10. Holiness and the Blood of Christ

HOLINESS AND THE BLOOD OF CHRIST I will now explain what I meant on [an earlier] page when I referred to the blessing of the fresh revelation of the power of the blood of Christ.

Christians like Frances Ridley Havergal, Thomas Cook, Brengle, and many others have been led into the secret of fullness of blessing through faith in 1 John 1:7 In my case, however, it was not so. I entered in by faith on a different line of truth, namely, faith in the sanctifying work of the Spirit of God on the basis of the crucifixion of the “old man” according to Romans 6:6. We do not always see immediately the underlying unity between different but related truths of divine revelation. As regards the truth of the blood of Christ, however, I was hindered by the theory that the “cleansing from sin” in 1 John 1:7 related only to my “standing” before God as completely justified in His sight and not to any actual inner cleansing of the heart. According to this theory, the blood of Christ was not applied to the sin in the heart of the believer. This theory prevented me from seeing the glory of the fullness and depth hidden in that precious phrase, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” I am not the only one who has been hindered in spiritual experience by this erroneous, limited interpretation of 1 John 1:7. In his book, The Dynamic of Faith, Mr. Paget Wilkes relates the case of an earnest missionary who had a singular prejudice against the truth of “holiness by faith in Jesus.” Wholehearted though she was, yet she had limited the atoning sacrifice to the pardon of her sins. For her there was no such thing as any moral cleansing in the blood of Christ. Cleansing was only a judicial thing, a taking away of the guilt of transgression. Mr. Wilkes states that though she was outwardly blameless in character and devoted in service, she came under the deepest conviction for inward holiness and exclaimed with brokenness of spirit, “Oh, my awful unbelief! I have limited the power of the precious Blood.” Mr. Wilkes concludes, “Not many days later there came a blessed entrance into that which hitherto she had held of no account.” I, too, became very exercised on this question, “Is it scriptural to say that the blood of Christ cleanses the heart of the believer from sin?” On this point I was greatly helped by a message entitled “The Power of the Precious Blood” delivered at the Keswick Convention by the late Dr. Charles Inwood. “The Blood,” he said, “is the symbol of the life of the Lord Jesus laid down to atone for sin; it is also the symbol of that life taken up again for our sanctification. All the atoning merit is in the life laid down; all the cleansing power is in the life taken up again.” I prayed earnestly for further light on this matter, and one morning about two o’clock I awoke with the following words powerfully impressed on my mind: “There are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” (1 John 5:8.) In a flash, light came to me and I experienced that peculiar unction and blessedness which I felt was of the Spirit. I saw that I could not dissociate the Blood from the work of the Spirit and the water, which I took to mean the Word of God, as all three agreed in one. The blood of Christ purified the heart because the Spirit of God applied the Blood through faith in the truth contained in the Word. That is how that verse spoke to my heart. On the same day, while I was out for a walk, the Spirit of God applied 1 John 1:7 to my heart in great power. He gave me such a sweet, blessed assurance that the precious blood of Christ was applied to my heart in all its wonderful cleansing power that tears of joy came into my eyes. Soon after this blessed experience, I purchased Dr. Andrew Murray’s books, The Power of the Blood o Jesus and The Blood of the Cross. He shows that the blood of Christ must not be regarded as something that was shed and finished with, as it were, at the Cross. The blood of Christ, as a divine reality, has entered heaven itself, is sprinkled on the eternal throne, and there abides and all the time exercises its mighty power both upward toward God and downward and inward towards the believer. These books greatly strengthened my faith and further confirmed and interpreted all that the Spirit of God had already applied directly to my soul with power It has been the unfolding by the Spirit of God of something of the depths of meaning in 1 John 1:7, concerning the blood of Christ, that has further confirmed and established me in the blessing of entire sanctification by faith I believe that the cleansing by the blood of Christ is (1) complete, (2) conditional, and (3) continuous. THE POWER OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST 1. Complete Cleansing. I believe that, however deep sin has penetrated in the human heart, the blood of Christ can go deeper and cleanse that heart. The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. Sin is the devil’s work. Cleansing from sin is God’s work. I believe that this blessed cleansing of the heart can be known here and now, in this life, because hearts are purified by faith (Acts 15:8-9) and not by death or works or anything else. The mere death of the physical body cannot touch the sin of the heart. And when God cleanses the heart, the Spirit of God will enter in all His fullness to abide and keep the springs of our being clean and filled with the love of God. God alone knows what sin really is, and when He cleanses the heart He deals with sin as He knows it, not according to our very limited knowledge of what sin is. His work of cleansing and filling the heart with the Spirit is a supernatural work and cannot be fathomed by our own powers of introspection. 2. Conditional Cleansing. When the Lord healed the impotent man in John 5, He said to him, “Behold, thou art made whole.” The Lord had done a complete work of healing in the man. But the Lord added, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” Thus the maintenance of the blessing of the healing was conditional upon his keeping from sin or, in other words, “walking in the light.” Similarly, the maintenance of the full blessing of the cleansing from sin is conditional upon our “walking in the light.” It is “if we walk in the light,” the Blood cleanseth, etc. 3. Continuous Cleansing. “The blood cleanseth,” present or continuous tense. In this verse, 1 John 1:7, the thought of cleansing is not limited to a “once and for all” act of cleansing at the moment of conversion. It is not a single act of cleansing. That thought would have been expressed by the aorist tense. Here it speaks of a continuous cleansing. Thus the blood of Christ is like a fountain under which the believer is kept as he abides by faith under its cleansing flow. It is like a living, refreshing stream; and as the believer walks in the light, so he walks in the cleansing stream by faith, his heart is kept pure and freed from sin, he enjoys blessed heart fellowship with the Father and the Son, and thus has a foretaste of the bliss of heaven. I confess I have been slow to appropriate by faith in all its glorious depth and fullness the truth that “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” The false teaching which denies that the blood of Christ effects any actual, inward, moral cleansing of the heart has had a harmful influence upon my spiritual life. I am glad, however, that the Lord has now delivered me from that error. My great desire now is that the Lord will graciously grant me continually an unwavering faith in the mighty, cleansing power of the blood of Christ. Oh, for a triumphant faith that confidently believes and testifies in the face of an indifferent world, a defiant but defeated devil, and a half- believing Church, that there is all-sufficient divine “dynamite,” power, in the Cross to destroy the “body of sin” (Romans 6:6) and infinite efficacy in the precious blood of Christ to cleanse the believer from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). This is the all-conquering faith which will make real in the believer’s life the victory of Revelation 12:11. “And they overcame him [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”