The Cleansing Of A Soul
God has appointed different forms of worship to be rendered unto Him during the past six thousand years, but the one thing in man's approach to God which has not changed is the fact that he must approach Him through blood. From the worship of righteous Abel down through the ritualism of the Mosaical dispensation, men approached the Lord by faith through bloody sacrifices, which prefigured the bloody sacrifice offered in our behalf, and through which we approach our Lord. And so, in Hebrews 9:22 the Bible says, "without the shedding of blood there is no remission."
In the ceremonial Law of Moses we note that for every sun and every offense sacrifices were to be offered according to the offender and the offense. And it is interesting to note that every victim of sacrifice for sin offering was killed and its blood sprinkled on the altar. Without the offering of the sacrifice and the sprinkling of that blood, there could be no approach to Jehovah. (There were other ceremonial purifications, but not for moral defilement.) Thus, under Moses, "without the shedding of blood there is no remission."
But what could be the end of the slaughter of so many animals? Each time a lamb was slain by the priest it looked forward to the time when the Lamb of God would be slain for the sins of the world. Christ is spoken of by the Holy Prophets as "making his soul an uttering for sin," "our iniquities laid upon Him" and as "wounded for our transgressions, that he might heal us by his strips." ( Isa. 53) Daniel stated that He would he cut off, not for himself, but that he should make "reconciliation for iniquity." (Dan. 9:24-26) He was a fountain to be opened for sin and for uncleanness. (Zech. 13:1) The forerunner, John, declared him to be "the lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world." (John 1:29) Each of these passages points us to the sacrifices to be made by Christ, and that we should seek salvation through his sacrifice.
The claims are many in the New Testament that we should seek to approach God through the sacrifice of Christ's blood. The Apostle Matthew records Christ as saying, is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." (Matt. 26:28) The church, of which Christ is the savior (1-50. 5:23) was purchased by the blood of Christ. (Acts 20:28) It was purified. washed and cleansed through His precious blood. (1 Cor. 6:11) It is stated that by the blood of Christ we are made near unto God and brought into covenant relationship with Jehovah, whereas we "were without Christ, being, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." (Eph. 2:12-13)
The Hebrew writer firmly declares that not one sin can be remitted without the shedding of blood. In this he was not speaking of the blood of animals, for all the blood poured over Israel's altars, though it should flood valleys and hide the hills of Judea, could not atone for one single sin. Without the shedding of Christ's blood there can be no remission. Thus we see the malignancy of sin. We observe the awfulness of sin in the great miseries suffered by humanity daily because of transgressions; and he Who will allow himself to imagine the torments to he suffered in hell by the condemned cannot but be impressed with the fearful consequences of sin. But one has not seen the blackness of it until he looks upon the bruised and bleeding flesh of our Lord of glory hanging on Calvary's cross, the dying of the Son of God — the atonement made by deity itself — that you and I might experience remission of sins.
When the inspired penman says, "without the shedding of blood there is no remission," he necessarily implies that "with the shedding of blood there is remission." This is not through the merits of our own righteousness, but according to his mercy, through the blood of Jesus. The author did not qualify the sins, for there is no sin so great, no deed so vile, that it cannot be forgiven through the blood of Christ. There is no soul so scarlet with sin that it cannot be made whiter than the snow — through the blood of Christ, if that one will go to the fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins, where sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.
Christ was aware that without the shedding of His blood humanity, being steeped in sin, was doomed to suffer the horrors in hell throughout eternity. So rather than abandon us to such a fate, he took upon himself the form of man, and endured the penalty in our stead, and by grace of God tasted for every man. (Heb. 2:9) "0 what transcendent love," how inconceivable its heights, how unsearchable its depths! Let our minds dwell upon it continually; that our hearts being warmed with this mysterious, incomprehensible love, we may be ever singing with the host of heaven, "To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, be glory and dominion for ever and ever."
The mere fact that Christ died for us, along with the fact that we are not saved by self-righteousness, does not leave us without responsibility in the matter of obtaining forgiveness. Jesus offers salvation, and says, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matt. 11:28) In order to accept this invitation we must meet the conditions He has stipulated. He says in Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized shalt be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." Hence, Paul said to the Romans, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" (Rom. 6:3) In his death Christ shed his blood. (John 19:34) Having contacted that soul-cleansing his blood in obedience to His will, He requires a constant commemorating of that shed blood through our observance of the Lord's Supper' each Lord's Day.
It is lamentable that so many preachers and teachers will aver to believe this which we have set forth, and cry in stirring declarations, "Salvation through the blood of Christ," and then in practically the same breath deny the necessity of the very thing that puts them into contact with the blood; and repudiate the necessity of the regular observance of the Supper of the Lord! "Saved by His blood," they cry, and then argue that one need not be numbered among that blood-bought throng, that one can saved outside that blood-bought body, the church of the Lord. They pledge faith in the blood of Christ, then immediately vitiate that blood and impeach the wisdom of God.
Friends, "have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" If not, we strongly urge you to "lay aside the garments that are stained with sin, and be washed in the blood of the Lamb; there's a fountain flowing for the soul unclean: O be washed in the blood of the Lamb."
— 1102 N. Mound St., Nacogdoches, Texas