(1) In that mysterious judgment chamber, where busy thoughts, like subtle and eager pleaders, accuse and excuse one another, a voice, whose authority we cannot dispute, declares us
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guilty, and the testimony of God, which is greater than our con- science, reveals to us more fully our sin and condemnation. But when we are convinced of our sin and helplessness, God is re- vealed as a just God, and the justifier of the guilty who believe in Jesus ; the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, reveals to us the holy and perfect way in which all iniquity is pardoned and all transgression removed. And as that blood avails in heaven, so it delivers the conscience from the burden of guilt, and from the burden of all our own miserable attempts at pleasing God and lulling our fears : dead works which like a dead weight only increase our wretchedness. Now we truly turn from sin unto God. In Jesus Christ, God and the sinner meet ; both behold the blood of the Lord Jesus, and in the high sanctuary above and in the inmost sanctuary of the conscience there is peace.
(2) Yet the conscience thus purged is more sensitive. We know now more of our sinfulness : for we behold sin in the light of God's love. What then ? Of sin we have no conscience ; but of our sinfulness and constant sinning we have. We confess our sins ; we pray, " Forgive us our trespasses " : we mourn over our unfaithfulness ; we behold and abhor our vileness ; we have no confidence in the flesh. But we confess to the Father as children ; we confess before the throne of grace, and in the hear- ing of the merciful and compassionate High Priest. We learn the deepest and most self -abasing lesson ; to go with sin and un worth- iness to infinite love, to boundless compassion, to never-failing mercy, to the Father who loves us, to the Lord who always inter- cedes for us. We have been washed once for all when we came to Jesus. We need now to have our feet washed. Peter either refused to have his feet washed by Jesus (false humility) or wished Jesus to wash not merely his feet, but also his hands and his head (unbelief and false humility again); but when afterwards he understood the ways of God, he strengthened his brethren. For in his Epistle he teaches that if we forget that we have been purged from our sins we become unfruitful and blind : the know- ledge of our perfect and complete acceptance is the strength of obedience.
^ Complete redemption involves deliverance from the sense of guilt, from the power of moral evil, and from religious legalism. These combined cover at once all ethical and all religious
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interests, both " justification " and " sanctification " in the Pauline sense. All these benefits flow from Christ's sacrifice, viewed in the light of the spirit through which it was offered. , . . Intelli- gent appreciation of the spirit by which Christ offered Himself inspires that full, joyful trust in God that gives peace to the guilty conscience. But its effect does not stop there. The same appreciation inevitably becomes a power of moral impulse. The mind of Christ flows into us through the various channels of admiration, sympathy, gratitude, and becomes our mind, the law of God written on the heart. And the law within emancipates from the law without, purges the conscience from the baleful influence of " dead works," that we may serve the Father in heaven in the free yet devoted spirit of faith and love.^
2. Dead Works.— We are separated from God the Holy One by sin, from God the living One by death. In order to bring us into communion with God, and to purge our consciences, we have to be delivered both from the guilt of sin and from the defilement and power of death. Now of the types which purified unto the (typical) service, the blood of Jesus is the antitype. By the blood of Christ we are brought into the presence of the holy and living God. This is our sanctification, in which we are separated and cleansed for the worship and service of God. We are separated from the world of sin and death, from dead works ; by which we must understand everything that is not the mani- festation of a divinely-given and divinely- wrought life ; because nothing is fit to be brought before and unto the living God imless it be living, or spiritual, or unless it proceeds from communion with the living One.
^ " Dead works " : works that are not good, in that their motive is good, nor bad, in that their motive is bad, but dead in that they have no motive at all, in that they are merely outward and mechanical — affairs of propriety, routine, and form, to which the heart and spirit contribute nothing. " Dead works " : to how much of our lives, ay, of the better and religious side of our lives, may not this vivid and stern expression justly apply ! How many acts in the day are gone through without intention, without deliberation, without effort, to consecrate them to God, without any reflex effect upon the faith and love of the doer ? How many prayers, and words, and deeds are of this character ? and if so, how are they wrapping our spirits round with bandages ^ A. B. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, 353.