1212. Cleanseth–The Work of the Atonement

Cleanseth–The Work of the Atonement

"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" (1Jn_1:7).

The Blood of Jesus Christ washes and cleanses the sinner from his sins. This is seen in three striking passages.

1. "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own Blood." Another Version has put it, "loosed from our sins." We rather like the word "washed," but in washing, the dirt must be "loosed" from the fabric. Thus the word "washed" goes in deep. It means more than cleansing the "outside of the cup and the platter."

We have met those who are always digging up their past and worrying over their former guilt. This is abject folly. Why should we be troubled over that which God can not see, which He no more remembers, and which He has effectually blotted out?

If our sins are washed away, they are gone, and, in the Blood of Christ, we stand clean, free from stain. There is no condemnation upon us, there is no mark of our former life. We were dead, walking according to the course of this age. We were at one time fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; we were children of wrath even as others: but now, we are washed, our sins are gone, and gone forever; they are in the bottom of the sea; they are behind God's back.

2. "These are they which came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God." How blessed these words! We have in vision before us a great multitude of the outcomers of the tribulation. These stand before God, not because they were martyrs to the faith, not because they lived lives true and clean, but because they washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.

Isn't this blessed to consider? "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Oh, the white of the whiteness of God's white; yet His own holy whiteness is no whiter than the whiteness of the white of the sinner washed in the Blood of the Lamb.

"All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." All stand before God, guilty, and unclean. When however, we have come to the Cross and have felt the cleansing flow of Calvary's Blood we are clothed in the righteousness of God. For, "Him Who knew no sin He made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." This shows us how white our whiteness is.

3. "Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy" (Jdg_1:24). This presentation is made possible only by virtue of the Blood of the Cross, for in Eph_5:25-27 we read how Christ "loved the Church and gave Himself for it; * * that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." We are not only washed and made white, but we are "ironed" and the wrinkles are removed. We stand before God without any such thing as a suggestion of sin or of darkness. It makes us shout, Hallelujah and Glory to God!

4. "When He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on High." We have before us the picture of a completed work. The sin question was settled at Calvary. On the Cross Christ said, "It is finished!" This is why the ascended Lord can sit down. Everything that He does for us as High Priest is based upon the fact that our sins are gone.

Because of Christ's finished work He has become a High Priest. Through His own Blood He hath entered once, into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." He needed not to have suffered often, for He suffered once in the end of the age, and put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Thank God, our sins are gone, forever gone, and the priesthood of Christ proclaims it as true.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR