Here, blessed be God, we have the stable ground-work of “purification for sin,” and of perfect peace for the conscience. “The atoning work is done.” All is finished. The great Antitype of the red heifer has been slain. He gave Himself up to death, under the wrath and judgment of a righteous God, that all who simply put their trust in Him might know, in the deep secret of their own souls, divine purification and perfect peace. We are purified, as to the conscience, not by our thoughts about the blood, but by the blood itself. We must insist upon this. God Himself has made out our title for us, and that title is found in the blood _alone_. Oh, that most precious blood of Jesus, that speaks profound peace to every troubled soul that will simply lean upon its eternal efficacy! Why, we may ask, is it that the blessed doctrine of the blood is so little understood and appreciated? Why will people persist in looking to aught else, or in mingling aught else with it? May the Holy Ghost lead the anxious reader, as he reads these lines, to stay his heart and conscience upon the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God.
Having thus endeavored to present to the reader the precious truth unfolded to us in the _death_ of the red heifer, we shall now ask him to meditate for a few moments upon the _burning_ of the heifer. We have looked at the _blood_, let us now gaze upon the _ashes_. In the former, we have the sacrificial death of Christ as the only purification for sin; in the latter, we have the remembrance of that death applied to the heart by the Spirit, through the Word, in order to remove any defilement contracted in our walk from day to day. This gives great completeness and beauty to this most interesting type. God has not only made provision for past sins, but also for present defilement, so that we may be ever before Him in all the value and credit of the perfect work of Christ. He would have us treading the courts of His sanctuary, the holy precincts of His presence, “clean every whit.” And not only does He Himself see us thus, but, blessed forever be His name, He would have us thus in our own inward self-consciousness. He would give us, by His Spirit, through the Word, the deep inward sense of cleanness in His sight, so that the current of our communion with Him may flow on without a ripple and without a curve. “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John i.) But if we fail to walk in the light—if we forget, and, in our forgetfulness, touch the unclean thing, how is our communion to be restored? Only by the removal of the defilement. And how is this to be effected? By the application to our hearts and consciences of the precious truth of the death of Christ. The Holy Ghost produces self-judgment, and brings to our remembrance the precious truth that Christ suffered death for that defilement which we so lightly and indifferently contract. It is not a fresh sprinkling of the blood of Christ—a thing unknown in Scripture,—but the remembrance of His death brought home, in fresh power, to the contrite heart, by the ministry of the Holy Ghost.
“And one shall burn the heifer in his sight.... And the priest shall take cedar-wood and hyssop and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.... And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation: it is a purification for sin.”
It is the purpose of God that His children should be purified from all iniquity, and that they should walk in separation from this present evil world, where all is death and defilement. This separation is effected by the action of the Word on the heart, by the power of the Holy Ghost. “Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” (Gal. i. 4.) And again, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us, that He might _redeem_ us from all iniquity, and _purify_ unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” (Titus ii. 13, 14.)