Readings:
Series 1 - Luke 22:17,18,20. John 6:54,55. Col. 1:20.
Heb. 9:12-14,20,22; 10:19; 11:29; 12:24. 1 Peter 1:2. 1
John 1:7. Rev. 5:9,10; 7:14,15.
Series 2 - Acts 2:38: 3:6; 4:7,12,17,30; 8:12; 16:18;
19:13-15, 1 Cor. 5:4; 6:11. Eph. 1:21,22. Phil. 2:9-11.
Rom. 6:3-8.
Beloved of God, we have
read a good many passages of the Word and you will have
noticed that there are three distinct matters brought
into view by them. They are divided into three and refer
to three different things, and I have it on my heart to
spend just a little time in considering these three
matters; namely, the Blood, the Cross, and the Name of
the Lord Jesus.
They are important
matters in themselves, each one of them. I trust that we
shall see something of that importance; but there is
another thing related to them which is also very
important, especially for the Lord's people, and that is,
to discriminate between them, for there is a good deal of
indiscriminate use of these words and terms, and I think
that confusion or misuse very often means weakness and
failure in getting through to the desired end. It is
important when we go into war to know what weapons we
need, and to be able to choose and intelligently use
those weapons; for to be in a warfare using a certain
kind of weapon which we discover is not the one that
effects the end is a very embarrassing situation. And so
it is important for the Lord's people to be able to
understand the peculiar value and meaning of these
different things which have so close a relationship to
their spiritual victory. It is also very important for
unsaved men and women to know the meaning of these terms,
these words which are so frequently upon Christian lips:
"the Blood of Jesus Christ", "the Cross of
the Lord Jesus", "the Name of Jesus". We
have no thought of covering the whole of that ground in
this short space, we can merely introduce it and touch
upon it as the Lord leads.
The
Blood
We begin, then, with
the Blood of Christ, about which we have read so much in
the Word, and yet withal a bare fragment of what there is
in the Word concerning it; and we may immediately point
out that the Blood of Jesus has specifically and
primarily to do with sin, and redemption unto life. I
would that you would just take that statement and go to
the Word of the Lord with it and investigate and inquire
much more fully than we can do now, and you will see how
truly that is borne out. The Blood has to do with
cleansing and with redemption unto life, that is, it
relates to sin and to all Satanic legal ground. When we
speak of Satanic legal ground we mean this, that by
nature, according to the Word of God, and according to
the spiritual experience and knowledge of those who have
come to the Lord Jesus, all the creation is in bondage to
the Devil. You may dispute that because you do not know
it experimentally and personally. I would suggest that
you turn to the Lord Jesus and you will soon discover how
much you are in bondage to the Devil, for it is only a
prisoner who tries to escape who discovers that he is
really a prisoner. But the Word of God tells us what is
true, and the spiritual experience of all who have really
come to Christ proves the Word of God to be true; that
the whole of the race, and of creation, by nature is now
in bondage to the Devil; but the power, the authority of
Satan rests upon a condition, and that condition is sin,
and he has legal ground for maintaining his hold where
sin is, his hold upon the race is through sin. He grips,
and holds, and maintains his hold through sin. You may
say that sin is the chain by which the whole race is in
the power of Satan, and sin therefore is his legal
ground; in so far as he has legal rights to his position,
those legal rights are constituted by the condition into
which man has fallen by his own sin: sin against God and
obedience to Satan. The Blood, therefore, relates to sin
and to all Satanic legal ground, and the words which
perhaps best represent that ground are condemnation and
death. It is with those words that the Apostle sums up
his matchless argument through the first three chapters
of his letter to the Romans, where, tracing the course of
the ages, and running through all realms of life, testing
and examining according to the Divine standard, he at
length concludes all under sin: "There is none
righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10), and he
pronounces by the Spirit, the verdict, all are under
condemnation and therefore all are under death; and
condemnation and death are words which represent the
legal ground of Satan in holding the race in bondage.
The
First Need of the Sinner
The initial need and
appeal of the unsaved sinner is to the Blood of the Lord
Jesus. "Without the shedding of blood there is no
remission". The unsaved sinner, knowing it or
not knowing it, is truly in bondage to the Devil,
imprisoned by Satan. The Blood of Jesus Christ relates to
condemnation and death unto life; and what the unsaved
sinner has to come to as the very first ground of hope is
a recognition of the meaning and value of the Blood of
Jesus Christ. We shall never get through to God apart
from that. We may struggle to break through, to break
away, we may adopt Christian practices and Christian
ideals, we may associate ourselves with Christians, we
may pass off as Christians amongst them, and perhaps
before the world, but this one thing is settled beyond
any question or doubt or shakeableness, that in the sight
of God no one ever comes out of the kingdom of Satan into
the kingdom of the Son of God's love except by the way of
the shed Blood of Jesus Christ. To ignore that, to
overlook that, to fail to see, recognize, accept that
means, whatever else may follow, in the sight of God the
thing has not been done which makes us a child of God and
delivers us from the kingdom of Satan. Oh, it is so
necessary, forgive the strength of emphasis, it is so
necessary that we should not be deceived, that we should
be in a true position that we should have no assumption
about this, that ours should not be an assumed
relationship to God, but that it should be upon God's
foundation, God's basis, for only as it is so are we
accepted in the Beloved One, the Lord Jesus, and are
brought into fellowship with God. The initial need and
appeal of the unsaved sinner is to the Blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, as shed for the remission of sins, by
which our redemption has been made, has been secured for
us.
