the saved are many, priests are few?
(d) Water. What then is the "water" so indispensable to communion, worship, and
service? What enables the believer to be a saint? By what means may person and
garments, the inward man and the outer life, be kept clean? The answer is given
in Eph. 5: 25-27: "Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it;
that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the
word, that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having
spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without
blemish."
This teaches (1) That the love of Christ is the fountain of every blessing for
all His people. (2) That His sacrifice of Himself unto death is the ground of
His redemptive right, His ownership of the church. (3) That the goal He has set
before His heart is to present the church to Himself as a bride to a husband.
The whole context is of this relationship, and it would be helpful in
translating, and would display the figure used, to follow the feminine gender of
the Greek word "church" and render, "gave Himself up for her ... that He might
sanctify her . . . that she should be holy and without blemish." At present His
people are as a betrothed virgin (2 Cor. 11: 2, 3); but in due time the heavenly
hosts will rejoice because "the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife bath
made herself ready" (Rev. 19: 7). But (4) unto this great end it is needful that
she shall be completely perfect, so as to be pleasant to her royal Bridegroom.
She must be glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but so holy
as to be without blemish. All these terms refer to external appearance, to
visible beauty.
How is this perfect condition to be attained by the bride? The answer here is
that Christ Himself sanctifies her. Not otherwise were it possible, but He can
bring her to this height of beauty and glory. But by what process does He do
this? It is by the use "of the laver [composed of] water in the word." The
brazen laver of old pointed to the words of God, now preserved for us in Holy
Scripture. The water in the laver spoke of the Holy Spirit of God. He who obeys
what the Lord says receives the purifying energy of the Spirit that abides in
the word. The Lord’s instructions direct us to holiness, but we must obey those
commands if we are to be sanctified. A command disobeyed cannot benefit but only
condemn; a command obeyed removes the moral blemish against which it is directed
or supplies the virtue lacking.
Obviously the picture is of a slave girl upon whom a prince sets his heart. He
thereupon redeems her and acquires all rights in her. His purchase price
completely releases her from her former bondage but at the same time makes her
entirely his property. But he cannot take her direct from the slave market to
sit with him on his throne. She must be bathed, clothed, adorned, trained for
regal glory, and in this she must co-operate by obedience to his requirements
and acceptance of the training appointed. All she will ever have her prince
supplies, but she must use it so as to render herself correspondent to him and
suitable for her noble calling. It were vain for her to argue that the
redemption price alone sufficed for every requirement. It would not: it sufficed
to set her free from the old life and introduce her to her new standing and
relationship, but it would not take the place of and render needless the water,
the royal garments, the ornaments, and fragrant ointment. These she must accept
and employ with all diligence, as did Esther. Hence the two statements,
complementary to each other, that Christ sanctifies the church, but she makes
herself ready and arrays herself for the marriage.
And therefore while Paul says of his converts that he espoused them as a chaste
virgin, that he might at last present them unto Christ on the marriage day, yet
he feared lest any of them should prove faithless in heart to the heavenly
Lover, and be corrupted and defiled, and thus unready. For as Satan seduced Eve
from God, so he will seduce the Christian from Christ if he be unwatchful as to
heart and ways (2 Cor. 11: 2, 3). And then
O grief for words too sore!
The bridal day is nigh,
The virgin, that no more,
Is left to weep and sigh:
All sullied by the foul embrace,
She lost for aye her queenly place.
(Jas. 4: 4: Phil. 3: 13, 14)
This use of the water is shown in many Scriptures. David, recovered from moral
leprosy, his sin put away by God, his sentence of death annulled, prayed, "Purge
me with hyssop and I shall be clean: Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow"
(Ps. 51: 7). The hyssop was used to sprinkle the blood (Ex. 12: 22: Lev. 14: 6,
7; Heb. 9: 19-21); the washing was with water, not with blood. No hymn to the
contrary should be used. It fixes in the mind the false idea that all that God
requires is gained at the altar, so that the laver is neglected and holiness
retarded. Of every thousand allusions by preachers to the altar and the blood is
there more than one mention of the laver? Again, Heb. 10: 22 shows that the
water is as requisite as the blood for full assurance of faith: "let us draw
near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience, and our body washed with pure water ;" the inward consciousness
relieved by faith in the blood of Christ, the "body," the outward conduct,
purified by obedience to the Word and the Spirit.
It was to a justified believer and sincere follower that the Lord said, "If I
wash thee not thou hast no part with Me ;" and emphasizing this need of
practical cleansing, under the figure of a branch in a vine having been stripped
of dead bark and other impurities which hinder fruitfulness, He added, "Already
ye are clean because of [by the effect of] the word which I have spoken unto
you" (John 12: 8-10; 15: 3). This external cleansing requires to be maintained
and advanced by diligent washing of the feet at the laver, and only so will the
pilgrim through this squalid world (2 Pet. 1: 19) arrive at length at the bridal
hall "clean every whit." The application of this last phrase to cleansing by the
blood at the altar is in utter disregard of the words as spoken by Christ to
Peter. It was while He was graciously washing his feet with water that He said,
"He that is bathed has no further need than to wash his feet." This being done
he is "clean every whit ;" but obviously a guest will not be clean every whit so
long as his bare and sandalled feet are soiled by the dust and mire of the
street.
