Now, this being the case, it appears to me that there are two great practical conclusions which irresistibly follow:—
First, that those who are walking in the light have sin in them which needs the cleansing blood. I know very well, and thank God for the blessed assurance that ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace.’ I know, too, that our blessed Saviour is the great deliverer, and that He will so surely and so effectually save His people from their sins, that every one of them, without a single exception, will finally be presented without a single spot, or stain, before His throne. But that is not the question. The question is whether in saving us it pleases Him to put an end, while we are in the flesh, to the deep corruption of our human nature, or to give us invariably such a victory that we shall never have reason to repent and deplore its power. If this verse stood alone it would decide the point, for it shows the deep need of the cleansing blood, even for those who are walking in the light. It describes two gifts as the sacred privilege of their life in Christ Jesus: fellowship one with another, and cleansing through the power of His blood. It proves, therefore, beyond the possibility of doubt, that whatever meaning we attach to the word ‘cleanseth,’ there is sin which requires to be cleansed, even in those who are walking in the light. But it does not stand alone, for the 8th and the 10th verses explain to us the reason of the need: the one teaches that we ‘have sin,’ and the other, that we ‘have sinned;’ the one speaks of the deep corruption of our nature, the other of the action to which this corruption has given rise; and both teach the same thing,—viz., that those who are walking in the light have sin in themselves and in their conduct,—sin which requires cleansing; that if ‘they say they have no sin, they deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them;’ and ‘if they say they have not sinned, they make Him a liar, and His word is not in them.’
I believe then that the compilers of our Articles were walking in the light when they wrote that, ‘The infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated;’ that the compilers of our Prayer-book were walking in the light when they taught us to confess, ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us;’ and that old Hooker was writing in the light when he said, ‘If God should yield unto us, not as unto Abraham, if fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, yea, or if ten good persons could be found in a city, for their sakes this city should not be destroyed; but and if He should make us an offer thus large; search all the generations of men since the fall of our father Adam, find one man that hath done one action which hath passed from him pure, without any stain or blemish at all; and for that one man’s only action, neither man nor angel shall feel the torments which are prepared for both. Do you think that this ransom to deliver men and angels could be found to be among the sons of men? The best things which we do have somewhat in them to be pardoned.’
But there is a second lesson: viz., that while there is the deep need, there is the ample provision; for, although no ransom could be found among the sons of men, there is a perfect ransom in the most precious blood of the Son of God. The propitiation is complete, and, through the wonderful mercy which God has shown in His covenant, that precious blood cleanseth from all sin.
There are two points in this sentence to which I would draw your special attention.
(1.) It is all sin that is cleansed. Sin after baptism, as well as sin before it; sin committed in the light, as well as sin in the days of darkness; sin of omission, and sin of commission; sin of act, sin of word, sin of thought, sin of temper, sin of desire, sin of heart, sin in the acts of religion, and sin in daily life; sin that is not noticed as it ought to be, and sin that leaves an inexpressible pain on the conscience. It is all included in the one word ‘all.’ ‘The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.’
(2.) It is a continuous cleansing: that is, continued day by day as long as the walk lasts. It is well explained by those words, John, xiii. 10: ‘He that is,’ or hath been, ‘washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.’ The first great washing took place when you were first brought to Christ, as represented in your baptism; and now as you are walking home through a defiling world, you require the continual cleansing of the feet. And this is what is promised in the text. We are walking, and the blood is cleansing. It might be rendered, ‘If we are walking in the light, the blood is cleansing us from all sin.’ The walk is continuous, and the cleansing continuous likewise. As we are taught in the Lord’s Prayer to ask for daily forgiveness with the same regularity as we ask for daily bread; so we are taught to trust the cleansing power for every step of the daily life. Day after day, and night after night, we return to the same fountain, and there experience the same power; and so it will be to the end, when all this earthly walking shall cease, and the ransomed spirit shall appear spotless before God.
But let us not speak of the blood, and its cleansing power, without remembering well what we mean by it. We do not mean the material blood which flowed from the feet and hands, or trickled down his careworn face from beneath the crown of thorns; nor that which after death gushed from His pierced side; for we can never be sprinkled by that. Still less do we mean what some suppose to be actual blood in the transubstantiated cup. We mean nothing material: for nothing material can cleanse the soul. We mean the sacrifice of the life of the Son of God as an efficacious offering for the life of the sinner.
In the sacred history of that mysterious death, we read His bitter cry: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ This cry it is utterly impossible to explain on any other principle than the imputation of sin. I am not one of those that would dare to speak of impossibilities with God. But when I think of the eternal and spotless holiness of the Lord Jesus, of His perfect purity and His blameless life, I find it utterly impossible to myself to imagine on what principle He could have been forsaken at such a moment by one with whom he had been one for eternity, if it had not been that sin, not His own, was imputed to Him; or in the words of Sacred Scripture, that ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ And then, when I turn to the dying cry, ‘It is finished,’ I see the completion of the work. What He had undertaken He had borne: what He covenanted to do was done. The covenanted ransom was paid; the covenanted sacrifice offered; the covenanted life given; and then, the burden being gone, He yielded up His soul into the Father’s hands, and said, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’ This explains what we mean by the power of the cleansing blood. We mean the full and perfect freedom given to all those who are in Christ Jesus; because He, as their Head, has paid their penalty. We look on Him forsaken, and believe that we shall never be. We look on Him bearing the full penalty of the law, and we know that because He has borne it, the awful curse will never rest on us. We listen to Him crying, ‘It is finished,’ and we know that nothing more can be needed in sacrifice; that the whole redemption as planned in God’s eternal purpose is complete; and that therefore, as He did, so may we commend into a loving Father’s hand all we are, and all we care for, saying, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.’ We need no priest’s absolution; and we cannot endure the thought of any continuation, or repetition, or any thing approaching to propitiatory sacrifice. We believe that the whole work is finished according to the purpose of God Himself, and that ‘the blood of Jesus Christ his Son,’ without any addition of any kind whatever,—simply and alone,—‘cleanseth from all sin.’ Thus we agree, heart and soul, with the grand old words of Hooker: ‘Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, or fury, whatsoever, it is our comfort, our wisdom; we care for no knowledge in the world but this,—that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered; that God hath made Himself the Son of Man, and that men are made the righteousness of God.’