Church of Christ Studies

The Blood of Christ

There is indelibly stamped upon my memory a photograph of this magnificent audience. it is made the more impressive, friends, when I remember that you have assembled out of regard for Jehovah, out of respect for his word, and conscious of the fact that you are rapid passengers upon the stage of action, hastening with lengthened strides toward that "city which hath foundations."

 

I am very glad this afternoon to acknowledge the presence of Sister Ryman, one of the charter members of the church of Christ of South Nashville, whose influence was largely responsible for the erection of this magnificent auditorium, which is quite historic because of the scenes that have herein transpired. I am also glad to have with us all visitors, many of whom I do not know, but especially to welcome my friend, as well as yours, Governor Taylor, whom all Tennesseeans gladly know.

 

Let me call your attention to what I hope to be one of the simplest and one of the most practical thoughts that I have tried to deliver to you thus far. I want your attention fastened and your thoughts centered upon a study of the blood of Christ in its relationship to mankind. A very fitting text is found in 1 John 1:6, 7: "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we He, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

 

I take it that every professed Christian upon the earth recognizes the efficacy and the power of the blood of Christ, without which we count ourselves indeed hopeless and helpless as along the pathway of time we move. I wonder, friends, if all of us are intelligently appreciative of just what is said by the beloved disciple: "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

 

There are just a few men upon the earth that are striving to reach heaven independently of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ; and it is a lamentable picture to see fine citizens, good business men and splendid women, in their negligence, indifference, and carelessness, blinded, deluded, and deceived, thinking that they can leave behind them evidences of their acceptance with God when they have not been washed in that fountain filled with the precious blood of his Son.

 

There are some other texts that I want to get before you early in the talk. John (1 John 2:2) says: "He [CHRIST] is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Thus is the universality of the scheme of redemption announced to man.

 

But Jesus said in connection with the institution of the Lord's Supper (Matt. 26:28) : "For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Hence, you can see the connection some way or other between the blood of Christ and the remission of sine, as well as making propitiation therefor.

 

But, again (Acts 20:28), Paul bade the elders of the church at Ephesus to "take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood."

 

These scriptures, when translated into common English, simply mean that Jesus Christ, our Lord, died as a ransom for lost and ruined humanity; that as man's life was forfeited by his betraying the trust committed to him, it took life, which is the blood, to make the atonement, or propitiation, for man's redemption and restoration.

 

In a very brief statement let me say that when God created man of the dust of the earth, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and there man stood, the culmination of Heaven's creative power, bearing the impress of divinity upon his brow and the very stamp of God's image upon his heart. So far as the record shows, man was perfeet in body, in mind, and in spirit; but being a man rather than a machine, he was clothed with the power of freedom to act and to decide and to elect his course as along the aisles of time he was destined to go. God Almighty turned over the government of this earth unto man that all the universe might be blessed and subsequent generations might evermore receive heavenly benedictions showered down upon them.

 

But the sad story is that man proved untrue to the trust, magnificent as it was, committed to his care; and instead of heeding the counsel and the advice of the God of his being, he lent an attentive ear unto the archenemy of mankind and yielded to the counsel of His Satanic Majesty. He chose the devil to be his God and the God of his kingdom, rather than the Lord of heaven and earth: As a result, death entered. Thorns and thistles sprang up in the world. Sin, sorrow, sickness, and sighing enveloped the earth in darkness. Hence it was that God's Spirit was withdrawn from the earth, and the spirit of the devil—mischief, wickedness, vice, and sin—blighted the hopes of mankind and cursed this earth with its various scars until glad redemption was announced in the subsequent years.

 

When man proved unfaithful, when he betrayed the trust delivered unto him, God saw fit to make an example of him for all who should follow. Not to punish a rebellion of this sort would be but an invitation to similar scenes and would put a premium on treasons of the basest kind. At that time some kind of propitiation had to be made in order that the laws of heaven might be satisfied and that the honor of God might be vindicated. Jesus Christ, therefore, interposed his precious blood and stood as a substitute for man on the condition that man should become his servant. In thus satisfying the Divine law and propitiating the offended majesty of heaven and in allowing man to return to God, Jesus was as "a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world."

