Written by Rev Dr Peter Barnes
I was visiting one of our older saints a while back, and he told me a story which he had told before, and which had obviously made a deep impression on him. During World War II, he was serving in Papua New Guinea when he heard singing wafting through the night air. The tune was one he recognised but, straining to listen, he could not understand the words. Then he realised that it was a group of native Christians who were singing, in one of the 900 or so native languages, the hymn of the German-American Presbyterian, Elisha Albright Hoffman, Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? The whole scene is a fragmentary picture of the wonderful truth of the communion of saints here on earth.
Hoffman’s hymn is a rather vivid picture of the Bible’s presentation of the work of Christ on the cross. Occasionally, true Christians can distort this truth as in the mid-eighteenth century where, for a time, Moravian hymns gave out gruesome descriptions of the crucified Saviour. The great Count von Zinzendorf proclaimed: ‘We look for nothing else in the Bible but the Lamb and His Wounds, and again Wounds and Blood and Blood.’ It all became a little too reminiscent of the ancient mystery cult of Cybele, the Great Mother, where one was literally baptised in the blood of a bull. The result was not cleansing but a greater stench!
For all that, the book of Revelation pictures believers as those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb (Rev.7:14; 22:14). Why does the Bible say ‘washed’? It is because we are dirty and stained by sin. To speak of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ to people who think they need their self-esteem inflated is pointless. Only the sick seek out a doctor, and only those conscious of their dirty souls seek cleansing. To change the image, a person who thinks he is swimming quite capably in the surf sees no need for a lifesaver. In fact, the offer of the lifesaver to help is likely to be resented as an insult to the abilities of the swimmer. It is the one who knows that he is struggling and close to drowning who waves for help. Only if you know and feel your need to be washed will the language of the cleansing power of the blood of the Lamb tug at your heart and mind and affections. We are guilty sinners answerable to a holy God who condones nothing. The good news begins with a declaration of the bad news.
How, then, are we washed? David knew that if God washed him, he would be whiter than snow (Ps.51:7). He would be washed of his adultery, his deception, his murder of Uriah, his hiding from God, and his pretence for nearly a year. This washing must be powerful indeed! The New Testament speaks of the washing of water with the word (Eph.5:26), where word and sacrament join together to bring gospel cleansing to the believer. Those who are washed, sanctified, and justified experience this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor.6:11). It is the blood of Christ which pays our death penalty, which gains for us the Holy Spirit, and which gives us a new power to walk with God. As Augustus Toplady prayed in Rock of Ages:
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
By the blood our guilt is dealt with, and by the Spirit there is a breaking of the power of sin.
Christ’s death does not just bring the possibility of salvation but salvation itself to all whom the Father gives to the Son (John 17:2, 6). The result is salvation forever. The cross reveals the depths of human depravity and also the length and breadth and height and depth of God’s lovingkindness in stooping down to His people to save them. John Newton also drew these two truths together:
Thus, while His death my sin displays
In all its blackest hue,
Such is the mystery of grace,
It seals my pardon too.
This is not one way among many, but the only way. Much of the modern Western Church seems embarrassed or confused by this notion of being washed in the blood of the Lamb. But as A. W. Tozer urged us: ‘Let us preach the old cross and we will know the old power.’