(Read John 19:16-42.)
IT is an old story, but to some of our hearts it will always be a new one, that Jesus died for us. In glory they “sing a new song;” and what is it? “Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof: for thou west slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.” (Rev. 5).
God has said, “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” You will never have your sins remitted except by blood. You may go on in folly or in fancy, despising the blessing, yea, trampling it under your feet, but there is no redemption but by the blood.
The Holy Ghost inspired the Scriptures, guiding the pens of those who wrote. It is a common thing for men, and even good writers too, to heap up words, and multiply adjectives, but a qualifying term is very rarely used in Scripture. In 1 Peter 1 however, we read of the “precious blood of Christ.” The Holy Ghost stamped that blood of the Saviour as being precious. Precious is it to the heart of God always, precious to the hearts of the saints too. Is it precious to you, my reader?
God has told us a great deal about the value of that blood. It is a great thine to get hold of the fact that the blood of Jesus was actually shed; in plain language, that He died. The apostle John brings Him out, in his gospel specially, as Son of God, so in it you get nothing, of the agony in the garden, nor of the forsaking on the cross. It is the death of the Son of God that is recorded.
If some friend or relative of yours dies, the first thing you wish for, is to hear something about his last hours. Four times over God gives us an account of the death of His Son. He knows how dull our hearts are. Once was enough, for the account of creation. Twice do we get the account of Jesus’ birth; but God says, so to speak, “I will make it a moral impossibility for you to mistake the meaning of the death of my Son.” Four times over, therefore, does He rehearse it.
Man had his way when Jesus died, but the Scriptures were fulfilled, and Pilate wrote over His head: “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King, of the Jews.” He was that, and far more than that. He was “King of kings, and Lord of lords,” who was hanging on that tree. All the rabble gather round Him, and gamble for His garments before His dying eyes. He speaks with affection to, and of His mother, and at length says, “I thirst.” Much more than natural thirst, was that. He was dying there under the judgment of God.
You have the sentence of death in yourself, as a sinner, my reader, and assuredly you will be a corpse in a little while, if the Lord tarries. The seed of death is in you. The whole of your life is a confirmation of this statement, for it is one constant battle against death, even from the day of your birth. If your mother had not then swaddled you, where would you be? In death. If you had not continually supplied the body with food and raiment, where would you be? Dead. Now death is the fruit of sin, and the reason why you are marked for death is because you are a sinner. But the wonderful truth revealed in God’s Gospel is that the One on whom death had no claim has actually died. He it was who alone had life in Himself, and that life He voluntarily laid down.
But, you say, why did He die? He died for me, of that I am sure, if no one else is. He took up the question of man’s sin, there on the cross. Betrayed by a false friend, denied by a true one, forsaken by all, not one left to comfort Him, alone; and more than that, at that moment forsaken of God, He bore the sins of sinners, and the judgment due to them. Marvelous is the record of His death. “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (vs. 30). Another gospel tells us that He yielded up the ghost “when he had cried again with a loud voice” (Matt. 27:50). I have seen many death-beds; some have died in great agony, others not, but all died of exhaustion. Here, however, was a man who Himself gave up His life in His full strength, and in the moment of departure cried, “It is finished.” What was finished? I cannot tell you; no man could fully answer that question. He had come to glorify God― “It is finished”; to bring low the power of Satan― “It is finished”; to accomplish redemption― “It is finished,” What tidings for you and me. Wonderful words, indeed! “It is finished.”
Have you been thinking, my reader, that you have something to do for your own salvation? Christ has forestalled you, ― “It is finished.” Did heaven hear these words? Surely; and what joy they produced! I believe, too, that they rang down to the depths of hell. There they produced consternation. “It is finished” was the dying Victor’s cry, and for nearly two thousand years the Holy Ghost has been proclaiming, “It is finished,” to sinners on earth, for their faith and acceptance. Let those words sink into your heart now.
But those religious people that hated Christ in their hearts, and compassed His death, must needs have His body taken away, that their Sabbath might not be desecrated. The Roman soldiery go out and break the legs of the slowly dying thieves. I do not think the devil thought what he was doing that day, for he sent one of them, who believed in Jesus, to glory certainly some hours sooner than he would have reached there otherwise. True, he dispatched the other unbelieving one to hell sooner than he thought or wished, and God alone knows how soon you, my unsaved friend, will be there, if you go on in your sins. Let me beseech you not, to delay coming to Jesus. Believe the simple story of the cross, and get salvation now.
