THE BLOOD OF CHRIST

THE BLOOD OF CHRIST

What is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this question. The object of these studies is to show that it is something very different from the life of the aver­age Christian. Indeed a consideration of the written Word of God of the Sermon, on the Mount for example—should lead us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth, save only by the Son of God Himself  But in that last saving clause lies immediately the answer to our question.
The apostle-Paul gives us his own definition of the Christian life in Galatians 2:20. It is ‘no longer I, but Christ’. Here he is not stating something special or peculiar—a high level of Christianity. He is, we believe, presenting God’s normal for a Christian, which can be summarised in the words: I live no longer, but Christ lives His life in me.
God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every human need—His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and sub­stituting Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: -He lives instead of us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions—a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way and one way only, namely, by showing us more of His son.

OUR DUAL PROBLEM: SINS AND SIN

We shall take now as a starting-point for our, study of the normal Christian life that great exposition of it which we find in the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, and we shall approach our subject from a practical and experi­mental point of view. It will be helpful first of all to point out a natural division of this section of Romans into two, and to note certain striking differences in the subject—matter of its two parts.
The first eight chapters of Romans form a self-contained unit. The four-and-a-half chapters from  1. to 5. form the first half of this unit and the three-and-a-half chapters from Rom 5:12; 8:39 the second half A careful reading will show us that the subject-matter of the two halves is not the same. For example, in the argument of the first section we find the plural word ‘sins’ given prominence. In the second section, however, this is changed, for while the word ‘sins’ hardly occurs once, the singular word ‘sin’ is used again and again and is the subject mainly dealt with. Why is this ?
It is because in the first section it is a question of the sins I have committed before God, which are many and can be enumerated, whereas in the second it is a question of sin as a principle working in me. No matter how many sins I commit, it is always the one sin-principle that leads to them. I need forgiveness for my sins, but I need also deliverance from the power of sin. The former touches my conscience, the latter my life. I may receive forgive­ness for all my sins, but because of my sin I have, even then, no abiding peace of mind.
When God’s light first shines into my heart my one cry is for forgiveness, for I realise I have committed sin’s before Him; but when once I have received forgiveness of sins I make a new dis­covery, namely, the discovery of sin, and I realise not only that I have committed sins before God but that there is something wrong within. I discover that I have the nature of a sinner. There)s an inward inclination to sin, a power within that draws to sin. When that power breaks out I commit sins. I may seek and receive forgiveness, but then I sin once more. So life goes on in a vicious circle of sinning and being forgiven and then sinning again. I appreciate the blessed fact of God’s forgiveness, but I want something more than that: I want deliverance. I need for­giveness for what I have done, but I need also deliverance from what I am.

GOD S DUAL REMEDY: THE BLOOD AND THE CROSS
Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salva­tion are presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our deliverance from sin. But now, in keeping with this fact, we must notice a further difference. In the first part of Romans I to 8, we twice have reference to the Blood of the Lord Jesus, in Rom 3:25 and in chapter s. 9. In the second, a new idea is introduced in chapter Rom 6:6, where we are said to have been ‘aucified’ with Christ. The argument of the first part gathers round that aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus which is represented by ‘the Blood’ shed for our justification through ‘the remission of sins’. This terminology is, however, not carried on into the second section, where the argument centres now in the aspect of His work represented by ‘the Cross’, that is to say, by our union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrec­tion. This distinction is a valuable one. We shall see that the Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin. The latter aspect will be the subject of our consideration in later chapters.

THE PROBLEM OP OUR SINS
We begin, then, with the precious Blood of the Lord  Jesus Christ and its value to us in dealing with our sins and justifying us in the sight of God. This is set forth for us in the following passages:
‘All have sinned’ (Rom 3:23). ‘God. commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God ugh him’ (Rom 5:8,9). ‘Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood, to shew his righteousness, because of passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the shewing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him chat bath faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:24—26).

We shall have reason at a later stage in our study to look closely at the real nature of the Fall and the way of recovery. At this point we will just remind ourselves that when sin came in it found expression in an act of disobedience to God (Rom 5:19). Now we must remember that whenever this occurs the thing that immediately follows is guilt
Sin enters as disobedience, to create first of all a separation be­tween God and man whereby man is put away from God. God can no longer have fellowship with him, for there is something now which hinders, and it is that which is known throughout Scripture as ‘sin’. Thus it is first of all God who says, ‘They are all under sin’ (Rom 3:9). Then, secondly, that sin in man, which henceforth constitutes a barrier to his fellowship with God, gives rise in him to a sense of guilt—of estrangement from God. Here it is man himself who, with the help of his awakened conscience, says, ~‘I have sinned’ (Luke 15:18). Nor is this all, for sin also provides Satan with his ground of accusation before God, while our sense of guilt gives him his ground of accusation in our hearts; so that, thirdly, it is ‘the accuser of the brethren’ (Rev 12:10) who now says, ‘You have sinned’.

To redeem us, therefore, and to bring us back to the purpose of God, the Lord Jesus had to do something about these three ques­tions of sin and of guilt and of Satan’s charge against us. Our sins had first to be dealt with, and this was effected by the precious Blood of Christ. Our guilt has to be dealt with and our guilty conscience set at rest by showing us the value of that Blood. And finally, the attack of the enemy has to be met and his accusations answered, In the Scriptures the Blood of Christ is shown to operate effectually in these three ways, Godward, manward and Satanward.
There is thus an absolute need for us to appropriate these values of the Blood if we are to go on. This is a first essential. We must have a basic knowledge of the fact of the death of the Lord Jesus as our Substitute upon the Cross, and a clear apprehension of the efficacy of His Blood for our sins, for without this we cannot be said to have started upon our road. Let us look then at these three matters more closely.

THE BLOOD Is PRIMAIULY FOR GOD

The Blood is for atonement and has to do first with our stand­ing before God. We need forgiveness for the sins we have committed, lest we come under judgment; and they are forgiven, not because God overlooks what we have done but because He sees the Blood. The Blood is therefore not primarily for us but for God. If I want to understand the value of the Blood I must accept God’s valuation of it, and if I do not know something of time value set. upon the Blood by God I shall never know what its value is for me. It is only as the estimate that God puts upon the Blood of Christ is made known to me by His Holy Spirit that I come into the good of it myself and find how precious indeed the Blood is to me, But the first aspect of it is Godward. Throughout the Old and New Testaments the word ‘blood’ is used in connec­tion with the idea of atonement, I think over a hundred times, and throughout it is something for God.
In the Old Testament calendar there is one’ day that has a great bearing on the matter of our sins and that day is the Day of Atonement. Nothing explains this question of sins so clearly as the description of that day. In Leviticus i6 we find that on the Day of Atonement the blood was taken from the sin offering and brought into the Most Holy Place and there sprinkled before the Lord seven times. We must be very clear about this. On that day the sin offering was offered publicly in the court of the tabernacle. Everything was there in full view and could be seen by all, But the Lord commanded that no man should enter the tabernacle itself except the high priest. It was he alone who took the blood and, going into the Most Holy Place, sprinkled it there to make atonement before the Lord. Why? Because the high priest was a type of the Lord Jesus in, His redemptive work (Heb 9:11-12), and so, in figure, he was the one who did the work. None but he could even draw near to enter in. Moreover, connected with his going in there was but one act, namely, the presenting of the blood to God as something He had accepted,