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 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 the 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 16 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, something in which He could find satisfaction. It was a transaction between the high priest and God in the sanctuary, away from the eyes of the men who were to benefit by it. The Lord required that. The blood is therefore, in the first place, not for ourselves but for Him.
Earlier even than this there is described in Exodus 12:13 the shedding of the blood of the passover lamb in Egypt for Israel’s redemption. This is again, I think, one of the best types in the Old Testament of our redemption. The blood was put on the lintel and on the doorposts, whereas the meat, the flesh of the lamb, was eaten inside the house; and God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” Here we have another illustration of the fact that the blood was not meant to be presented to man but to God, for the blood was put on the lintel and on the doorposts where those feasting inside the house would not see it.
It is God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, which demands that a sinless life should be given for man. There is life in the blood, and that blood has to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be so. God is the One who demands that the blood be presented, in order to satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says, “
When I see the blood
, I will pass over you.” The blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.
Now I desire to say a word at this point to my younger brethren in the Lord, for it is here that we often get into difficulties. As unbelievers we may have been wholly untroubled by our conscience until the Word of God began to arouse us. Our conscience was dead, and those with dead consciences are certainly of no use to God. But later, when we believed, our awakened conscience may have become acutely sensitive, and this can constitute a real problem to us. The sense of sin and guilt can become so great, so terrible, as almost to cripple us, by causing us to lose sight of the true effectiveness of the blood. It seems to us that our sins are so real, and some particular sin may trouble us so many times, that we come to the point where to us our sins loom larger than the blood of Christ.
Now the whole trouble with us is that we are trying to sense it; we are trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively what the blood is for us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The blood is first for God to see. We then have to accept God’s valuation of it. In doing so we shall find our salvation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way of our feelings, we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of faith in God’s Word. We have to believe that
the blood is precious to God
because He says it is so
(1 Pet. 1:18–19).
If God can accept the blood as a payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the blood, then the blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to His valuation—neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it must not be less. Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and that a holy and righteous God has the right to say that the blood is acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied Him.
The blood has satisfied God; it must satisfy us also. It has therefore a second value that is manward, in the cleansing of our conscience. When we come to the Epistle to the Hebrews, we find that the blood does this. We are to have “hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Heb. 10:22). This is most important. Look carefully at what it says. The writer does not tell us that the blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses our hearts, and then stop there in his statement. We are wrong to connect the heart with the blood in quite that way. It may show a misunderstanding of the sphere in which the blood operates to pray, “Lord, cleanse my heart from sin by Thy blood.” The heart, God says, is “desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9,
NASB
), and He must do something more fundamental than cleanse it: He must give us a new one.
We do not wash and iron clothing that we are going to throw away. As we shall shortly see, the “flesh” is too bad to be cleansed; it must be crucified. The work of God within us must be something wholly new. “A new heart also will
I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezek. 36:26).
No, I do not find it stated that the blood cleanses our hearts. Its work is not subjective in that way, but wholly objective, before God. True, the cleansing work of the blood is seen here in Hebrews 10 to have reference to the heart, but it is in relation to the conscience. “Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” What then is the meaning of this?
It means that there was something intervening between myself and God, as a result of which I had an evil conscience whenever I sought to approach Him. It was constantly reminding me of the barrier that stood between myself and Him. But now, through the operation of the precious blood, something new has been effected before God which has removed that barrier; and God has made that fact known to me in His Word. When that has been believed in and accepted, my conscience is at once cleared and my sense of guilt removed, and I have no more an evil conscience toward God.
Every one of us knows what a precious thing it is to have a conscience void of offense in our dealings with God. A heart of faith and a conscience clear of any and every accusation are both equally essential to us, since they are interdependent. As soon as we find our conscience is uneasy, our faith leaks away, and immediately we know we cannot face God. In order therefore to keep going on with God, we must know the up-to-date value of the blood. God keeps short accounts, and we are brought nigh by the blood every day, every hour and every minute. It never loses its efficacy as our ground of access if we will but lay hold upon it. When we enter the Most Holy Place, on what ground dare we enter but by the blood?
But I want to ask myself:
Am I really seeking the way into the presence of God by the blood or by something else?
What do I mean when I say “by the blood”? I mean simply that I recognize my sins, that I confess that I have need of cleansing and of atonement, and that I come to God on the basis of the finished work of the Lord Jesus. I approach God through His merit alone and never on the basis of my attainment—never, for example, on the ground that I have been extra kind or patient today, or that I have done something for the Lord this morning. I have to come by way of the blood every time.
The temptation to so many of us when we try to approach God is to think that because God has been dealing with us—because He has been taking steps to bring us into something more of Himself and has been teaching us deeper lessons of the cross—He has thereby set before us new standards, and that only by attaining to these can we have a clear conscience before Him. No! A clear conscience is never based upon our attainment; it can only be based on the work of the Lord Jesus in the shedding of His blood.
I may be mistaken, but I feel very strongly that some of us are thinking in terms such as these: “Today I have been a little more careful; today I have been doing a little better; this morning I have been reading the Word of God in a warmer way, so today I can pray better”! Or again, “Today I have had a little difficulty with the family; I began the day feeling very gloomy and depressed; I am not feeling too bright now; it seems there must be something wrong; therefore the way is not clear for me to approach God.”
What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved something for God
today? Or is your approach based on something far more secure, namely, the fact that the blood has been shed, and that God looks on the blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it conceivably possible for the blood to suffer any change, the basis of your approach to God might be less trustworthy.
But the blood has never changed and never will. Your approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours through the blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever be your measure of attainment today or yesterday or the day before, as soon as you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place, immediately you have to take your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed blood. Whether you have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or not, your basis of approach is always the same: the blood of Christ. God’s acceptance of that blood is the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other.
As with many other facts of our Christian experience, this matter of access to God has two phases: an initial and a progressive one. The former is presented to us in Ephesians 2 and the latter in Hebrews 10. Initially, our standing with God was secured by the blood, for we are “made nigh in the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). But thereafter our ground of continual access is still by the blood, for the apostle exhorts us: “Having therefore . . . boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus . . . let us draw near” (Heb. 10:19, 22). To begin with I was made nigh by the blood, and to continue in that new relationship, I come through the blood every time. It is not that I was saved on one basis and that I now maintain my fellowship on another.
You say, “That is very simple; it is the ABC of the gospel.” Yes, but the trouble with many of us is that we have moved away from the ABC. We have thought we had progressed and so could dispense with it, but we can never do so. No, my initial approach to God is by the blood, and every time I come before him it is the same. Right to the end it will always and only be on the ground of the precious blood.
This does not mean at all that we should live a careless life, for we shall shortly study another aspect of the death of Christ which shows us that anything but that is contemplated. But for the present let us be satisfied with the blood, that it is there and that it is enough.
We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong. No trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because of the blood: “Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the blood is, but I know that the blood has satisfied Thee; so the blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea. I see now that whether I have really progressed, whether I have really attained to something or not, is not the point. Whenever I come before Thee, it is always to be on the ground of the precious blood.” Then our conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever be clear apart from the blood. It is the blood that gives us boldness.
“No more conscienciousness of sins”: These are the tremendous words of Hebrews 10:2. We are cleansed from every sin; and we may truly, with Paul, echo the words of David, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin” (Rom. 4:8).
In view of what we have said, we can now turn to face the Enemy, for there is a further aspect of the blood which is Satanward. Satan’s most strategic activity in this day is as the accuser of the brethren (Rev. 12:10), and it is as this that our Lord confronts him with His special ministry as High Priest “through his own blood” (Heb. 9:12).