Of the first bathing of the priest at his consecration baptism is an appointed
figure, "the laver of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Tit. 3: 5),
but baptism is not in view in the main passages on holiness and priestly
service, such as Eph. 5: 25-27 and Heb. 10: 22.
Let no Christian beguile himself, or be beguiled by erroneous teaching, into
thinking that he acquires by the sacred blood what can only be gained by the
equally sacred water. He needs both equally ; the blood to secure his standing
before God, the Spirit to cause his state to correspond to his standing. It is
by water that the thirst of the heart is quenched, the soul refreshed, the life
made to overflow with grace; it is by water that the practice of daily life is
cleansed and kept clean. And God be praised that this heavenly Water is ever at
hand; the spiritual Rock goes with us through the desert; Christ accompanies His
people and gives the Spirit to them that obey Him. Therefore from His riven side
there flowed both water and blood, and therefore rings out His gracious promise
"I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life
freely," and therefore "blessed are they that wash their robes" (Rev. 21: 6; 22:
17, 14).
(back to the top)
4. Blood is not oil and does not serve the purpose of oil.
In the process of cleansing the leper, after the blood of atonement had been put
upon his ear, hand, and foot, oil was sprinkled before Jehovah, was put upon the
blood on the ear, hand, and foot, and poured upon the head of the man being
cleansed. It was the last act but one of the ceremony and without it cleansing
was not complete (Lev. 14: 16-18). The same features found place in the
consecration of priests (Lev. 8). The king was consecrated by anointing with oil
(1 Sam. 10: 1; 16: 13: 2 Sam. 5: 3). Elisha was to be anointed as prophet (1
Kings 19: 16). The Son of God was anointed at His baptism. Peter intimates what
the oil signified and effected when he said of Jesus "God anointed Him with the
Holy Spirit and power," so that "He went about doing good, and healing all that
were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him" (Ac. 10: 38). This anointing
with the Spirit was distinct from that measure of the Spirit which had been the
portion of the Lord Jesus all His private life. Its consequence was that "God
was with Him" in a sense that was additional to the former fellowship with His
Father. Its effect was an accession of spiritual energy for public service; He
was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power, as it is written of that event,
that "Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee" (Lk. 4: 14), and
showed the power of the anointing in victory over disease, sorrow, Satan.*
[* These miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, are to be evident prior to the
return of our Lord, and the establishment of His Millennial Kingdom; they will
accompany those who are empowered to preach the "gospel of the kingdom," that
is, the good news of Christ’s reign on earth in righteousness and peace. See
Acts 1: 8 and compare with Lk. 21: 15, 19. This power of God will be necessary
to withstand the false prophets - i,e., deceivers and servants of Satan ; who
may include some who are regenerate (Mk. 13: 12). - Ed.]
In like manner the first disciples received power by the Holy Spirit coming upon
them (Ac. 1: 8) and became mighty witnesses to Christ glorified.
This anointing can be given to those only who have accepted the sprinkled blood
as atonement for sin. But why are so many who do this without power to witness
and serve? The solemn fact is undeniable: what is its reason? and what the
remedy? Let each ask himself, Have I consented that my ear shall be marked with
blood, so that I purpose to listen only and constantly to the voice of God? Have
I dedicated my hand to do only His will, His works? Am I, as blood-bought,
resolved to walk only in the footsteps of my Lord? Have I sought and received an
anointing with the Spirit and power? Or do I suppose that all this took place
when first I went to the altar and accepted pardon by blood ?
It might have been thus, for so it was with Cornelius and his company (Ac. 10:
44-48); but was it so with you? Is the reader’s life as a believer marked by
power or by weakness? Be not beguiled by theory, but receive the reality by
faith. Dedicate your person to Christ to serve Him alone and wholly, so shall
the anointing of oil be added to the blood, and you shall have power to know the
mind of God (1 John 2: 27), to go about doing good, to conquer the devil in your
own life and in others.
But be assured that blood without oil does not produce those blessed
God-glorifying results. To service as prophet or priest or king the anointing
with oil was a distinct and known event.
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5. The Blood does not dispense with discipline.
The classic instance of this is David after his lapse and recovery (2 Sam. 12:
12-14). He was pardoned, his sin put away, the capital punishment remitted, and
all this because God was able to give the repentant offender the benefit of the
blood Jesus would shed. But to the announcement of pardon the sentence was added
that his child should die and the sword would harass his house to the end. He
had sinned publicly and had given great occasion to the enemies of his God to
blaspheme, and that holy God was bound to vindicate His holiness and to show
publicly that He does not tolerate sin in His people. The after life of David
showed that he humbly bowed to this severe chastisement and was benefited by it.