'Redeemed
by the precious
blood of Jesus,
Nothing else could ever save my soul'.
Now that is simple
Gospel. It is where everything begins in relationship to
God.
The
Believer's Conflict with the Accuser
And then the conflict
of the saved sinner necessitates the Blood, because the
conflict of the saved sinner is so very truly with Satan;
not now as his master, his lord; not now as the one to
whom he is in captivity, but as the one who would get him
back into captivity. Satan must therefore get him back on
to a ground where for him the basis of escape has been
overlooked, forfeited, let go. I mean this: that the
conflict of the saved sinner is very largely with Satan
as the Accuser. He is called the Accuser of the brethren
- "for the accuser of our brethren is cast down,
which accused them before our God day and night"
(Rev. 12:10). He watches their movements, he seeks
to cause them to move in some way that is not wholly
according to the will and the mind of the Lord, to prompt
a wrong movement, to provoke to a wrong word, to stir up
a wrong feeling:
'Christian,
dost thou feel them,
How they work within,
Striving, tempting, luring,
Goading into sin?'
and then
when you slip, you make the mistake, you stumble in the
way, he immediately pounces upon you to accuse you of sin
and to bring you under condemnation, to bring upon you a
sense of condemnation, to smother you with it and make
you feel you have grieved the Lord, and the Lord has
forsaken you, the Lord has withdrawn from you, to make
you conscious of being out of fellowship with God. And so
as the Accuser he is trying to make us sin and then he
will pounce upon us with condemnation to drag us back
into his grip: and the saved sinner needs the precious
Blood of the Lord Jesus as an instrument with which to
meet the enemy as the Accuser. Don't ever believe,
beloved, that if you slip, if you make a mistake, if you
stumble in the way, if you grieve the Lord, that that
necessarily severs you from God, that that necessarily
means that the Lord forsakes you. What might be the
consequences of your willfully, consciously being in the
way of sin, violating the will of God, I would not care
to follow out; there is no doubt that you would get into
darkness, very much into the power of Satan, you would
lose the joy of your salvation. Whether you would lose
your salvation ultimately or not is not a question for us
at this moment, but you would lose all the joy and
delight and pleasure of your salvation by persisting in
sin. But I am not dealing with persistent sin, I am
dealing with the slip, the mistake, the fault, the failure
which the enemy immediately having himself brought about,
quickly snaps up, takes advantage of, and makes the
occasion of accusing us, seeking to bring us under
condemnation.
The means to deal with
that is the Blood of the Lord Jesus, and the Blood of the
Lord Jesus can deal with that instantly. The argument to
take to Satan is not: 'I am not a sinner; I have not made
a mistake; I have not gone wrong'. We know we have. The
answer is, that in that precious Blood, as we turn to the
Lord and confess our failure, humbly repentantly,
acknowledge our mistake before the Lord and grieve in
exercise of heart that we should have so failed, the
Blood of Jesus Christ goes on in its mighty efficacy
cleansing from all sin. It stands us in stead to take
that ground from the enemy immediately. But remember, you
must use your weapon. You must know your weapon, and you
must have faith in your weapon; faith in that precious
Blood. And faith in the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus
is our shield which receives the fiery darts of the
Wicked One, and is impervious to them. Oh, the inflamed
darts of the Wicked One are so often the darts of
accusation and condemnation, and we have a shield of
faith given to us by God, but it is faith in the virtue
and efficacy of the precious Blood of Jesus, even when we
have stumbled and slipped. Victory over the enemy, having
been given initially through the Blood, is now maintained
by reason of faith in that Blood in the hour of
accusation. And so the saved sinner's conflict is very
largely with the Accuser who is seeking to bring back on
to the old ground of condemnation and death, and
deliverance continuously from him, as initially, is by
that justification which we have through His Blood; no
condemnation; faith in the Blood of the Lord Jesus. It is
in this sense that the Blood is a weapon. You see in Rev.
