Thursday, March 22, 2018
1 John 1:7 ...the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin...
THE CLEANSING BLOOD OF JESUS
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
William Cowper (pronounced "cooper") penned these opening words of Hymn 157 in The Lutheran Hymnal while meditating on Zechariah 13:1: "On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness." From the stanzas of this "redemption anthem" of the Christian church it is plain to see that the hymn writer's mind went straight from the words of the Old Testament prophet to their fulfillment as described in passages like 1 John 1:7 (above) and Ephesians 2:13: "But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ."
This hymn seems to have fallen into disuse in our circles, perhaps because a visualization of this first verse is a bit unsettling. Bathing in blood is not a pretty picture. But the bloodbath of which this hymn speaks is both absolutely necessary and absolutely Scriptural. The blood shed by Jesus our Savior marks Him as our sacrificial Substitute and the promised Lamb of God, the World's Redeemer. He willingly laid down His life under a vicious Roman scourging that was followed by bloody execution on a cross.
But we know that neither Roman law nor the sins of Jesus (He had none!) were ultimately the reason He died this way. We were. Our sins--every one of them--and all the sin of every sinner in the long history of our sinful world made Jesus' bloody death necessary. He bled and died to pay the ransom price for us all.
Long before modern medicine came to recognize how the blood in our veins continually carries away bodily impurities, believers everywhere trusted that Jesus shed His blood that we might be cleansed of our sin-guilt and restored to our heavenly Father pure and holy. When we each consider the countless ways we have sinned by thought, word and action against our gracious God, the idea that much blood would be necessary to cleanse and purify our guilty souls is not a strange idea at all.
What a relief, what a joy, to be able to sing! . . .
The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.
Dear dying Lamb, Your precious blood shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God are saved, to sin no more.
