Apr 26
6
Consider Jesus– in His Atoning Blood
Octavius Winslow
“The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7
The blood of Jesus is everything. It is the central doctrine of our faith, the present and eternal life of our souls. There is no pardon, no salvation, no heaven but by blood–theblood of the Lord Jesus. Were we to relinquish every other revealed truth, and concentrate upon this one our supreme and lasting study, resolving all our knowledge of the Bible into an ‘experimental and personal acquaintance’ with ATONING BLOOD–as, like a purple thread, it runs from Genesis to Revelation, it would not be a too exaggerated view of this vital and momentous subject. The blood is everything to us–it is everything to God. He provided it, is satisfied with it, beholds it, and when He sees it on the soul, that soul becomes a living and a lovely soul in His sight. May our meditation on atoning blood exalt our views of its dignity, increase in us its power, and endear to our hearts the preciousness of Him who shed it!
The blood of Jesus is DIVINE. It is the blood of God’s Son, the God-man Christ Jesus. In this consists its sovereign virtue. The Divine nature of Christ rendered His obedience and death an offering and a sacrifice to God of a sweet-smelling savour.
The blood of Jesus is ATONING. It was shed for sin, it has made to Divine justice a full satisfaction for sin, it puts away sin. Is sin your burden, O my soul? Is it for your sins you do moan and weep, and are cast down? Behold, the sin-atoning blood of Jesus; believe, and weep no more. Here is that before which not a sin can stand.
The blood of Jesus is CLEANSING. It “cleanses us.” Oh, this is what you do so deeply need, my soul! Sin-forgiving, guilt-removing, heart-cleansing, conscience-purifying blood. All this is the blood of Jesus to you. Wash in it, and you shall be whiter than snow. “He that is washed is clean, every whit.” And mark the tense of the wonderful words on which this meditation is based–it is the present tense. The blood “cleanses.” It has cleansed, it will cleanse, but, as touching our daily walk as believers in Jesus, we have to do with its present cleansing. In our Christian travel through a sinful world the feet are apt to slide, prone to wander, and are constantly contracting fresh defilement, needing the daily washing in the blood. What a sweet thought, O my soul! that the fountain is open, and the blood cleanses, even now cleanses us, from all sin.
The blood of Jesus SPEAKS. “The blood of Christ that speaks.” Oh, what a voice has the blood of Jesus! What sweetness and majesty, what gentleness and power! It speaks, and the troubled conscience is at rest; it speaks, and the broken heart is healed; it speaks, and the tormenting doubt is hushed; it speaks, and the trembling fear is quelled. It speaks, also, within the veil. The voice of Jesus’ blood is heard in glory, sweeter and louder than the voices of all the minstrels round about the throne. My soul, the voice of Jesus’ blood pleads louder for you in heaven, than all your sins can plead against you on earth.
It is sprinkled blood–that is, APPLIEDblood. Therefore it is called, “the blood of sprinkling.” The blood of Jesus practically will not avail us unless applied to the conscience, just as the blood of the Paschal lamb had availed nothing to the Israelite, when the first-born of Egypt was slain, had it not been sprinkled upon his house. And so God said, “When I SEE the BLOOD, I will pass over you.” O my soul! look well to this. Why is it that you are so doubting and fearful? Why are you not walking in a full sense of your pardon and acceptance in JESUS–basking in the sunshine of a present and assured salvation? Is it not because you are stopping short of the applied blood? Oh, come to the blood, the blood of sprinkling! Keep no guilt upon your conscience, no anguish for uncleansed sin in your heart; but wash daily in the precious blood of Christ, which cleanses from ALL sin.
If
you are at home in the world
(J.C.Philpot, “Daily Portions”)
“For we are strangers
before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days
on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none
abiding.”
1 Chron. 29:15
If you possess the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and, Jacob, you, like them, confess that you are a stranger; and your confession springs out of a believing heart and a sincere experience.
You feel yourself a stranger in this ungodly world.
It is not your element.
It is not your home.
You are in it during God’s appointed time, but
you wander up and down this world . . .
a stranger to its company,
a stranger to its maxims,
a stranger to its fashions,
a stranger to its principles,
a stranger to its motives,
a stranger to its lusts,
a stranger to its inclinations, and all in which
this world moves as in its native element.