12:11 we are told that: "They overcame him
because of the blood of the Lamb". Now the
Revised Version being more accurate should be noted in
its peculiar value. The Authorized Version reads: "They
overcame him by the blood of the Lamb". The
suggestion is of using the Blood of the Lamb as a kind of
weapon with which to slay the enemy; it is a sort of
objective thing with which you meet the enemy. If you
look more closely you have two things. Firstly, the enemy
in Rev. 12 as the Accuser: "The accuser of our
brethren is cast down". The Accuser of the
brethren is there, it is the enemy in that form. The
other thing is: "They overcame him BECAUSE of the
blood of the Lamb". That does not necessarily
mean that they took up the Blood of the Lamb as some kind
of weapon with which to smite him, but they stood upon
the ground of that Blood, and the Accuser lost his power.
The Blood has to do with sin all the time, and what the
enemy is out to do is to bring us under a sense of sin,
and thus to defeat and destroy us; but if we are standing
on the value and meaning of the precious Blood, and
refuse to forsake that ground, the Accuser is cast down
from his high place, he is overcome, and we overcome, not
by some objective conflict with the Blood, but because we
in our hearts stand and refuse to move from the ground of
justification through His Blood. "They overcame
him because of the blood of the Lamb".
Now a further step. The
Blood is one with the Life. We know that quite well. In
the Old Testament from Lev. 17 we gather very implicitly
that, "the life is in the blood and the blood is
the life", and from John 6, which we have read,
that same thing comes in: "Whoso eateth my flesh,
and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life". So that
the Blood is one with the Life, and that means that
initially, through the Blood our faith in the Blood of
the Lord Jesus, our acceptance of its meaning and value
in relation to our sin - the Life is given. The Divine
Life, Eternal Life, is given through the Blood of the
Lord Jesus. Now both the Blood and the Life speak of the
holiness of the Lord, and therefore of cleansing from
sin. If sin is fallen into and not instantly repented of,
confessed before the Lord and put right, there is an
arrest upon the Life. The Life receives a check, and if
the Life and the Blood and the Blood and the Life go
together, that means that sin allowed, sin not confessed
and repented of, checks the Life and the Blood is
suspended in its operation of cleansing and we stand
touched, spotted, blemished. And so John, in the passage
read, says: "If we walk in the light, as he is
in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and
the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all
sin". There the tense in the Greek is 'keeps on
cleansing', but there is an 'if': "If we
walk...". What is it to walk? To go on. If we
go on in the light; yes, there may be some dark thing
touch us, we may touch a dark thing, we may fail, we may
slip, go wrong, but that can be instantly put right
before the Lord, and we can go on by putting it right
away, we can go on in the light and the Blood of Jesus
Christ God's Son goes on cleansing. You arrest the
operation of the Life and the operation of the Blood if
you willfully harbor sin. If the Holy Spirit shows you
wrong and you do not confess it and put it right, if you
do not bring it back to the Blood, you have arrested the
Divine operation, and you stand there. "lf we
walk..." So that in failure, confession is
necessary, confession to the Lord, and a putting right
away is necessary if the Life is to flow. And the Life
can only flow as we recognize that that Life is a holy
Life, and it cannot go on in its course alongside of sin.
The holy Life of the Lord as represented by His
incorruptible Blood cannot go hand in hand with known
sin: it cannot! Many of us know that in experience.
The
Cross
Then the Cross. Of
course it was in the Cross that the Blood was shed, and
the Blood is related to the Cross and the Cross to the
Blood, but doctrinally in the New Testament the Cross has
its own specific meaning, and as we have seen from the
passage read in Romans 6, to which others could be added
such as Colossians 2 and elsewhere, the Cross has to do
with the flesh and the natural man; and the position to
which the Cross brings us is this: not only have our sins
been dealt with, but we have been dealt with, and we have
been crucified together with Christ. Now you can have
contradictions if you are not careful - and there are
plenty of contradictions about in this way. There may
have been constant failure and breakdown and going wrong,
and seeking of forgiveness and cleansing, and then not
getting very much beyond that; that may repeat itself
again and again and life becomes a matter of failing and
regretting, sinning and repenting, going wrong and being
sorry for it, and this can stretch out through all your
days; up and down, one day in victory, the next in
defeat; and so it goes on until in many cases it comes to
an acute crisis where the individual says: 'Well the
Christian life is a tremendously strenuous business; it
seems nothing but coming to the Lord and asking to be
forgiven, going wrong and repenting; there is very little
victory in it'. That is not as the Lord would have it and
the secret is very largely here, that we have never
recognized that in the Cross of the Lord Jesus we have
been set aside as to our nature. We have not accepted
that position with all that it means, all its
implications, all its content, that from that time onward
it is no longer I. "I have been crucified with
Christ," said the Apostle,
"nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in
me". It is not to choose our own way,
our own will, our own desire, to make our own program for
life, to project our own schemes for the future; but to
have nothing whatever out from ourselves from our will,
mind, desire; but that everything now is from the Lord.