 

God Almighty wanted to give to man that which would be the means of overcoming the sad plight into which his acts of disobedience had carried him. God wanted something to be done because of his matchless love that might overcome the thorns, the briers, and the thistles that had grown upon the earth as a result of sin. He desired to transform this earth into another paradise and make it possible for man to put forth his hand once more, partake of its fruit, and live forever in his holy presence. Man's journey was to be from one paradise unto another paradise. Just as the great enemy of mankind triumphed in the first great battle, wrested liberty and association with God from man, caused him to be driven out and the gates of paradise closed behind him, so the second Adam, the substitute, the one to make propitiation for our sins, voluntarily proposed to be our mediator, with the earnest hope that he might wrestle with the powers in the Hadean world, come forth triumphant from the tomb, pluck the rose of immortality therefrom, and through the merit or efficacy of his blood might swing wide the gates of paradise once more and grant us to eat of the tree of life and thus live forever.

 

And thus is flashed the entire program and principle of salvation from first to last, drafted by God, executed by Christ, and by the Holy Spirit revealed unto the sons and daughters of Adam's apostate race. We ought, therefore, to congratulate ourselves to-day, if we would be thoughtful in our deliberation over the possibilities of the restoration that is to be made through Jesus Christ, our Lord. By the gift of Christ, God has purchased the church. But remember that it takes two parties to complete a purchase, to consummate a gift. One provides and offers the gift, the other accepts. Those who accept the offer of the Lord enter in and constitute his church. Hence, the church alone is ransomed and redeemed by the blood of Christ. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law." "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins." Only those who believe and obey the gospel have part in the blood of Christ, and apart from his blood there is no forgiveness.

 

Now, permit me to say that while Jesus Christ stood as a substitute for man and purchased a respite for him, he should lend himself to his set-vice. The coming of the Lord was stayed for a period of four thousand years, during which time God instituted dispensations that were purely symbolical and typical of that which finally culminated in the gospel age. But, further, let me say that in no period of the world has God Almighty been approachable only by and through the shedding of blood, which is the life. Hence, in the patriarchal age we have the story of Abel and Cain. The former, walking by faith, offered an animal whose blood was shed. Thus was his sacrifice accepted. The latter, representing a class of humanity wise above what is written, substituted the fruit of the ground and was rejected. This first sacrifice of blood was but typical of the blood of Christ, the perfect sacrifice for sinners made. Grandfather Abraham, following in perfect accord, walking in the counsel of God Almighty, offered sacrifices of a bloody nature unto God. Thus the patriarchs did while twenty-five hundred years of the history of the world sped by.

 

Moses then led the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage, and God instituted a national system of service and of worship known to us as the Jewish theocracy—-a government both civil and religious in its nature. From the very time that they encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai until the close of that period—fifteen hundred years—there was not an approach, there was not the presentation, favorable, of any act or of any service unto God other than through the sacrifices of blood, typical as they were of Him by whose blood our sins are cleansed to-day.

 

Hence, Paul said (Heb. 9:22): "Almost all things are by the law purged with blood." So there was not an ordinance, there was not a commandment, there was not a single, solitary thing ordained of God to Moses, and through Moses unto the people, but that it was sanctified and dedicated by the blood of an animal. When God gave the constitution in the form of the Ten Commandments, he told Moses to get a book and write a law based upon these statements. Having so done, "he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. 158 Hardeman's Tabernacle Sermons Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission."

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When the tabernacle was thus erected and the altar made, the lever and the candlesticks, the table, the mercy seat, and the ark of the covenant—all of it God had sanctified and sealed by the blood of animals. Not only these, but the tongs, the pots, the pans, the shovels, the flesh hooks, and all of the articles used by Moses in the administration of the service had to be dedicated and sealed by blood. So, then, there was a system of government in which sacrifices galore were offered; and if you will look back through the changing scenes of these fifteen hundred years, you will observe a great incline down which there has come the blood from the days of righteous Abel on through patriarchy through the Jewish age, picturing, symbolizing, and typifying the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the immaculate child of Mary and the Son of the living God.

