The blood of the cross

[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters!We who know not only the Good Friday Gospel but also the Easter Gospel, who look back to the events of Good Friday from the time after Christ's resurrection, know that Good Friday is not a day of mourning, but a joyful celebration of the sealing of the new covenant, of the reconciliation of God and man, and therefore of thanksgiving and rejoicing! It may sound strange to speak of joy and gladness when the Bible speaks incessantly of blood in its recounting of the events of this day. Sad, bloody events are remembered on that Friday! Jesus Himself, at the Last Supper, with the cup in His hand, speaks of His blood being shed for the forgiveness of sins for many. Of His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, it is recorded that His sweat was like great drops of blood that fell to the ground. Pilate also mentions the blood of Christ without having any idea of its meaning: 'I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man. Still less do the people know what unheard truth he speaks when he cries out, 'His blood is upon us and upon our offspring. Then they scourge our Lord with blood, the wreath of thorns is pressed on His head so that the blood comes out.
Then comes the cross. Here everything is covered with blood. His hands and feet are nailed through, a soldier spears him in the side. Blood, blood, blood everywhere. Not animal blood, as on the slaughterhouse - not even human blood, as on the battlefields, but the pure, innocent blood of God made man, the second person of the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ! Yet we may call this bloody day a joyous feast of thanksgiving and rejoicing! And it is precisely because of this blood. It is that very blood that makes Good Friday the most blessed day of all for us. "For it pleased the Father to reconcile all things to himself through Christ, making peace through the blood of his cross." (Col 1:20) Let us now see what significance the blood of Christ has.
In the New Testament, there is a verse that says that the blood of Christ speaks! Have we not noticed that the blood in general has a heart-gripping power of speech?! A stain of blood in a room, for example, loudly proclaims that something horribly cruel has happened there: someone has been killed. Or another bloodstain might speak of the tragedy of a human life that has been compared to itself, a sad physical and spiritual collapse. The bloody soldier's jacket speaks loudly of a valiant soldier, a brave man, a determined struggle, an earth-shaking battle, a fierce horror, a heroic death that will shape the future! Blood sometimes speaks very loudly. And the blood of Abel, in the words of the Bible, cried out to heaven
If even human blood has such an audible voice, how much more does the blood of Jesus Christ speak! His blood truly cries to heaven and speaks before God. My brother, the blood of our Lord Christ, shed on the cross, speaks of you and me before the throne of the righteous God. So the holy blood of Christ has its word there, and a decisive word at that, in the highest place, where the destiny of all men is controlled, where the salvation-doom, life-death, time and eternity of each one of us is decided! The blood of Christ enters into that decision and control. God judges all who come before Him from this earth - and who does not come before Him at some time? - in the light of the shed blood of Jesus. Such is the great word of the blood of the cross in heaven!
I said, it is of you and of me that the blood of Jesus Christ speaks before God! Are you not terrified at the thought of what the blood of Christ can say to God about you?! I think you no longer delude yourself that it is all good and good. I think you also feel that when it comes to blood, all your sins come out, even the ones you didn't know about, not just the ones you've been hiding. You feel with me, don't you, that you are no better than the disciples who ran away in cowardice when their Master was caught? Do you too feel that the blood of Christ now tells God how many times you have cowardly squinted in a company, before your office-boss, among your fellow-workers, or in Parliament, when it was necessary to stand boldly for the cause of Christ, when you should have openly, loudly testified for Christ, even if it cost you your popularity, your job, or your life? The blood tells you that you are no better than Pilate, who, though he knew Jesus was innocent, yet delivered Him up to the wrath of the people - how many times do you see clearly what would be the choice of God's will, and yet you choose otherwise because it is easier and more convenient! Thou art no better than those who have mocked, mocked the Saviour: for thy life is full of abysses which are a mockery of thy Christian name. Art thou no better than those who have put a crown of thorns on his head, and pierced his hands through his feet? Can you imagine the thorns that prick not his head but his heart when Jesus hears a harsh, hateful word from you, when he feels your passionate emotion?! Oh, we could go on with this wretched list of our sins without end, but that is enough. That is enough to show that you and I are the cause of the shedding of the blood of Christ. I see myself in the disciples, in Pilate, in the chief priests, in the people, in the soldiers, in all the murderers of Jesus: it is a terrible burden to my soul to realize that I am a partaker of Christ's death!