When we have come to accept that position, that in
Christ's crucifixion we were crucified, in His burial we
were buried, then raised together with Him, we receive
into our hearts the Holy Spirit of Christ for the purpose
and object of governing our lives, directing our
course, choosing our way. "No longer I... One
died for all, therefore all died; and he died for
all, that they that live should no longer live unto
themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and
rose again", and that in the power and
energy of the indwelling Spirit. Now that is a very
utter, comprehensive, thorough-going thing and the Cross
means that. It does not mean that after that we shall not
fail; we may make mistakes, but there the Blood applied,
but what so many of us have had to learn, and so many
more have yet to learn is that the Cross has its own
peculiar value. The Cross does not cleanse from sin, the
Cross crucifies the flesh.
Now you can have a
great deal of phraseology about the Blood, and be always
talking about the Blood, and know little of the Cross.
The flesh may be there very much in evidence while all
the time speaking about the Blood. The basic thing is
necessary, the Cross. "Our old man was crucified
with Christ". Do you see the difference? What is
the good of your going out to meet the Devil with the
Blood if your flesh has not been dealt with by the Cross?
He will come in the back door and with all your
phraseology about the Blood, he will beat you every time
if you have not come to that deep work of the Cross where
the natural man has been dealt with. So many are
preaching the Blood, have much phraseology of the Blood,
and yet the flesh is rampant in their lives; the 'I' is
very much in evidence. You may preach the Blood and still
be a very self-assertive person with pride, arrogance,
ambition and all that kind of thing. Well, the Cross
deals with the man; the Blood with the sin.
The
Name
Now one word about the
Name, and here also there is a good deal of confusion.
Many people plead the Blood when they ought to use the
Name. It is the Name which is the mighty thing against
the enemy for the believer mainly in the matter of
service. The Name goes beyond the Blood, in this
sense (do not misunderstand that) that the Name has to
do with the authority of Christ over the enemy. The
Blood takes the enemy's ground away from accusation and
condemnation. The Name of the Lord Jesus is the mighty
thing by which the authority of Satan in every realm is
dealt with. Oh, you want something more than to have sin
put out of the way. You need to be in a position of
authority over the works of the enemy, not merely in your
own life but all around in situations, as he comes up
everywhere on this earth. And so it is in the Name that
that power is found. The Name represents the authority of
Christ - and in Christ - over the enemy. Acts 16
is a classic instance. What you have there, as you will
recall, is Paul, who stood in all the virtue of the
precious Blood in relation to sin in his own life; Paul,
who stood in the fulness of the meaning of the Cross as
to having nothing of himself, but all of Christ - oh, he
was in a strong position, a well-crucified man, standing
by faith on "no condemnation" ground through
the Blood - and now finding the enemy busy at work
outside, looking to the Lord for His moment, His time for
dealing with the situation, not rushing in from himself,
but after "many days", waiting for the Lord's
time, then in the Name of Jesus Christ commanding this
Satanic work to cease. Paul stood in a position by the
Cross and the Blood and the Name, this three-fold
strength, but he dealt with the thing in the Name, he did
not plead the Blood for it. We sometimes see the work of
the Devil objectively and we begin to plead the Blood.
That has got to be appropriated, we have to see that that
has been applied to our own hearts or else he will turn
upon us. Paul did not plead the Blood against the enemy,
he came in the Name. There were others, sons of Sceva who
did not stand on the ground of the Cross. who were not
standing in the virtue of the Blood, but held a mere
formula, saying, "We adjure you by Jesus whom
Paul preacheth", and the demon turned round upon
these presumptuous men and answered, "Jesus I
know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" and
these sons of Sceva had the scare of their lives. They
discovered that there is nothing in a mere formula, but
there is something, there is everything in standing on
the ground of the Cross, in the virtue of the Blood,
bringing us into the authority of the Name. And the Name
has that objective value of authority over the enemy. "God
highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is
above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee
should bow", etc. "He raised him from
the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the
heavenlies, far above all rule, and authority, and power,
and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in
this world, but also in that which is to come" (Eph.
1:20,21). The Name represents the exaltation of the
Lord Jesus. And so the Blood cuts us off from sin, the
Cross cuts us off from ourselves, the Name brings us into
union with an exalted, enthroned, authoritative Lord.
Now I trust that we
have got some of our difficulties straightened out, at
any rate, we are seeing a little more clearly the
peculiar value of each of these things and we shall not
confuse them; and we shall see how that mighty and
precious Name carries with it all the honor and glory of
our Christ, and that if He is to be honored and glorified
in us it must be that sin is dealt with, we are set
aside, and Christ is pre-eminent, enthroned, predominant
in all things for us.
Published in "A Witness and a Testimony" magazine in Jan-Feb 1933, Vol. 11-1.