 

During these forty centuries there was no sacrifice, no blood, that could possibly take away in the absolute a single sin. Those being typical ages, the blood being typical, the remission was only typical and partial.

 

From Heb. 10:1-4 I bid you listen: "The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never [watch it] with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshipers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sine every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." But, my friends, that is all they had. They had only the blood of animals. Every Jew who was faithful to the law of Moses came at the stated period year after year, bringing his victim to the altar, and there at the hands of a priest offered that victim as a sacrifice. What did it do? Blot out his sins? No, no! it simply rolled those sins forward one year at a time, at the expiration of which those sins, together with others accumulated, were piled upon him as before. Hence, it was then necessary for that act of sacrifice to be repeated for another year, and thus it was on down for the fifteen centuries. Every Jew, however, who was faithful in the observance of these annual sacrifices of the blood of bulls and of goats unto the coming of Christ was redeemed—had all sins wiped out, never to be remembered again.

 

Hence, you and I ought to appreciate what Paul said in Heb. 8: 6-12: "But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he said, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people." Now note: "They shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord." Why? "For all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."

 

The time was, under the Jewish age, when the Lord did remember their sins every year; but under the shedding of the blood of Christ, our Lord, under the gospel of the Christian dispensation, he will blot out sins, and, in so doing, they are remembered no more.

 

Paul said, "Without shedding of blood is no remission;" and from this, coupled with the statement that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin, it follows as certainly as the night follows the day that without the shedding of the blood of Christ there can be no remission of sin. This fact is generally conceded. it is also true that no debt was ever paid absolutely by mere paper currency; but thousands of obligations have been practically canceled by notes, bonds and similar documents. Just so God issued to the patriarchs and Jews promissory notes based on the infinite value of the blood of Christ which he knew would in due time be shed. By means of these notes he was enabled to meet for the time being all the claims of justice, and still to treat as just and righteous all who became loyal subjects of his government. But no one could "read his title clear to mansions in the skies" until all promises had been redeemed by the one atoning sacrifice.

 

But let me submit to you further, my friends, in connection with a fact of that kind, what Paul said in Heb. 9:15: "And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."

 

I think there are none of you who would be so thoughtless or so lax in your studies as to imagine that the beneficiary of the Mosaic dispensation had to have the literal blood of the literal bull or goat applied to his body. That was not the way the Jew gained the benefit of the blood of animals. But when Moses had ordained the book of the law and had sealed that book by the blood, then every Jew on earth who accepted that law and obeyed the direction of Moses received the benefits of the blood of these animals, and thus the blood of the animals was applied to the Jew.

 

Just so today in the atonement made by Christ, in the propitiation and the reception of the benefits of the blood of Christ, it is hard to believe that any one of ordinary intelligence, who has studied the Bible with the least particle of profit, would think that the physical, literal blood of Christ was to be applied in a literal way to the immortal, the immaterial spirit and soul of man. But some there are who would actually have you believe that in some mysterious, miraculous manner the Holy Spirit literally sprinkles it upon the heart of the sinner—a thing that is absolutely and ridiculously impossible to be done.

 

Before Christ Jesus, our Lord, left the earth, provision was made for the writing of a book of the law of the Spirit, by which his people were to be governed and by obedience to which they were to become beneficiaries of his will. The constitution of that law was the great world-wide commission. Christ dedicated, consecrated, and forever sealed the great principle and the law of salvation, not with the blood of an animal, but by his own precious blood. Hence, a testament is of force after men are dead. it must be sealed by their blood. Many of you, perhaps, have your wills written out; but they are not of force. You have the right to go to the vault, get them, tear them up, and write others altogether different. But when you die and leave a will correctly made, no court on earth can change the terms or benefits therein found. it is then sealed by your blood.

