THE POWER OF CHRIST'S BLOOD TO OPEN THE HOLIEST
Hebrews 9: 12. But Christ, through His own Blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained Eternal Redemption.
Continuing with the SEVENTH SECTION
Hebrews 9: 1-28.
The Power of Christ's Blood to inaugurate the New Sanctuary and the New Covenant.
BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY
Through His own Blood. We have seen our great High Priest on the Throne of God, a Priest after the order of Melchizedek, in the Authority and the power of an Endless Life. When He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, it was according to that working of the strength of His might, whereby God had raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand. He entered God's presence as the Living One who was dead, and behold, He Lives forevermore. And yet, strange to say, it was not enough that He should present Himself at the gate of Heaven as the Conqueror of death and hell, and ask admission. He had to take with Him His own Blood, as it had been shed upon earth, as the power by which alone, as the Surety of sinners, in deed all of humanity, He could claim access to the presence of God. Through His own Blood Christ entered the Holiest of All.
And what does this word, His own Blood, mean? To Moses God had said that He gave the blood upon the altar to be an atonement, because the blood is the life. That is, the Living Blood in the body is the life of that body. And the shed blood? That means death. More than that, it means an unnatural, a violent death. There are only two ways in which this unnatural blood shedding comes: by malice or by justice. We have the two together in the words: Whoso sheds mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed. In the death of Christ the malice of men and the Righteousness of God met. He was slain, a Sacrifice to the evil passions of men, because He resisted unto blood, striving against sin. He was slain, a Sacrifice to God, because He was the Lamb of God that toke away the sin of the world. Death is inseparably connected with sin, and the curse which God pronounced upon it (Genesis 2: 16-17). When Jesus, as the Second Adam, tasted death for all; when, in Gethsemane, He with strong crying and tears besought His Father that the cup might pass from Him; when on the cross He cried, My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me? He tasted death in all its bitterness, both as the terrible fruit of sin, the Revelation of what sin is in its very nature, and as the Penalty God had attached to it. He died, as Scripture says, the just for the unjust; He bore our sin; His Blood was shed for us; He gave His life as Ransom for many. And the word "Blood" in this Epistle includes all that is meant by the death of Christ; the Blood is the expression and embodiment of His Obedience unto death, of His death for our sins, of the atonement which He made for us as the victims on the altar, as our Substitute sacrificed.
It is this Blood now, of whose power our Epistle says such wondrous things. It was in the Blood of the Eternal Covenant that God brought again our Lord Jesus from the dead; the Blood was the power of the resurrection. It was through His Blood He cleansed the Heavenly things themselves and entered the Holiest on our behalf. In those Heavenly places our sin was in God's book, our sin had as a thick cloud darkened (covered or veiled) God's presence (Psalm 97: 2); for the sake of the Blood the sin was blotted out (as with an ink blotter, it was removed never to be again), and access given to Him, and in Him to us, to appear before the very face of God. And now, in the Vision of the Heavenly Glory to which HE has given us Access, as we have it later in the Epistle, we find in Heaven not only God the Judge of all, and Christ the Mediator of the New Covenant, but also the Blood of sprinkling that speaks of the Better things than that of Abel. Everywhere we see, besides and along with Jesus Christ, the Living One Himself, in His Resurrection, in His entering Heaven, in His sitting on the Throne, as a separate existence and power, the Blood, the symbol of the death in which we have our Ransom and Redemption.
Through His own Blood. Let us especially note how the Blood is connected with the Heavenly Priesthood of Christ. We are too apt to think only of the fulfillment of the type of Aaron (an externality priesthood of works), the blood-shedding on earth. The Epistle does not speak of it. Where it mentions the Blood, it is in connection with the Resurrection and the Entrance into Heaven, as it works in the Authority and the power of an Endless Life. It is as the Holy Spirit reveals this to the soul, the Heavenly power of the Blood, as Ministered by our Melchizedek (the spiritual perfection in the Knowledge of HIM ), the Minister of the Heavenly Sanctuary, that we see what a power that Blood must have, as so sprinkled on us from Heaven, in the power of the Holy Spirit, at once to give us a real, actual, Living Access into the presence of God.
His own Blood. I know of no word in the Bible or in human speech that contains such mysteries! In it are concentrated the mysteries of the incarnation, in which our God took flesh and Blood; of the obedience unto death, in which the Blood was shed; of the Love that passes Knowledge, that purchased us with His own Blood; of the Victory over every enemy, and the everlasting Redemption; of the Resurrection and the Entrance into Heaven; of the atonement and the Reconciliation and the Justification that came through it; of the cleansing and perfecting of the conscience (from the shame and guilt of sin and sins effect ), of the sprinkling of the heart and the Sanctifying of the people. Through that Blood Christ Entered once for all into Heaven; through that Blood we enter too, and have our home in the Holiest of All. As the Holy Spirit from Heaven, now dwelling in us, imparts to us the Boldness the Blood gives, and the Love into which it Opens the Way, our whole inner being will be brought under its power, and the cleansing of the Blood in its full extent be our experience.
1. "As in Heaven so in earth." We have more interest than we think In Knowing what the Blood has wrought in Heaven. As we enter by the Spirit into its power there, will our faith Receive its power within us.
2. The inner sanctuary deeper, nearer in to God. He that seeks after this will have the inner Sanctuary Opened within Himself. The inner life, the law within the heart, in the inward parts, a deepening sense of the Life of God in the soul will be given to such a one.
3. There are in Scripture two aspects of Christ's death that of atonement and that of intimacy. He died for us, for our sin, that we might not die. What our Substitute did in bearing the curse of sin, we cannot do, we need not do. He died to sin, and we died with Him and in Him. The Blood is the Divine expression for the former aspect: His own Blood is the power and the worth of His death taken up and presented and forever preserved in its energy and action before God. The sprinkling with the Blood includes the transition to the second aspect. As the Blood, as a Heavenly reality, through the Holy Spirit works in us, the very disposition that animated ( to produce Life Eternal ). Jesus in the shedding of it will be imparted to us.
4. Christ can bring us into the Holiest In no other Way than He went in Himself, through His own Blood. Oh, seek to know the power of Christ's Blood.
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