Blood of Jesus Christ
by G. C. Morgan
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us" (Ephesians 1:7-8).
All of the New Testament writers make use in one way or the other the statement, "Purchased with His own blood," "Justified by His blood," "Having made peace through the blood of His Cross," "Redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold . . . but with precious blood . . . . even the blood of Christ," "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin." G. Campbell Morgan writes about the blood:
The Bible does not teach that a man is saved by a principle, but by the shedding of blood. Salvation is not through life lived, but through life poured out. It is not by the life of Jesus that we are redeemed; but by His life given up in the pain and suffering of a shameful death, of which death there is no sufficient symbol or method of expression other than that of the shedding of blood. Redemption is provided, not by the richness of His life provided, but by the suffering of His life poured out. . . . It is through the shedding of blood that there is remission.
. . . . The moment we begin to say there is no virtue in the actual blood, the physical blood of long ago, we are on the verge of denying the lonely, separate suffering of God in Christ, though which, and through which alone, it is possible for forgiveness, . . . and power of sin, to be pronounced upon men. . . . Why may we not get rid of the phrasing, Cleansed by blood, and say, Cleansed by life? Because when we get rid of the phrasing we get rid of the truth. It is not by the life, but by the life laid down; not by the richness and beauty of the ideal, but by the mystery of its breaking and buffeting and suffering and death that it is possible for forgiveness to be pronounced. . . .
A spurious, latter-day refinement, which objects to the mention of blood, is both sickly and sinful. A deeper sentiment would be conscious that the awful blood-shedding of the Son of God is the most terrible revelation of the meaning of sin, and is in itself the proof of the dire necessity for such means of salvation. Do not let us forget that.
They say the Cross of Christ is vulgar! I know it. Never was anything so vulgar in human history as the Cross of Jesus! But where is the vulgarity? It is in the sin that mauled Him and put Him there. It is your vulgarity. It is my vulgarity. It is the vulgarity that lies and cheats, that is impure, that laughs at sin, or speaks of it as though it were something to be pitied. It is the vulgarity that has lost its sense of the high throne of God and the white purity of His heaven. It is the vulgarity of the age which drags God off His throne and makes Him merely a force in His creation, and denies righteousness and purity. That is the vulgarity that lifted the Cross! Sin is so vulgar that it can only be dealt with by that which violates the essential life of God. . . . Awful, terrible; but infinitely worse was the pain of God, which was invisible save through that Cross. In His grace He took hold upon sin and expressed, in the suffering of His only Son, its vulgarity. . . .
"Out, damned spot!" That is the true cry of human nature. That stain cannot be removed without blood, and that which is infinitely more, and deeper, and profounder, and more terrible than blood, of which blood is but the symbol--the suffering of Deity (The Bible and the Cross, pp. 75-84).
"Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:24-26).