Imagine now that this blood, in which we have a part: it cries to heaven, it speaks, it speaks before God, it speaks of us! What could he say but terrible accusations, listing all our sins, what could he ask but vengeance, but the retribution of the injury done to him, a just punishment?! If even the blood of Abel, the son of Adam, cries to heaven for vengeance, how much more does the blood of Christ, the Son of God! If it were so, if the blood of Jesus spoke accusations before God: then indeed Good Friday would be for us a day of the deepest mourning! But it is not so! The blood of Jesus does not accuse, but asks for mercy! His blood asks for the blotting out of your sins, the erasure of your sins from God's memory! His blood does indeed cry to heaven, but it continues to cry incessantly what Jesus cried out on the cross: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do! Listen, Brother: so powerfully does the blood of Jesus speak in heaven before the throne of God that, according to a New Testament Word, written in Hebrews 10:17, which is worthy of note as a document, God Himself personally declares, "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more!"
Do you understand this, Brother? The blood of Christ, instead of accusation and reproach, blots out from the memory of God all our sins! If you accept this, if you believe this, Brother, then know that God is reconciled to you. However great your sins, however deep the gulf between you and the Lord, God has now made peace with you through the blood of His cross! Do you believe this?
The Old Testament records a great pagan feast that one of the Babylonian kings, Belshazzar, gave for the chief men of his court. The wine was drunk from sacred vessels stolen from the temple in Jerusalem, and the revelry was growing, the merry mood of the revelers reaching its climax, when suddenly a mysterious hand appeared in the room and began to write letters on the walls. The prophet Daniel deciphered the writing and read God's judgment, which read: 'You have been tested, you have been found light, and you will perish! God's judgment was fulfilled that very night on the king and his mulatto company! At some point, this scene happens to all of us personally. None of us will escape the great final judgment before God. How this judgment will unfold in its details, I do not know, but the gist of it will be that our lives will be weighed in the balance. In one pan of the scales will be all the deeds and omissions of your life, all your thoughts, emotions, words, passions. And in the other pan of the scales will be the Ten Commandments and the great commandment of Jesus! I think you have no doubt what the result will be: that you will be "weighed and found light"! But then the miracle happens: the blood of Christ, that which poured out of his head, his hands, his feet, and his sides on the cross, is poured in some wonderful and mysterious way into the pan of the great balance in which my light life is squeezed, and by its own infinite weight weighs down the tilted balance and balances it with the other pan. The result of the great trial will thus be, through the goodness of Christ, that God will pronounce the final judgment on a wretched sinner like you or me: 'This man's life has been perfectly in accordance with all my wishes and laws!
God imputes all the love, goodness and obedience of Christ to me - and my faults and sins to him. He looks at me as if I were Jesus, and He looks at Jesus as if Jesus were living my sinful life. Jesus rewards all my perfection in me and punishes all my sin in Jesus! This is what the Apostle Paul's much quoted statement that we are "justified by the blood of Christ" means!
Finally, my brothers and sisters, sin is not only a burden on our lives, not only a power that keeps us in slavery, but a filth, a dirt that makes the soul, the body, the whole life unclean! The more I know that God forgives me my sins for the blood of Jesus Christ, the more I want to be freed and cleansed of my sins now. Is there any power that can deliver me today from the actual sins of fornication, drunkenness, occult sciences, discontent, pride, selfishness?! Education, culture, enlightenment, state laws, or self-discipline cannot cleanse such filth from our lives. It is only as good as Pilate washing his hands! Soap, water and towels cannot get rid of sin! There is only one way to be cleansed from sin: the blood of Jesus, which the Apostle John writes cleanses us from all sin! This blood cannot be resisted by Satan. This blood is his total defeat, the complete bankruptcy of all his works. The Lord knew this well, and shed his blood so that there might be something in this world with which to wash the soul! There is deliverance from your sin, Brother, from the sin that makes your life so difficult, that you have struggled against so many times, in vain. Just ask the Lord in prayer to cleanse you from that sin by His blood!
We started from the fact that it pleased the Father to reconcile all things to Himself through Christ, making peace through the blood of His cross! It is this blood that forgives us our sins, it is this blood that justifies us before God, and it is this blood that cleanses us from all sin. What else can disturb our peace with the Father? Only by despising the blood of Christ, by despising it, by not accepting this gospel of the blood, and not receiving it gladly into one's heart as the only means of salvation. Such a man can no longer be helped! Good Friday will be a feast of mourning for him!
But for us, it is a joyous day of thanksgiving and rejoicing, if we have been reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ - freely, by grace!
Amen.
Date: 23 April 1943 Good Friday.