The Blood of the Cross

The Blood of the Cross by Horatius Bonner Chapter 2. Israel Guilty But how far was this accusation true of all Israel? It is evident that the Apostles spoke indiscriminately and universally, not merely singling out certain individuals, the active doers of the deed, the more direct participators of the crime. They manifestly charged the whole nation with the guilt, speaking to those whom they designate ye men of Israel, all the house of Israel. They accused them of having taken and by wicked hands having crucified and slain this man approved of God. Let all the house of Israel know that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Acts 2.23.36 And again, ye killed the Prince of Life. Acts 3.15 Moreover, in several other passages this is spoken of by God as the peculiar guilt of the nation, that guilt which is now weighing them down with its curse, that guilt which shall above all others awake to remembrance when they see their returning King. They shall look on me whom they have pierced. Zechariah 12.10 And again, every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him. Revelation 1.7 This, then, is the great national crime, the crime that is pursuing them through all the earth. For this blood God reckons all Israel responsible. It is not merely Caiaphas or Herod or Pilate. It is not merely the individuals who scourged and buffeted and mocked and nailed him to the tree. It is all Israel that is accounted guilty. They are all counted guilty of rejecting him. As it is written, He came unto his own, and his own received him not. So they are all counted guilty of crucifying him. And accordingly the curse and the desolation have come down upon all. But how is this? How are they all guilty? Why has the stroke of vengeance come upon the whole nation? Because the same Spirit was in all. They consented to his death, like Saul in the case of Stephen, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. They acquiesced in the deed, if they did not perpetrate it. They stood by and hindered it not. They did not protest against the deed, nor give any sort of testimony in condemnation of the doers. Therefore they are held as acquiescing, nay as participating in the sin. It is thus in human law. If we belong to a corporation or society which resolves by a majority of its members to do an unlawful deed, we are held liable for all the consequences and penalties attaching to that deed, unless we enter our individual protest. Till we do this, we are held responsible for the act, whatever it may be. Most naturally and most righteously is it so. Law and equity have always united to maintain this. It was thus that God dealt with Israel, and is to this day dealing with them still. It was thus that the apostles made good their fearful accusations wherever they went. They sought to bring this man's blood upon the heads of all whom they addressed. Upon this they took their stand. With this sharp-edged weapon they assailed the consciences of the men of Israel. And what a weapon, both for weight and sharpness! Irresistible in the hands of the Holy Spirit for convicting of sin. Wherever they preached Christ, they proclaimed men guilty of the blood of Christ. They maintained that though perhaps not the actual murderers, yet they were truly, legally, righteously guilty, personally responsible for the infinite crime. And the conscience of Israel pleaded guilty to the charge. They could neither deny nor extenuate it. They did not fully admit the guilt. But the way in which they met the charge showed how the inner man was responding to its truth. They were enraged. But their very anger was the outburst of a smitten conscience. They might turn the accusation into a matter of scorn, but their scorning was the expression of hidden fear. Hence their hatred of the apostles. They looked upon them as men in possession of a secret, the promulgation of which was intolerable. Could they but silence these bold proclaimers, they might have rest. For then the witness of the deed would be hushed and the evidence destroyed. But so long as these witnesses remained, going round the inhabitants of the land with their story, and producing the personal evidence of its truth, they could not but be troubled. The crime was felt to be a real one, and the mention of it by such witnesses was like the stinging of an adder. Hence also the fearful agonies of conviction into which those were cast whose hearts the spirit touched. They felt that all was true. They were murderers, murderers of the Lord of Glory. Their hands were full of blood. No wonder that they were pricked in their hearts and cried out, What shall we do? It was crime enough to cover a world with confusion of face, making its knees to smite against each other, and its lips to grow pale with shame and fear. The messenger said, Thou art the man. Conscience said, I am, I am. What shall I do? His blood is upon me. How shall I escape the curse, which such a deed must certainly draw down? What doom must now be mine? It was thus that the Holy Spirit convinced them of sin. He did not take up the whole catalogue of their transgressions and present it in all its black array to their consciences. He took up just one sin, but that was the sin of blood, and that blood was none other than the blood of God's own Son. This was the arrow which He selected from His quiver, the sharpest and deadliest of all. It pierced even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow. It was a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. There were ten thousand other shafts ready fitted to the string against these sinners, but none so resistless, so terrible as this. God has for these eighteen hundred years been specially laying the sin of bloodshedding at the door of Israel. He has proclaimed them guilty by the ruin wherewith He has smitten them so fearfully. It has been no common ruin, proving thereby that it was no common crime. Denial of it has availed them not. God has by His righteous acts declared that He reckons them guilty. If not guilty, why these long ages of calamity? If not guilty, why the shame, the scattering, the banishment that have been there since their cup was filled? Conscience was whispering its forebodings when the apostles stood before the nation and declared it guilty. The whole dark future they could not foresee. But that they had sinned, and that they had shed blood which God required at their hand, they seemed unconsciously to admit, even when trying to evade or to scorn the accusations of the apostles. Thus God spake, and Israel trembled. Thus the messengers of Jehovah made the charge, and Israel grew pale at the mention of it. Passing by every other sin, the accuser fastened upon this as the most crushing as well as the most unanswerable of all. Thus God found a way into Israel's conscience, and thus it is, as we shall see, that He finds a way into the sinner's conscience still. He forces home this as His main charge, the charge which sinks deepest and rankles sorest, guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Footnote How did the Spirit convince those three thousand, those patterns of God's converting grace? Did not the Lord begin with them for one principal sin, their murder and contempt of Christ, by imbruing their hands in His blood? There is no question, but now they remembered other sinful practices. But this was the imprimus which is ever accompanied with many other items in God's bill of reckoning. Shepherds Sound Believer, page 8