JESUS CHRIST, GOD'S REMEDY FOR
SIN
"Without shedding of blood there is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22).
First of all, every one of us must recognize the fact of sin. People may use different names such as failings, weaknesses, hereditary tendencies, inhibitions, phobias, and so on, but "Whatever is not from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23).
Often what we call a slight weakness in our own life we condemn as something more serious in someone else, but the Bible gets right down to the root of the matter and calls it "sin."
Some years ago in England the leading personality in a radio program called "The Brains Trust" was a brilliant atheist called Dr. Joad who had written many books denying the Christian faith. It was his delight to "take to pieces" any suggestions of belief, and time and time again he scored heavily at the expense of some simple believer. Then Dr. Joad fell ill and it took him many months to die. He died inch by inch, and while doing so he made a full survey of the Christian belief. His last book, The Testament of Joad, contains the admission that he could explain away everything in the Bible except SIN. In the end he believed what he had so often mocked — the fact of sin and the need of a Saviour from sin.
For any who talk of the discoveries of modern psychologists, it is important to realize that the Lord Jesus was the greatest psychologist who ever lived. He knew what was in man.
To many, the idea of the awfulness of God's judgment on sin is rather difficult to accept. Having been brought up on the idea "God is Love," it somehow does not seem to fit in. They fail to appreciate both the utter holiness of God, and secondly that God is other things besides Love.
For example, John's first epistle tells so much of the love of God. But before that subject is introduced, we are faced in I John 1:5 with these words, "This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all."
Before we meet the God who is love, we have to deal with the God who is light. In John 1:4-5, the Lord Jesus is shown as the Light that shines in darkness. John 3:19 says: "And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
Bygone days of great revival have always been associated with the fearless presentation of sin, its vileness and its sure and certain penalty.
God's punishment of sin has been one of the consistent characteristics of His dealings with men, whether with individuals like David, Saul, Moses, and any other great Bible character — or with nations — Israel herself, as well as the annihilation of the foul-living nations in Canaan.
The greatest proof of God's judgment on sin is not the actual cross of Calvary, but the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, when our blessed Lord faced the fact of "being made sin for us." How He shrank from the foulness of it, sweating as it were great drops of blood and praying "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me" (Matthew 26:39).
As the great hymn writer Faber wrote:
Ever when tempted, make me see,
Beneath the olive's moon-pierced shade,
My God, alone, outstretched, and bruised,
And bleeding, on the earth He made.And make me feel it was my sin,
As though no other sins there were,
That was to Him who bears the world
A load that He could scarcely bear!
It is essential to realize the unchangeableness of our God. Sin has not changed; neither has the attitude of God. What has changed is the national conscience. Things our forefathers believed in as pure and sacred are now laughed at, mocked and scorned in our modern Sodoms and Gomorrahs.
This challenges us to a personal identification with Christ. Many people will believe He died for us, but here the point is personal — confession of my sin, realization of my awful condition, and identification with Christ as my Lamb.
"For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21).
We are cleansed by his blood — I John 1:7
We have redemption through his blood — Ephesians 1:7
We are made nigh by the blood of Jesus — Ephesians 2:13
We have been made to be at peace through the blood of his Cross — Colossians 1:20.
We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus — Hebrews 10:19.
The phrase "The blood of Christ" and the teaching which involves reference to the shedding of His blood is frowned upon in many churches. It is considered unpleasant, decidedly "Old Testament," and definitely out-of-date.
One of the greatest successes the devil has had is to turn the hearts of many so-called Christians against this teaching. They call it "the slaughter house religion."
But God does not ask our opinion on His plan for the remission of sins; He states the fact, and we can either take it or leave it!
As a schoolmaster for 30 years I have taught all age groups, and many subjects; but there are some things I never had to teach. I never had to teach a child to lie, or to swear, or to tell a dirty story. No one has ever had to teach a boy or girl to go into sin.
No one has to teach a teenager to break the moral codes and throw away honor and purity. No one has to teach a man or a woman to leave his home and family and enter into illicit relationships with others. No one ever has to teach these things — they are "built in" with the model. Jesus said: "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man" (Matthew 15:19-20).
It is interesting to notice that the word "proceed" is in the continuous tense — "they keep on proceeding." These are the words of the greatest psychologist who ever lived for He knew what was in man — He did not have to guess!
