Look at Him as the Son of God, as the anointed Messiah, as the Spotless Lamb, as offering Himself in obedience to the Father’s eternal will; and tell me, ye that cannot trust Him,—Can such a sacrifice as that fail? Shall that which is infinitely little succeed, and that which is infinitely great fail? Can you believe that the blood of a poor little kid was sufficient, but the blood of the Son of God insufficient? Think then of the ancient Jew walking home after his sacrifice, notwithstanding all that had passed, now clean and reinstated. Then think of the most precious blood of Christ, the Son of God, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world,—slain too for those very sins that weigh on the conscience; and consider why should not you go home this day, as that Jew did in ancient times, Free?—in the position of those described by St. Paul, when he said, ‘Such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God’?
THE CLEANSING BLOOD.
‘But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’—1 John, i. 7.
It should be the earnest desire of our hearts, in commemorating the great facts of the crucifixion of our blessed Saviour, to know the fellowship of His sufferings, and realise all that He endured. On this account it is well to dwell on His wounds, His sorrows, His tears, His prayers, and His bitter cry: but it is well to look also at the power of His precious blood, and at the great results accomplished in the covenant of God by that wonderful blood-shedding of the Son of Man.
I scarcely know which branch of the subject is the more important of the two, and I propose to-day [27] to consider the latter, and to draw your thoughts to the power of the blood, as taught us in these familiar and most sacred words, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ May God so teach us by His Spirit, that we may know in our own experience the cleansing power of the blood of Christ!
There are two questions which will require our careful study, in order to a right understanding of the text. To whom do the words apply? and what do they mean?
To whom do they apply?
They are often applied in a loose and haphazard way to all kinds of characters to whom they do not in the least belong, as drunkards, Sabbath-breakers, and all descriptions of unconverted men. But the most cursory glance at the text shows that it has no reference to such characters, and applies exclusively to those who are walking in the light. ‘If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ The blessing is made in this text entirely dependent on our walking in the light; and if we are not walking in the light, it does not belong to us. The man who is still living the life of the unconverted cannot claim it, for he has never known the light, and his poor soul is still darkened by sin; nor can the backslider, who once saw the light, and now has turned back into the darkness of the world; for, though he was in the light once, he is not walking in it now.
There are other passages which apply to such persons, and invite them to reconciliation through the precious blood of Christ: but this text does not. It applies to those who have been brought into the light, and now are walking in it; not seeking it, nor groping after it, but in it,—and enjoying a holy fellowship both with God’s people and with God. There cannot be a higher standard, or, to use modern terms, a higher life. It is a life in the very presence of God Himself,—a life in which every step is lightened by the sunbeam of His love. Fellowship, light, love, and joy, abound through the whole of it. The persons possessing it are happy, loving, peaceful believers, rejoicing in the sacred privilege of companionship with God; and yet of them the text declares, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’
And now, what is meant by the expression ‘Cleanseth us from all sin?’ I find that it is sometimes supposed to mean, ‘the inward cleansing of the soul,’ or the purifying of the heart by the Holy Ghost, as in Acts, xv. 9: ‘Purifying their hearts by faith.’ But I know of no other passage of Sacred Scripture in which this is the meaning of cleansing by blood; whereas there are many in which it means the removal of all legal guilt, as in Heb. ix. 13, 14, where the blood of the Jewish sacrifice is said to ‘sanctify to the purifying of the flesh,’ and the blood of Christ ‘to purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God.’ The word in that passage in the Hebrews for ‘purging,’ is the same as here rendered ‘cleanseth;’ and, if there were nothing in the context to decide it, the general use of the language of Scripture would be sufficient. But the context appears to leave no doubt on the subject. The ninth verse clearly shows that the subject of the forgiveness of sin is the subject of discussion: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ And then in the opening of the next chapter you find the full explanation of the text. The first two verses are in fact little more than an expansion of it. The first verse sets before us the highest possible standard of sinless holiness: ‘My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.’ After which the Apostle proceeds to show the provision which God has made for us under the sense of sin: ‘If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sin.’ This is an expansion of the short statement of the text: ‘The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ It teaches of Christ Jesus, the righteous Advocate and the perfect Propitiation; it shows that the blood is the blood of atonement, and the cleansing the blotting out of the guilt of sin through the propitiation; it points the contrite believer, deeply humbled for sin, to what is now passing at the right hand of God, where the Son of God now stands as his Advocate, having completed the sacrifice, and sprinkled the blood before the mercy-seat. That sprinkled blood is the cleansing power, and the cleansing is the blotting out of guilt so completely that the soul stands before God as free from all legal pollution as if it had never been defiled. It is perfectly true that there are other passages in which we read of inward holiness as a purification of the heart: as e.g., 1 John, iii. 3. But that is quite a different thing to the cleansing through blood described in our text, the real meaning of which is the removal of all guilt from the guilty sinner by the transfer of it, according to the covenant, to the great sin-bearer: ‘The Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.’