Grace has separated you by God’s sovereign power, that though you are in the world, you are
not of it.
I can tell you plainly–if
you are at home in the world; if the things of time and
sense are your
element; if you feel one with . . .
the company of the world,
the maxims of the world,
the fashions of the world, and
the principles of the world
–grace has not reached your heart, the faith
of God’s elect does not dwell in your bosom.
The first effect of grace is to separate.
It was so in the case of Abraham. He was called by grace to leave the land of his fathers, and go out into a land that God would show him. And so God’s own word to His people is now, “Come out from among them, and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
Separation, separation, separation from the world is the grand distinguishing mark of vital godliness.
There may be indeed separation of body where
there
is no separation of heart. But what I mean is . . .
separation of heart,
separation of principle,
separation of affection,
separation of spirit.
And if grace has touched your heart, and you are a partaker of the faith of God’s elect, you are a
stranger in the world, and will make it manifest by your life and conduct that you are such.
CHRIST THE PROPITIATION
“This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this is the place of repose”—
“Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.” Romans 3:25
Here is rest under the true Mercy-seat; the antitype of that which, in the earlier dispensation, was surrounded with palm-wreathed carvings on “the Holy Oracle.”
The great redemption is finished. The blood of the Divine Surety has been shed. The Lamb for the burnt offering has been sacrificed; access has been provided into “the Holiest of all.” Through the rent veil of the Redeemer’s flesh, the approach is available to every true, believing Israelite, by “faith in His blood.” How many among the worshipers of a false and spurious Christianity, are looking to Christ through material relics—pieces of the so-called real cross, fragments of the spear or thorn-crown, or seamless robe! We are called to look “through faith.” How many more are groping their way to Him through propitiations of their own: penances, and prayers, and fastings, and flagellations. The Propitiation is completed “Whom God has set forth.” If the Jewish High-priest, as he stood at the mercy-seat, instead of sprinkling the blood, had stripped the jewels from breastplate and mitre, and flung them on the sacred chest, what would all have availed? Nothing. There was but one offering efficacious there: an offering not composed of ‘pearls from the ocean, or gold from the mine’— “When I see THE BLOOD I will pass over you.”
The efficacy of the blood of the Great Sacrifice is inexhaustible. Revelation unfolds “an hundred and forty and four thousand” with lustrous robes, washed and made white in it; and still the Propitiation is “set forth;” still the way into the Holiest and to acceptance is open. Countless pilgrims, weary and heavy-laden, have encamped by the antitypical Wells and Palms of Elim. Still is the shade-giving shelter ample as ever. Still is the invitation unlimited as ever—”Whoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”
The word “Propitiation” in our motto-verse, as is well known, refers to the lid or covering of the Ark of the Covenant, above which were the overshadowing wings of the cherubim. Within the Ark were deposited the two tables of stone, on which were engraved the ten commandments, the words of the Eternal decalogue. Impressive and significant, surely, was that old symbolism! The sinner or worshiper (through his representative in the person of the Jewish High-priest) draws near with blood in his hand—this he sprinkles above the mercy-seat and before the mercy-seat; the purple stream falls on the floor at his feet. The law of God is still there with all its demands intact and inviolate; unabrogated, unrepealed. It utters the condemning word, “The soul that sins it shall die.”
But between the law and the trembling worshiper there is this propitiation covering; the glorious type of Him, who, to all His true people, is a shelter from the curses of the law—”a refuge and a hiding place from the storm.” Thus do we see the old, but ever-binding and obligatory Tables of Sinai’s covenant, screened out of sight by the intervening barrier—hidden, as a covenant of works, by the better work of Jesus. We can take up with joyful confidence the prayer of the publican in the parable (Luke 18:10), in which prayer, it is well worthy of note, the very word which here occurs, propitiation, though differently rendered, is also employed—”God be MERCIFUL to me a sinner!” ‘Be merciful’—but let mercy reach me by the alone channel through which it can flow—mercy by sacrifice—mercy through the atoning blood of the Immaculate Surety.