The leading passage on parental discipline by God is Hebrews 12: 1-17. This
follows the great exposition of remission through the blood and of cleansing by
the water. Can discipline, then, add ought to these? The passage declares that
the Father "scourges every son whom He receiveth," and that this is a proof of
His love and of their sonship. The object of this severe treatment is "for our
profit, that we may be partakers [eis to metalabein, so that we may partake] of
His holiness" (verses 6-10). Every one of His sons has already been reckoned
righteous by faith in Christ. But that is something imputed, securing a clear
and safe standing in law; this holiness is the actual character and activity of
God infused into and wrought out in His sons. The only other place of this exact
word in the New Testament is 2 Cor. 1: 12, where Paul uses it of his practical
conduct at Corinth. In that city notorious for vice he had "behaved in holiness
and sincerity of God."
For the furthering of this needful and noble end chastisement is employed by God
our Father, and neither blood, water, nor oil dispenses with it. Gold is freed
from dross by neither of these but by fire (1 Pet. 1: 7). This is set in direct
connexion with the believer being found unto "praise and glory and honour at the
revelation of Jesus Christ." Our passage in Hebrews puts heavy emphasis upon
this same connexion by exhorting us to "follow after peace with all men, and the
sanctification without which no one shall see the Lord" (verses 14-17), that is,
God the Father, for every eye is to see Christ and every knee to bend before Him
at one or other session of His judgment seat.
In my commentary on Hebrews it was shown from many Scriptures that there is a
possibility that this "scourging" of a child of God may continue after death. An
indignant critic complained in a magazine that it seems that what the blood
cannot do, a thousand years in purgatory is to do. I had shown that the process
proposed differed radically and essentially from the Roman Catholic conception
of purgatory in that the Catholic doctrine makes salvation dependent upon such
purgation, which is false. The critic ignored this. His phrase was clever, well
calculated to catch the unwary and mislead the uninstructed by a seeming
honouring of the blood: but it revealed the common and regrettable theological
error that the blood is like money and answereth for all things. Yet it is very
evident that in this life at least the atoning blood does not serve the end that
chastisement serves, nor, if discipline be resented, will the blood compensate
by perfecting holiness in the child of God. To lead the people of God to rest on
this misconception is injurious to their souls and to their prospects. It
retards growth in holiness, induces unwarranted confidence, and conduces to
lethargy.
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6. Blood does not do the work of the sword.
By blood Israel had been delivered from the Destroyer in
Egypt, but this did not give victory over Amalek in the desert. It required the
hill-top intercession of their Leader and their own sharp swords. In the desert
they had experienced the continual virtue of blood, water, oil, and the fire of
discipline; but this did not give them victory over Sihon and Og: victory
demanded their own swords. They went through Jordan, typifying for us escape by
the cross of Christ from the weary effort to suppress the flesh, the "old man"
and his corruptions; this did not give them possession of their noble
inheritance: possession had to be won at the sword's point.
Israel in Egypt is the chosen people of God in bondage to the world; Israel in
the desert pictures her harassed and often defeated by defilements of the flesh
(as fornication and idolatry), and of spirit (as distrust and self-pleasing):
Israel fighting giants on the hilltops of Canaan represents our warfare with
wicked spirits in the heavenly places. This ceaseless battle must be waged in
our own hearts, watching against evil thoughts, feelings, desires: it must be
pressed in home, school, business, church, pulpit, perhaps in prison for
Christ’s sake.
Hast thou sheltered under the precious blood of Christ, then thou art secure
from eternal damnation; but take not thou for granted that all the privileges
and advantages of the new life in Christ, in time and eternity, are certain to
become thine. Not so, not so! Thou must put on the whole armour of God, and use
the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph. 6). Therefore challenge
thy heart with the question, Am I fighting the good fight of faith? "Am I a
soldier of the cross? " Thy new birth grants thy title to inherit in Christ; the
atoning blood has removed the legal obstacle to thy inheriting, even thy sin;
but possession will only be secured by thy sword. Therefore, my brother, say
resolutely to thy soul
“Since I must fight if I would reign
Increase my courage, Lord:
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain
Supported by Thy word.”
What the blood does has been opened up in the former part of this exposition.
The God of all grace be praised for the rich and establishing truth there set
forth. Yet it is very necessary that the Christian should understand what the
blood does not do, in order that he may feel his need of water and oil, may set
himself to the life of detail obedience to the will of God declared in His Word,
may thus enjoy the communion of the Holy Spirit and "grow in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and
unto the day of eternity. Amen." (2 Pet. 3: 18).
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Content credit - http://website.lineone.net/~whtindle/Atoning.htm