The blood of Jesus Christ. By this is meant that the last act in the tragedy of his life, his blood being the ransom of our souls, the price of our redemption, and the expiation of our sin. The shedding of his blood was the highest and most excellent part of obedience, Phil. 2:8. His whole life was a continual suffering, but his death was the top and complement of his obedience, for in that he manifested the greatest love to God and the highest charity to man. The expiatory sacrifices under the law were always bloody, death was to be endured for sin, and blood is the life of the creature; the blood or death of Christ is the cause of our justification.
His Son. His sonship makes his blood valuable. It is blood, and so agreeable to the law in the penalty; it is the blood of the Son of God, and therefore always acceptable to the lawgiver in its value. Though it was the blood of humanity, yet the merit of it was derived from the divinity. It is not his blood as he was the son of the virgin, but his blood as he was the Son of God, which had its sovereign virtue. It is no wonder, therefore, that it should have the mighty efficacy to cleanse the believers in it, in all ages of the world, from such vast heaps if guilt, since it is the blood of Christ, who was God; and valuable, not so much for the greatness of the punishment whereby it was shed, as the dignity of the person from whom it flowed. One Son of God weighs more than millions of worlds of angels.
Cleanseth. Cleansing and purging are terms used in Scripture for justifying as well as sanctifying. The apostle interprets washing of both those acts: 1 Cor. 6:1, “But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
The blood of Christ cleanseth:
1. It hath a virtue to cleanse. It does not cleanse all, but only those who believe. . . . There is a sufficiency in it to cleanse all, and there is an efficacy in it to cleanse those that have recourse to it. As when we say a medicine purgeth such a humour, we understand it of virtue and quality of the medicine, not that it purgeth unless it be taken in, or otherwise applied to the distempered person.
2. The blood of Christ cleanseth, not hath cleansed or shall cleanse. This notes a continued act. There is a perpetual pleading of it for us, a continual flowing of it to us.
3. The blood of Christ cleanseth. The apostle joins nothing with this blood. It hath the sole and sovereign virtue. There is no need of tainted merits, unbloody sacrifices, and terrifying purgatories. The whole of cleansing is ascribed to this blood, not anything to our righteousness or works.
4. The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin. It is an universal remedy. . . . It absolves from the guilt of sin, and shelters from the wrath of God. The distinctions of venial and mortal sins hath no footing here; no sin but is mortal without it, no sin so venial but needs it. This blood purgeth not some sort of sins, and leaves the rest to be expiated by a purgatory fire. This expression of the apostle, of all sin, is water enough to quench all the flames of purgatory that Rome hath kindled.
When the apostle, Heb. 10:14, tells, “That by one offering he has for ever perfected them that are sanctified,” he placeth this perfection in the remission of sin (vv. 17-18). He did in offering himself so transact our affairs, and settle our concerns with God, that there was no need of any other offerings to eke it out or to patch it up. As the blood of the typical sacrifices purified from ceremonial, so the blood of the anti-typical offering purifies from moral uncleanness. The Scripture places remission wholly in this blood of the Redeemer.
Excerpted and edited from “A Discourse of the Cleansing Virtue of Christ’s Blood.”
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