Believer! come, seat yourself under the shadow of this heavenly Palm, and exult in your indestructible safety and security! God has set Him forth as a Propitiation (an atoning sacrifice for sin). He (the true ‘shield, and lifter-up of your head’), “stands between the living and the dead, and the plague is stopped!”
“Trembling with guilt,
oppressed with fear,
Unfailing shelter I have here.
Long have I roamed in need and pain,
Long have I sought for rest in vain;
Bewildered in doubt, in darkness lost,
My soul fierce driven and tempest-tos’t.
But forth from dark and stormy sky
Beneath the mercy-seat I fly.
There I repose with fears all fled,
Pardoned, accepted, comforted.
The present, peace—the past, forgiven,
The future, vista-views of heaven.
Jesus! my soul alone relies
On Thine accepted Sacrifice.”
“The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.”
John MacDuff
Wrought with divine power!
(J.C.Philpot, 1844)
“For our gospel came
not unto you in word only, but also . . .
in power,
and in the Holy Ghost and
in much assurance.”
1 Thessalonians 1:5
Most men’s religion is nothing else but ‘a round of forms’ . . .
some have their ‘doings’,
some have their ‘doctrines’,
and others have their ‘duties’.
And when the one has performed his doings, the other learned
his doctrines, and the third discharged his duties—why,
he is as good a Christian, he thinks, as anybody. While all the time, the poor
deceived creature is thoroughly ignorant of the kingdom of God, which stands
not in simply in word, but in power.
But as the veil of ignorance is taken off the heart, we begin to see and feel
that there is a power in vital godliness, a reality in the teachings of the
Spirit—that religion is not to be put on and put off as a man puts on and off
his Sunday clothes.
Where vital godliness is wrought with divine power in a man’s
heart, and preached by the Holy Spirit into his conscience it . . .
mingles, daily and often hourly with his thoughts;
entwines itself with his feelings; and
becomes the very food and drink of his soul.
Now when a man comes to this spot: to see and feel what a reality there is in
the things of God made manifest in the conscience by the power of the Holy
Spirit—it effectually takes him out of dead churches, cuts him off from false
ministers, winnows the chaff from the wheat, and brings him into close
communion with the broken-hearted family of God.
“For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power,
and in the Holy Ghost and with much assurance.”
1 Thessalonians 1:5
The Veil of Separation
Hebrews 9:3
In the tabernacle of the Old Testament the Lord God was set forth as One separated from his people, dwelling in the holy of holies, separated from the holy place, which was called “the sanctuary,” and from the rest of the tabernacle by a thick veil.
Within that inner sanctuary, which was called “the holiest of all,” God dwelt alone. His presence was symbolised by the Shekinah glory dwelling above the mercy-seat. No man dared enter that holy place except the high priest of Israel. He was allowed to enter only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, and then only with the blood of the sin-atoning sacrifice.
That veil represented the separation of man from God, the division that sin had made, and told the people that man, because of his sin, had no way of access to the holy Lord God. Yet, even in the symbolism of that thick veil, a hint was given that a way of access to God would soon be made. Man was separated from God in the holy place, not by a brick wall or an iron gate, but by a veil, a temporary divider. And that veil was lifted once a year, so that the high priest might go in and draw near to God as the representative of an elect nation.
To those who had eyes to see the implication was clear: When Christ, the Lamb of God, was come, sinful men and women would be able to come to God through him.
Three hundred and sixty-four days a year the teaching of the veil was, “No admission! Sinful man cannot come near the holy God.” But one day every year the corner of the veil was lifted, and the high priest entered in with the blood of atonement. On that one day, the teaching was, “There is One coming, an High Priest over the house of God, through whose blood atonement a way shall be opened by which sinful men and women can approach the holy God and be accepted.”
The priests, the holy place, the most holy place, and the sacrifices of the Mosaic economy were only temporary types and symbols of that which was to come. “But Christ being come” has fulfilled them all. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). Do you see that? The Lord Jesus Christ has obtained eternal redemption for his people. His blood has opened a way for sinners to approach God and be accepted of him. — “O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph!” (Psalm 47:1)
Don Fortner