“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5). These words link the story of His blessed work of salvation by blood shedding on His cross with the shedding of the blood of the Passover lamb in Egypt. Let us look for a moment at what this blood shedding has done for our souls.
When God was about to redeem His people out of their state of captivity in Egypt and to lay the ground for His bringing them into that good land and large, a land that flowed with milk and honey, He must not only have a people cleansed from their sins and saved from the judgment which they deserved, but also He must have a righteous answer to the claims of His own nature. This He found for them as for Himself in the blood of the Lamb.
Do you believe in the worth of that sacrifice with God? Has He rested upon His word which said, “When I see the blood I will pass over you”?
The blood was for His eye alone. Israel was shut up in their houses resting on His word; God was shut out, so to speak, when with uplifted hand He was in judgment, and His claims were answered by the blood, and it alone.
And so it is for any sinner now who will bow to his state and rest in simple faith upon the word of the living God and believe what the precious blood of Christ has done for him with God. How complete is the answer in that blood for all his sins! Will any say, “It is not enough”? Will any suppose that God has not accepted it? Some may hesitate and suppose that, because they do not feel that they have peace, it is still uncertain. They base their thoughts upon their own experiences. Faith bases its thoughts on what God has said about it and that He who thought of and planned this way of meeting our sins and His claims and who has accepted what He had Himself appointed is forever and eternally satisfied. This leaves no room for a doubt. All is settled, eternally settled, for all who believe in Him and the satisfaction of God in what His Son has done.
Let us turn to the New Testament and see what this blood has done for us and how full is the Word of God of the certain portion of those who thus believe.
1. Brought “nigh by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2).
Here we learn the condition of those who stand in its precious value with God. Their former state is described in the previous verse: “Remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.” Such was their description, and such may be your description. Nay more, he may be much more sadly described elsewhere in God’s Word, for he may not be a Gentile, but a professing Christian man. It is a Gentile who is here described. When we turn to 2 Timothy 3, we find what God tells us of ourselves if unbelievers still in heart: “Men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” Such and in such a way does God describe the professing Christian who has not Christ. Solemn words, and well calculated to rouse to terror the heart on which they fall, the calm, quiet, conscience-searching description which He gives. May the Lord open the ear and reach the conscience of such to see his own solemn ruin and read this description as his own! “Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.”
In Ephesians 2 we read these words: “But now.” How blessedly does the Word of God testify for such itself! It leaves it not to the poor sinner to say what he thinks that blood has done for him; the Spirit of God, after describing the one side, adds this precious word, “But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Once we were “afar off,” “without God,” “without Christ” and “without hope,” but now we are “made nigh by the blood of Christ.”
One thus brought nigh needs more than this. His conscience would only dread the presence of God, which only laid bare his uncleanness in His sight, and therefore He puts a word in the heart of such: “To Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood.”
Here we find the blessed consciousness of what we possess as being forgiven. “Forgiven” by God is a blessed portion and possessed by all who believe in Jesus. Many trust in Him who have not this portion. Many would not give up their trust in Christ for a thousand worlds, yet they are not consciously the possessors of forgiveness. God has forgiven them, yet they do not believe it. They look into their own poor hearts and rest on what they think of it and feel about it. They rest on a sandy foundation and do not rest upon the living, solid and imperishable security of the Word of God. Let them lay their finger on this verse in Ephesians (ch. 1:7) and try, if they can, to take up the words which God has provided for faith and say, “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Does their heart hesitate by the look within? Or do they, with bold, God-honoring faith, say, “Yes, I have forgiveness through the blood of Christ.”
“It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?” is the challenge of the Apostle. The soul possesses and enjoys forgiveness as its portion, and which can only be known by itself. The enemy may accuse, but in the blessed consciousness of forgiveness we do not heed him. When the Apostle turns the soul to God Himself as the justifier, not merely that the soul is justified before Him, but that He Himself has justified it, then the enemy may accuse in vain. In the verse above, we find the blessed groundwork for God counting the believer righteous, or, in other words, a justified person. Blood has been presented to God, and it has met His claims — answered the righteous nature of Him who cannot look upon iniquity — and through it God is free to act according to His own righteous nature in justifying the ungodly. When He justifies, who is it that can condemn? The soul that has been “brought nigh” by blood, that has been “washed ... in His blood,” and who has “forgiveness ... through the blood” can now rest in His presence, “being justified by blood.”
That soul can now not only rest in His presence, being justified, but can look around and gaze with a worshipping heart by faith upon the fullness of Godhead seen in Jesus and know that in His day of weakness (as it were), when His blood was shed on His cross, the peace of God’s throne was eternally made. I say “the peace of God’s throne” because, while many rejoice, through grace, at their own future and in the peace they possess with God — being justified “by faith” and “by blood” — yet they do not yet see fully that the bright presence of Godhead’s fullness is filled with peace. It is like the holy place of the tabernacle with the clouds of incense, which speaks of the peace and satisfaction of the throne of God, in the perfection of the work by which all things in heaven and earth will be reconciled and by which we have been reconciled to the fullness of Godhead’s glory.
Full and perfect is the word “redemption.” It implies there is no return, no change in what has been done for those who are in Christ. As He is, so are they in this world. He will never undo what He has done, never will leave the blessed place as man which He now has entered through the work of redemption. So those who possess a portion in Him find it as unchangeable as Himself; they are redeemed and have redemption in Him. What rest of soul! No uncertainty characterizes their blessed lot! While all is uncertain here below, all is certain there.
7. “Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13).
As surely as we possess in Him the glory on high, so surely does it put us in the place of rejection here. Sanctified by blood! Set apart from man and put into the place which Jesus had below. This is the portion of the redeemed. How many defile themselves and depart from this place and embrace the world again! Yet, so surely as the blood of Christ has given us a place in the brightness of the glory of God’s presence, where the perfections and value of the precious blood of Christ appear, so surely is it our place and portion while on earth to identify with our Master and Lord “without the gate.” This is where He suffered for our sins and for God. Those who suffer for Him “bearing His reproach” have here no continuing city, but seek one to come.
May we know for our own soul’s portion that we, by blood, have been “brought nigh,” “washed,” “forgiven” and “justified,” that the peace we possess is the peace of the throne of God, that we have redemption by blood, and that we have been sanctified — separated to his Lord’s place here and, by blood, sanctified to the obedience of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:3).
Words of Truth