When the bible speaks of washing us in the blood of Christ (Rev.1:5) or washing our robes in the blood of the Lamb (Rev.7:14) or sprinkling our hearts with his blood (Heb.10:22, 1Pt.1:2) we must be careful not to import magical or superstitious ideas into our thinking. Some believers whose zeal exceeds their knowledge have formed ideas about the blood of Jesus and the atonement where Christ’s blood either is omnipresent spirit or turns into it after the crucifixion. We want to be very reverent here and try to address these issues without lightness. They imagine that the blood although physical has some mysterious spiritual form (since physical blood could not be applied to a heart) that is applied to our spiritual nature to dissolve or eliminate sin somehow. They would argue that because the bible mentions the blood of God (Ac.20:28) although a spirit does not have flesh and bone (Lk.24:39) God (a spirit- Jn.4:24) must have eternal spiritual blood (the Son only presumably, and not the Father or Spirit, introducing component parts and imposing a view of God subject to space). They conceive of this blood as a non-physical substance which is either created when the body of Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of Mary (Lk.1:35) or has always existed. In contradiction to this Jesus in his immortal body after the resurrection did not have blood in it. They further interpret John chapter 6 as Christ teaching us that in some literal fashion we drink (receive) his spiritually applied blood.
This produces so much confusion with divers and strange ideas generated that it reduces itself to absurdities. For example if the spiritual blood can remove the presence of sin, could the physical blood have been applied to the disciples flesh and cleansed them? If you say no then you conclude it only attained this power when it was translated into spirit sometime after the cross, thereby making the blood of the cross of none effect. Was it then not sufficient to cleanse us on the cross and had to be brought to us tangibly? What actual benefit then is the physical blood being shed at Calvary? If there is eternal spiritual blood why does there need to be temporal physical blood (Lk.22:44)? Could the disciples have drunk his physical blood and received spiritual life? Or eaten his physical body and received eternal life? If you are only cleansed by a tangible contact with the spiritual blood, then what about the cross? Why could I not upon the same logic, conclude that we must literally bear his spiritual cross? Romans 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ Galatians 5:24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Galatians 6:14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. If you say we are tangibly cleansed by spiritual blood as opposed to physical blood, then since it is the blood of his cross, why would you not have to be tangibly crucified with him on a spiritual cross? Does this mean that when the saints overcome the devil by the blood of the Lamb (Rev.12:11) somehow this spiritual blood wrought a force or a hedge that drove back the devil?
What we need to understand however is that when Christ offered himself without spot to God (Heb.9:14) he was once offered to bear the sins of many (9:28). This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God (Heb.10:12), and this was so complete that there is no more offering for sin (10:18). And it was the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (10:10) Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me (v5).
So now hath he reconciled us to himself in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight (Col.1:21-2). Having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself (v20).
This occurred on the cross when he shed his blood for the remission of our sins (Heb.9:22) and the sins of the whole world (1 Jn.2:2). God sent his Son to be a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom.3:25, 1 Jn.4:10). So our faith needs to be in the blood of the cross when he bare our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Pt.2:24) being put to death in the flesh (3:18).
There is no separation between his blood from his body on the cross in the gospel. We therefore have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh (Heb.10:19-20). There were no magical properties to his blood while he was in the days of his flesh. He did not wash us from our sins in the garden when his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground (Lk.22:44). It was on the cross where he for sin, condemned sin in the flesh (Rom.8:30) and reconciled us to God (Eph.2:16) and so we are made nigh by the blood of Christ (v13). It was at that point on the cross when he was accursed as it is written Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Gal.3:13); suffering without the camp (Heb.13:12). This was where it was finished (Jn.19:30), where we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Pt.1:19).
When we have faith in his blood (Rom.3:25) we are believing that the sacrifice of himself on the cross made propitiation or appeased God’s justice and wrath. The day of Atonement shows us that reconciliation was made on a certain day in a certain place (Lev.16). So the application of the blood must have the sacrifice of the body of Christ on the cross as the focus and object of our faith. And so when we speak of our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience (1 Pt.1:2, Heb.10:22) we do not imagine spirit blood touching our heart. Sprinkling is a metaphor (as is eating his flesh and drinking his blood- Jn.6:51-8) with the symbolism of the Levitical priests (Ex.29:20-21, Lev.1:5, 11, 16:14-5, 19 etc.). We apply it to our hearts by faith believing what God has wrought through Christ on the cross. And trusting in this sacrifice assures us that once purged we should have no more conscience of sins (Heb.10:2). Once we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn.1:9). We move from faith to faith as the just live by faith (Rom.1:17)- that is faith in his physical blood he shed to cleanse us from our sins. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 Jn.2:1) who now appears in the presence of God for us (Heb.9:24). We maintain our faith in him; 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 (1 Jn.1:7)
The body and blood of the spotless Lamb of God appeased the eternal justice of Almighty God when he offered himself on the cross. The abstract and spiritual realities of these truths (i.e. the mysteries of Godliness) are the focus and cause of faith. The words of Jesus are life giving spiritual truths (Jn.6:63, 68). They are eternal Spirit (He.9:14, Jn.4:24, Jn.1:1). The body and blood of Jesus the Son of man is created (Jn.19:34, He.2:14,10:5, Gal.4:4). The water he offered the woman at the well was the word of truth about himself (Jn.4:10-26). The bread from heaven was Jesus himself of which the manna was a type (Jn.6:31-5). But their faith had to be activated by the revelation (Rom.10:17) of his person (I am the bread- Jn.6:35, 48, 51). To eat and drink of Christ was to believe what he taught (Jn.6:29, 35, 47). To receive his Spirit was to believe his words- the manifestation of his Spirit (Jn.7: 37-9, 6:63). We partake of this divine nature by believing his promises (2 Pt.1:4). In the same way that Jesus lived by the Father (Jn.6:57, 12:49-50, 14:10, 10:16-17, 4:34), we are to live by Christ; that is live by the faith of the Son of God (Gal.2:20). The flesh does not profit us in the same way the spirit does (Jn.6:63). The flesh and blood body of the man Christ Jesus which he covered himself in when he came down from heaven was for God directly and for us indirectly. When he made propitiation through his shed blood he satisfied the justice of God. This physical, historical action becomes an abstract doctrine for us. Our faith in the doctrine (Rom.10:17) related to what he did and who he is gives life to us. The life is the divine nature, the eternal life which is God himself which is Christ himself (Jn.17:3, 1 Jn.5:12, 20, 1:2-3) which is Spirit (Rom.8:9, 2 Cor.3:17); that is to say not flesh and blood and not created. In other words to eat the physical created body and blood of Christ would not impart eternal uncreated spiritual life to us- that is what believing what he taught and promised does to us.
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