If we are honest, we have to acknowledge that this is true of our own hearts. There is a power of sin within us that overcomes us time and time again.
When was the first time you ever told a lie? How many lies do I have to tell to be a liar? One lie can keep you out of heaven! "But there shall by no means enter it any thing that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life" (Revelation 21:27).
Most people will acknowledge the power of sin in their hearts, though they may call it some other name, e.g., personal failing, family weakness, natural tendency, etc. What most people overlook is the fact that, as well as the power of sin, there is also a penalty of sin. Every sin is a sin against Almighty God and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). "The soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). "But your iniquities have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2).
Physical death is a physical separation from the physical world, but the death referred to above is spiritual death, both in this world and the world to come.
Notice: "The wages of sin is death"— is now, not will be in the future only. Because I am a sinner now I am due, now, to go to a place of eternal separation from God. I don't have to lift a finger to go to a lost eternity — I am on my way already, and unless something happens to alter it, my end is both inevitable and incurable.
I John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." God has a way of being both faithful and just — "faithful" to His essential character of LOVE and "just" to His essential character of HOLINESS — one of the great miracles of God.
God has provided the way. It is this — "Without shedding of blood there is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22). These words form one of the essential key phrases of the Word of God. Right from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, the shedding of blood according to God's instructions is the only remedy for the penalty of sin.
Many people will say, "Yes, true, but that was the way of the Old Testament. Things have changed now." Yet the verb used is the present tense "is no remission" and it is written in the New Testament. God's demands have never changed and even today in the Atomic Age, without shedding of blood there is no remission.
Chapter 4 of Leviticus, the Visual Aids section of the Word of God, details how a man could obtain forgiveness in the Old Testament. According to his social standing, he had to bring an animal offering to the Lord. Before the beast was slain, the man placed his hands upon the head of the animal to identify the animal with himself.
The animal was then put to death instead of the man, and the shed blood was the proof of the pardon. The Bible says in Leviticus 4:35: "the priest shall make atonement for his sin that he has committed, and it shall be forgiven him."
The word atonement is very important; it implies literally "a covering." The shed blood covered the sin of the man so the man's sin could be forgiven.
While this method was wonderful, it was also limited. If the offerer became conscious at a later date of the burden of more sins, he had to repeat the whole process again — a costly and humbling process. This fact is emphasized in Hebrews 10:4: "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sins." The man's sin remained, but it was covered.
Thus, under the Old Testament economy, all the sins remained for which offerings were made. They remained, but they were covered by the shed blood. This fact throws into glorious relief the words of John the Baptist: "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).
What a stupendous thought! How precious is His precious blood. It could take away the sin of the whole world. All the sacrifices offered in the days of the Old Testament looked forward to Calvary's cross. Each animal was a type of God's lamb, but its shed blood could never take away sin; it simply covered it until the glorious day when God's own Lamb came, and by His shed blood took away the sin of the world.
Hebrews 10:1-18 brings out the truth concerning Christ: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me" (verse 5). The body of Christ was specially prepared of God to be the offering for sin.
"We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (verse 10).
"And every priest stands daily ministering and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins" (verse 11).
"But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God" (verse 12).
"For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified" (verse 14).
"Their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more" (verse 17).
Notice the tremendous importance of verse 12 — "One sacrifice for sins forever." Calvary's cross is God's answer to all the sin of all time. Just as we look back to the cross of Christ, so the Old Testament sacrifices looked forward to the cross of Christ.
They were the type, but He is the Truth. The sins that were covered in the Old Testament were taken away by the shed blood of Christ. Notice how this magnifies the death of Christ so that we see it, not as one of God's afterthoughts, but truly as I Peter 1:19, 20 says — we are redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ . . . [who] was foreordained before the foundation of the world." Before the world was ever made, the precious shed blood of Christ was part of the divine counsel and strategy.
Revelation 5:9 says, "And they sang a new song, saying: 'You are worthy . . .for You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood.'"
The center of the praise of Heaven is: "a Lamb as though it had been slain" (Revelation 5:6) and the praise is: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing" (Revelation 5:12).
This praise becomes universal when we read in Revelation 5:13, "And every creature which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: 'Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever.'"
That is what God and heaven think about the blood of Christ; no wonder the devil would seek to detract from such glory — even to the extent of getting so-called Christian ministers to scoff and belittle it.
