ATONING BLOOD
WHAT IT DOES AND WHAT IT DOES
NOT DO
by
G. H. LANG
"Now it is high time for you to awake out of
sleep; for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed."
In keeping with the theme of the rolling text (Rom.
13: 11, R.V.), as show above the following most informative and excellent
work by G. H. Lang is presented.
May our Lord be pleased to use it to awaken us from our
spiritual slumber; and may His grace and mercy grant to us, a holy love,
an obedient heart, and a reverent fear: for if these characteristics are ours
and if they are exercised daily in our lives, then they will help to keep us in
the narrow way (Matt. 7: 13, 14; Lk. 13: 24), and enable us to
attain that "inheritance from the Lord as a reward" (Col. 3: 23, 24, N.I.V.).]
-------
PART ONE
WHAT THE BLOOD DOES?
BLOOD PROTECTS FROM VENGEANCE.
THE BLOOD GIVES ACCESS TO GOD.
WHY THE BLOOD SAVES?
WHO'S BLOOD SAVES?
WHOM DOES THE BLOOD SAVE?
BENEFITS SECURED BY
ATONING BLOOD.
PART TWO
WHAT THE BLOOD DOES NOT DO.
BLOOD DOES NOT TAKE THE PLACE OF FOOD.
BLOOD DOES NOT DO THE WORK OF WATER.
BLOOD IS NOT OIL AND DOES NOT SERVE THE PURPOSE OF OIL.
THE BLOOD DOES NOT DISPENSE WITH DISCIPLINE.
BLOOD DOES NOT DO THE WORK OF THE SWORD.
-------
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 un-drained
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; 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.
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?
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 [regenerate
believers]
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).
[* See Heb.
26-30. “For
if we
sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth,
there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgement,
and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries.” … “Vengeance
belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And
again, The Lord shall judge his people.”]
This
subject will be enlarged later.
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).
[* The animating spirit must be
distinguished from the soul and body.
The spirit returns to God at the time of death; the soul descends into
Hades – the place of the dead; and the body decomposes into dust: this is what
the scriptures teach. It is impossible
to ascend into heaven before the time of Resurrection; only then will all three
component parts of man be reunited.]
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.”
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
[only begotten]
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 [Holy] 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).
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.).
[* Here is scriptural proof of the Millennial
Kingdom of Christ. Those who doggedly refuse to believe it will
take place, position themselves outside and against the will of God. The land of Canaan was an inheritance for the
Israelites, which the accountable generation lost through disobedience; and it
is shown in 1 Cor. 10:
1-12 as a type of the Christian’s future inheritance in the Millennium,
which can also be lost by our lack of faith in it, our wilful sin and our
disobedience to His commands.]
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 [the turning away of God’s
anger] 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 un-subdued
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).
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 [regenerate] 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 a 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 [only begotten]
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
un-feignedly 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 reconciliation. 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 un-reconciled.
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) Jusification. "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, 1O: "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
[Holy] 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
[Holy] 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 [Holy]
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 [Holy] Spirit was poured on the day of Pentecost; and
ever since then God has given the [Holy] 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 Prosecutor
General 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).
Part 2
WHAT THE BLOOD DOES N0T
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).
[*In like manner, regenerate
believers disbelieve the Word of God; and near the end of their journey in the
wilderness –(this evil age) - refuse to advance toward their earthly
inheritance in the “age” to come.. They disbelieve God relative to His Millennial Kingdom, and fall in the desert on the right
side of the Blood but through disbelief, wilful sin and disobedience, lose
their inheritance in that kingdom.]
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.
[* The Father’s chastisement of His redeemed children,
takes place during their lifetime in this
world; and it will also take place – (if repentance and obedience
is not found) – in the underworld – that is, in Hades, the place
of the dead. Rev. 3: 19, 21; Luke 16:30. Cf. Luke 20: 35; John
15: 1, 10, 14, 16.]
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 [Holy] Spirit. One may be sincerely relying upon the blood
of Christ for [eternal]
salvation from perdition, yet be feeble and sick spiritually by not feeding
upon Christ in the Word.
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 [eternal] 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).
[* Keep in mind: the word
translated “eternal” can also be translated
“age-lasting” if the context is suitable.. Brother Lang rightly believed the Holy Spirit
does not indwell any disobedient regenerate believer, therefore “the Spirit” could will not be always be with those
whose “innermost being shall flow torrents of living
water.” If this is so, then the “life” cannot “eternal”
but “age-lasting”: and the only “life” a regenerate believer can lose -(who presently has “eternal Life” as a “free gift” through
faith alone) - is “life” in the next “age” – the Millennial Kingdom of Christ.]
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 [Holy] 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 [regenerate] 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 [Holy]
Spirit; the believer has to receive and apply* His empowering grace.
[* That is, we apply the Holy Spirit’s empowering
grace by obeying the precepts
of Jesus Christ.]
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 [Holy] 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 [regenerate] 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 [regenerate] believer
and its heavenly privileges are available to [them] 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 [Holy] 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 [Holy] 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 [eternally] 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 [regenerate] 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 [Holy]
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 [Holy] 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).
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.
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.
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 [eternal] 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.
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 [of the
future millennial inheritance] 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).
-------