When the soldiers came, to Jesus they saw that He was dead already; but one of the soldiers, incredulous I suppose, “with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.” Now this is an immense fact that Jesus died. He was seen to be dead. You are not dead yet, although death is ahead of you. Would it not be a great relief to find that someone had died for you? This blessed Saviour has done so; “And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.” What stress God lays on this death of His Son; and why? ― “That you might believe.”
But, you say, I do believe it. Are you saved, then? You must have to do with a dead Christ. A living Christ could not help you. Apart from His death, He would be a barrier between the soul and God; for His life was the perfect expression of what God required. He was holy, righteous, and perfectly sinless, and I know that I am just the very opposite. Hence His perfection only condemns me. He was absolutely fit for God; we are utterly unfit. How can our case be met? He must die, as He said, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). If He, on whom death had no claim, had not died, there could have been no blessing, and no salvation for you and me, but His death has changed everything: The strongest thing in this world is death. It has overcome everybody but that blessed One, whereas He has overcome death and annulled it. The apostle John, who saw the Lord’s death, and thereafter saw Him in resurrection, bears record, that ye might believe. Why? Because God knew very well that there is not a man in this world who would not doubt it.
And now we read, “A bone of him shall not be broken;” this refers to the passover. Genesis is the book of creation, but man brings in death by sin, and the first book of Scripture, therefore, is very largely a register of deaths. Exodus, on the other hand, is the book of redemption. There sinners and slaves are redeemed by blood, a striking type of the work of the Lord Jesus. The blood was put outside on the door-posts, where God could see it (see Ex. 12). Death was the sentence upon man; Jesus bears it, annuls it, rises from death, and the Holy Ghost comes down to tell us all about it. Moses and Israel only saw a lamb, God saw Jesus, and I see Jesus by faith. The blood is seen coming from the side of the dead Saviour. The blood of the paschal lamb was to be sprinkled and trusted. Here is the antitype. Can you trust the Saviour’s blood?
God is careful to say that the tomb of Jesus was “a new sepulcher wherein was never man yet laid.” One reason for this statement is beautiful. In 2 Kings 13 we read, “And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And, it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulcher of Elisha. And when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet” (vers. 20:21), It was due to the Lord that His grave should be a new one, but Jewish infidelity as to His resurrection is silenced by the record of its being “new.” Had it not been so they would have said that what happened in Elisha’s day had happened again, and that the body of Jesus had been put into a prophet’s tomb, touched his bones, and revived. All this unbelief is checked by the record of a” new tomb.” From this tomb, on the resurrection morn they find the stone rolled away, and an empty sepulcher and a risen Saviour are the irrefragable proofs of the value of the work done by Him, and for us, in the moment of His death. Resurrection is the triumph over death of Him who went into it that He might annul it.
In the Gospels you get the facts of the life of Jesus; in the Psalms you get His feelings; and in the Epistles you get the fruits of Christ’s work. Christ personally is the One you trust. You believe in the person of the Lord. His person fills the heart, and His work satisfies the conscience. Both must be met. The heart craves an object. The difference between the book of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon is this, that in the former the heart is too large for the object―the world, whereas in the latter the object―Christ―is too large for the heart. When once the person of Christ fills the heart, it is at leisure to survey His work and its fruits. In the Epistles these are unfolded. God is now your justifier, because the judgment you deserved fell upon Jesus, so in righteousness God can justify you. Can you trust Him? is the only question now.
The Gospel is worthy of God, and divinely fitted to meet man. “God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Rom. 5:8, 9). In chapter 3:24, I learn that I am freely justified by His grace. There are three separate parties to my justification. God in His grace is the spring of it; Jesus justifies me by His blood, and on my part there is faith. Grace upon God’s side, blood―the atoning work of Jesus―on His aide, and faith on my side. I am cleansed by His blood, justified by His blood, and in Ephesians we read, “In whom we have redemption through, his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (ch. 1:7). I have been a slave, but now I am out of bondage, redeemed by His blood; He has paid down the ransom price of my deliverance, and as a result all my sins are forgiven.
Precious blood, how infinite its efficacy and value.
Will you not trust it, and it alone?
W. T. P. W.