The great question each person has to decide is — "What do you think about the Christ?" (Matthew 22:42). Is He only a good man, a great prophet, a glorious example — or is He to be your Lamb? Remember our verse — "Without shedding of blood there is no remission."
First there must be a conscious sense of my sin, and admission that I have sinned against Almighty God. My sin is an affront to the holiness of God, and the penalty of sin is eternal separation from God.
Unless my sin is forgiven and taken away, it remains, so that I continue to live in my sins. If nothing is done to remove it, I will die in my sins and be buried in my sins. Some day I will be raised, still in my sins, and before the Judgment Throne I will receive the sentence of eternal damnation. All because, although I knew the remedy, I refused to apply it to myself.
It is just as if you were seriously ill, even to the point to dying, when a doctor came and placed some tablets in your hands. "Take these, and you will make a sure recovery. No one has failed to recover who made full use of this remedy," he says.
After he has gone, you put the tablets on your bedside table. You determine not to take them, and then eventually you die. Whose fault would it be? Surely your own. And if you go to a lost eternity having refused to take God's remedy, it will be no one's fault but your own. "As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked" (Ezekiel 33:11).
When I come to the stage where I am conscious of the burden of sin and the horror of it, then I desire above all else to have remission of my sin. I must now do what is detailed in Leviticus, Chapter 4. I must bring my Lamb and place my hands on its head; in other words, I must identify myself with Christ. I must claim Him personally as my Lamb of God. As Paul said of Him: "The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
I must realize that if I were the only sinner in the world, then the shed blood of Christ would be needed to take away my sin. Having humbly and reverently identified myself with the Lamb of God, I can now go on thanking and praising God for all He has done for me, just as the Ethiopian did when "he went on his way rejoicing."
Notice that all this is an act of faith in God. We believe what God says: "without shedding of blood there is no remission." We accept what God provides: "the Lamb of God." We do as God commands: identify with the Lamb and then, in faith, believe that God will keep His promise. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
The beauty of God's offer is that whosoever will may come. It is simple enough for everyone to understand. A clever university student once said to a preacher, "If I could only understand how God forgives sin, I would accept it right away."
"But," replied the preacher, "if you could understand it because of your intellect, how would the young and the ignorant and the retarded ever come to a knowledge of forgiven sins? I have a missionary friend who has preached for over thirty years to the pygmies of the Congo forests, people apparently just one stage higher than animals. Even the men of the other tribes call them animals. How could they know forgiveness of sins?"
"Forgive me," the student said, "I never thought of it that way."
"No, you didn't," the preacher continued, "but God did."
"Whosoever will may come." Any one who feels a sense of sin is able to experience the blessing of forgiveness if only he believes what God says, accepts His offer, and claims Jesus Christ as his own personal Saviour, identifying himself with Him.
One thing more God promises in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
God takes my sin and identifies it with Jesus, He "who knew no sin", so that I might not only be forgiven, which is a neutral state, but that I might be made the righteousness of God in Him, a very positive position.
What an exchange — my sins for His righteousness! This is the white robe that the Apostle John saw worn by the great multitude in Revelation 7:9. The answer of the elder to John in Revelation 7:14 is so pointed: "These are the ones who come out of great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
When we think of our own sin and the power of sin in our lives, then let us face up to the penalty of that sin. Let us hear God's remedy: "without shedding of blood there is no remission." Let us see God's Lamb — that takes away the sin of the world. Let us reverently place our hands on Him, identifying Him with our sin, and us with His righteousness. We either look back to Calvary's perfection, or look forward to certain judgment.
This whole study of redemption by the blood is one which shows so clearly the oneness of the Word of God. What is taught in the New Testament is illustrated in the Old Testament. The type is in the Old Testament, the Truth is in the New Testament.
The precious blood of Christ was foreordained before the foundation of the world (1 Peter 1:20). Without the New Testament the sacrifices of the Old Testament would have no point and no direction. Without the Old Testament, the sacrifice of Christ is meaningless.
As the New Testament so often says: "all this was done that the Scripture might be fulfilled." The blood of Christ is the great link between the Old and the New. Let us get a holy sense of the greatness of the blood of Christ: don't apologize for it, don't seek to defend it. The shed blood of Christ is the unending wonder of the universe of God!
