The Blood That Cleanses

There is no doubt that the blood of Jesus was real blood. It was the actual blood of a real man. Yet it was more than just the blood of a man... it was the blood of God. It was the blood of God because He is the God-Man. Thus, when it says in scripture that "the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanses us from all sin," it is not speaking of His literal blood being applied to us. If the blood of Christ spattered on the soldier that nailed Him to the cross it did not cleanse him from his sins. Likewise if His blood dripped from His pierced side it did not cleanse any it might have fallen upon.

No, this term, "the blood of Jesus," refers to the life He laid down and the death that He died. "The life is in the blood," God said. His death was not simply the death of a man but rather the death of THE Man! It was the death of a Representative Man and "the death of the cross." God looked to Christ alone for all that was necessary to honor His law, satisfy every claim of His strict justice and save all His elect from their sins. The substitutionary death of Christ did just that. Christ's death "cleansed" or "purged" our sins from the books of heaven by completely paying the ransom price and accomplishing the eternal redemption of all He represented.

Thus we read that by His own blood He entered into the holy place once and obtained eternal redemption for us. His success in this work was demonstrated when He “sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.” Furthermore, the stain of our sins being blotted out in the court of heaven is the ground upon which they are cleansed in the court of our conscience. We experience this when the truth of the gospel is revealed to and realized in the sinner's conscience through the Spirit giving us faith to believe the record of God. This cleansing is a continual cleansing because we were cleansed, made righteous through the death of our Substitute.

In Christ and by Christ we are "clean" and being cleaned! Our consciences in the matter of our sins are "purified" with every fresh hearing and believing of the gospel of the crucified Christ. Oh that precious fountain opened for sin! "There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins... and sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose ALL their guilty stains!" Let men mock the preaching of the cross, of salvation through the blood of Christ; but let us listen to God and look to Him who “made peace through the blood of His cross.”

-Gospel report by preacher Gary Shepard