Blood has from the beginning been regarded by God as a most precious thing. He has hedged about this fountain of vitality with the most solemn sanctions. The Lord thus commanded Noah and his descendants, “Flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” Man had every moving thing that liveth given him for meat, but they were by no means to eat the blood with the flesh. . . . As for the blood of man, you remember how God’s threatenings ran, “And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man. . . . Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man”. . . . Even in cases where life was taken in chance-medley or misadventure, the matter was not overlooked. . . .
[The shedding of blood was taken very seriously under the Old covenant]. The general law in all cases was, “So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land.” Strange is it that that very thing which defileth, should turn out to be that which alone can cleanse. . . . Further permit me to observe that the seal of sanctity of blood is usually set upon the conscience even of the most depraved of men. . . , for you will notice that men, bad as they are, shrink from the disgrace of taking blood-money. . . . It is clear then that blood is precious in God’s sight, and he would have it so in ours.
Now if in ordinary cases the shedding of life be thus precious, can you guess how fully God utters his heart’s meaning when he says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints?” If the death of a rebel be precious be precious, what must be the death of a child? . . . I have taken you up, you see, from the beast to man, from man to God’s chosen men.
I have another step to indicate to you: it is a far longer one–it is to the blood of JESUS CHRIST. Here, the powers of speech would fail to convey to you an idea of the precariousness! Behold here, a person innocent, who without taint within, or flaw without; a person meritorious, who magnified the law and made it honorable–a person who served both God and man even unto death. Nay, here you have a divine person–so divine, that in the Acts of the Apostles Paul calls his blood the “blood of God.” Place innocence, and merit, and dignity, and position, and Godhead itself in the scale, and then conceive what inestimable value of the blood which Jesus Christ poured forth. Angels must have seen that matchless blood-shedding with wonder and amazement.
Let us come nearer to the text and try to show forth the precariousness of the blood of Christ. . . . The precious blood of Christ is useful to God’s people in a thousand ways; we intend to speak of twelve of them. [We will examine only a four of CHS’s twelve–editor].
1. The precious blood of Christ has a REDEEMING POWER.
It redeem us from the law. We were all under the law which says, “Do this and live”. . . . My brethren, the life of a Jew, happy as it was compared with that of a heathen, was a perfect drudgery compared to yours and mine. He was hedged in with a thousand commands and prohibitions. . . . He was always in danger of making himself unclean.
A thousand sins of ignorance were like so many hidden pits in his
way. . . . When he had done his best any one day, he knew he had not finished; no Jew could ever talk of a finished work. The bullock was offered, but he must bring another; a lamb was offered this morning, but another must be offered this evening, another to-morrow, and another the next day. . . . The high priest has gone into the veil once, but he must go there again; the thing is never finished, it is always beginning. He never comes any nearer to the end.
But see our position: we are redeemed from this. Our law is fulfilled, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness; our Passover is slain, for Jesus died; our righteousness is finished, for we are complete in him; our victim is slain, our priest has gone within the veil, the blood is sprinkled; we are clean, and clean beyond any fear of defilement, “For he hath perfected for ever those that were set apart.” Value this precious blood, my beloved, because it has redeemed you from the thraldom and bondage which the law imposed upon its votaries.
2. The value of the blood lies much in its ATONING EFFICACY.
We are told in Leviticus, that “it is the blood which maketh an atonement for the soul.” God never forgave sin apart from blood under the law. . . . I may make sacrifices; I may mortify my body; I may be baptized; I may receive sacraments; I may pray until my knees grow hard with kneeling; I may read devout words until I know them by heart; I may celebrate masses; I may worship in one language or in fifty languages; but I can never be at one with God, except by blood; and that blood, “the precious blood of Christ.”
3. The precious blood of Jesus Christ has a CLEANSING POWER.
John tells us in his first Epistle, first chapter, seventh verse, “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Sin has a directly defiling effect upon the sinner, hence the need of cleansing. Suppose that God the Holy One were perfectly willing to be at one with an unholy sinner, which is supposing a case that cannot be, yet even should the pure eyes of the Most Holy wink at sin, still as long as we are unclean, we can never feel in our own hearts, anything like joy, and rest, and peace. Sin is a plague to the man who has it, as well as a hateful thing to the God who abhors it. I must be made clean, I must have mine iniquities washed away, or I can never be happy. . . . Whatever the sin may be, there is power in the veins of Christ to take away at once and for ever. No matter how deeply seated our offenses may be, the blood cries, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
4. A fourth property of the blood of Christ is its PRESERVING POWER.
You will rightly comprehend this when you remember the dreadful night of Egypt when the destroying angel was abroad to slay God’s
enemies. . . . The angel sped with noiseless wing through every street of Egypt’s many cities; but there were some houses which he could not enter. What was it that preserved the houses? The inhabitants were not better than others, their inhabitants were not more elegantly built, there was nothing except the bloodstain on the lintel and on the two side posts, and it was written, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
And today, if my eye of faith be dim, and I can scarce see the precious blood, so as to rejoice that I am washed in it, yet God can see the blood, and as long as the undimmed eye of Jehovah looks upon the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, he cannot smite one soul that is covered with its scarlet mantle. . . . It preserving power of that blood should make us feel how precious it is. . . . When heaven is on a blaze, when earth begins to shake, when the mountains rock, when God divides the righteous from the wicked, happy will they be who can find shelter beneath the blood.
Excerpted and edited from “The Precious Blood of Christ,” a sermon preached by CHS on March 20, 1865.
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