^ G. S. Barrett, The First Epistle General of St. John, 60. JAS.-JUDE — 15
226 FELLOWSHIP IN THE LIGHT
courage and peace, and enables the man who had faltered and hesitated as to whether he could accept the assurance of Divine forgiveness to accept it with courage, thankfulness, and hope.
^ The essential part of every sin offering was the blood, be- cause the blood is the life. It was, further, a principle of the Mosaic sacrifices that anything placed upon the altar became the property of God, and was, therefore, invested with a peculiar sanctity. The blood of a sacrificed animal was thus first a thing of excellent worth in itself, being the life ; and next a tliing en- dowed with highest sanctity, because it now belonged to God. It was the most holy thing with which even the high priest himself had to do. Once more, the law said that nothing less sacred than this consecrated blood might be used in the expiation of sin. For certain ceremonial defilements water was the purifying element; but in a majority of instances even these defilements exacted a mingling of blood with the water. The statement of the writer to the Hebrews is strictly accurate, — " almost all things are by the law purged with blood " (Heb. ix. 22). For the removal of moral defilement, however — for the purposes of an atonement — nothing but the consecrated blood was efficacious. Without shed- ding of blood is no remission.^
3. Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture; died the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. And, whatever the ineffable mystery of the atonement may conceal, this at least is clear, that our sins did, in some way, make part of the terrible necessity that He must die if He would save us. These phases of the sacrificed life of our Lord — its wondrous revelation of His own deathless purpose to save us ; its exhibition of the great heart of God not willing that we should perish ; and its connexion, its real and dread connexion, with our sins — these are the elements that constitute the cleansing power of that sacri- ficed life. For these mighty forces excite within the bosom of every man who vividly contemplates the cross of Christ the two emotions which, far more than any others, are the redeeming, saving, puri- fying energies of our hearts. They excite gratitude and love.
^ Of such supreme importance in the Christian revelation is this idea, or rather this fact, of redemption by His blood, that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself instituted a solemn service to express it, and to be the perpetual memorial and monument of it. Other great truths Chris c trusted to the oral and written
1 W. J. Wooas,
I JOHN I. 7 227
teaching of Apostles ; but that He is the bread of life and that His blood was shed for the remission of sins are truths of a unique kind ; they belong to the very substance of the Christian revela- tion; they are the germs and the roots of everything besides. To lose them would be to lose what is most characteristic and what is most essential in all that He has revealed to mankind. While they are preserved everything is saved. He therefore did not choose to trust them to the written Gospels, which would preserve the memory of His life and His ministry ; He did not choose to trust them to the oral teachings of the Apostles or to the Epistles which they were to write ; He instituted a pathetic service, a visible ceremonial, to enshrine, to protect them, to per- petuate them through all generations.^
(1) The Blood cleanses: it does not merely cloak. — The high priest was to take an aspersory of hyssop and dip it in the blood of the victim and sprinkle the doors and the holy place, typifying thereby that the sprinkling of the Blood of Christ is that which sanctifies the universe, of which the tabernacle was the symbol. It is a direct allusion to the Passion of Christ that we find in the Fifty-first Psalm, where David says, " Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean " ; that is, sprinkle me as the high priest sprinkled the victim, with the Blood of Christ, and I shall be clean — clean from the defilement and pollution of sin and its consequences.
^ When Butler in his dying moments had expressed his awe at appearing face to face before the Moral Governor of the world, his Chaplain, we are told, spoke to him of " the blood which cleanseth from all sin." " Ah, that is comfortable," he replied ; and with these words on his lips he gave up his soul to God.^
(2) It is not mere remission. — It is not mere averting of the punishment. It is not mere pronouncing man just when he is in fact unjust. It is not mere annulling of pains and penalties. It is all this and more. By cleansing we mean making that pure which before was foul, and this is what we attribute to the Blood of Christ. We believe that in that Blood there is such a virtue as to be able to transform the sinful nature of man into an imperfect but real image of the holiness of God ; that before its might, all that is base and unclean fades away, and that, like the chemist's potent elixir, it transmutes the baser elements with which it comes in contact into a new and more perfect substance.