 

Just so Christ Jesus, our Lord, gave the great constitution to the apostles, who were guided by the Holy Spirit in proclaiming to the world his laws, sealed by his blood. The blood of Christ sealed the law of the new testament and purchased the church of God.

 

Acts 20: 28: "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the dock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood."

 

For what was Christ's blood expended? The answer is: The church of the living God. How much of the blood of Christ went into the church of God? The last drop flowed from his pierced side, and all of that went to the purchase of the church of which we read in God's book. So, then, it stands axiomatic that if you and I get any of the benefits of the blood of Christ, we must get it by virtue of our relationship to that institution into which Christ's blood went.

 

To illustrate, I have here a five-dollar bill. Suppose today that is the only five-dollar bill that I have, and I walk into some store in your city and buy a hat—not for four dollars and ninety-nine cents, but I give in exchange for it five dollars. I put five hundred cents, every particle of that five dollars, into this hat. Now, then, no matter where I go nor how I act, if I ever get any benefit out of that five dollars, I must get it out of the use of the hat into which the entire Ave dollars went. Outside of the hat there is no benefit, there is no purchasing power of the five dollars possible to be rendered, for all of it is there. So if I ever get one single, solitary benefit, I must get it out of the hat.

 

Very well. Jesus Christ, our Lord, purchased the church of God with his blood. Therefore it follows beyond the shadow of a doubt that if you and I ever become beneficiaries of Christ's blood it will be due to the fact that we have become members of his church. Why? All of Christ's blood went into the purchase of his church; and when you and I render obedience unto him, become his children, he adds us to the church, and thereby we get all the benefits of the blood of Christ; and "if we walk in the light, as be is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

 

As the Jews received the benefit of the shed blood of the animals by virtue of their acceptance of the Mosaic law, just so to-day you and I receive the benefits of Christ's shed blood through obedience and in compliance with the commandments and the authority connected with the church of the living God, and outside of that there is no benefit. Our moat important duty, therefore, is to become members of the church of God, the body of Christ.

 

When I talk about the church of God, I am not talking about some human denomination; for be it remembered that the church of God is not even the distant relative of human organizations, which are unknown to the book of God. I am talking about that institution for which Christ died, over which he reigns as head, in which the Spirit dwells— that institution that is guided by his counsel, that is filled with his Spirit, that is ultimately to be crowned with his matchless glory. I rejoice to think it possible for men and women to become members of the household of faith, of the family of God, of the church purchased with his blood, in which there is salvation by the blood of Christ.

 

So, then, when I ask a man to-day to believe the gospel with all of his heart and he starts down the aisle to extend his hand, friends, that man is not looking to faith per se as the cleansing power, but that man, prompted by faith, is looking to the blood of Christ.

 

When a man turns from his sins, resolves by the grace of God to abandon the wrong and to face about to a holier, higher, nobler sphere, that man ought not to be looking merely to the act of repentance, but to be looking to the blood of Christ, which alone can cleanse from all sin.

 

When a man walks down into the water, there to be buried in the name of the sacred three, he is not looking to the water. O, no. He is not looking to faith. He is not looking to repentance. But he is looking beyond—unto the entrance into the church of God, bought with the blood of his Son, through which alone there can come the cleansing power. Hence, his effort is to get into the merits and benefits of the blood of Christ.

 

But, friends, where did Christ shed his blood? The answer must come': In the tragedy of the cross, in the scenes inaugurated and enacted on Calvary's brow, when thus he tasted death for every man. Christ shed his blood in his death; and if I get the benefits of Christ's blood, I must get into his death, for there the blood was shed.

 

Hence, Paul said: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid." Now note: "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" In his death the blood was shed, and in the blood there is remission of sins.

 

The hope of the world is in the blood of Christ. Without it you cannot be saved. No matter how moral, upright, and honest you may have lived, unless you have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, there is no heaven for you. I beg of you, therefore, to accept the call of the Lord, submit to his will, and be saved on his terms. While we all sing together, may the Lord help you to come.

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