It is the blood of Christ, not His example only, or His beautiful moral teaching, but His vicarious sacrifice that meets the wants of the soul. No wonder that Peter calls it “precious.” Precious it has been found by the heathen abroad, and by the peer and the peasant at home…

What is the only remedy for our terrible spiritual disease? What will cleanse us from the guilt of sin? What will bring health and peace to our poor dead hearts, and enable us to walk with God while we live, and dwell with God when we die?

To these questions I give a short but unhesitating reply. For the one universal soul-disease of all Adam’s children there is only one remedy. That remedy is “the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18-19). To the blood of Adam we owe the beginning of our deadly spiritual ailment. To the blood of Christ alone must we all look for a cure.

When I speak of the “blood of Christ,” my readers must distinctly understand that I do not mean the literal material blood which flowed from His hands and feet and side as He hung on the cross. That blood, I doubt not, stained the fingers of the soldiers who nailed our Lord to the tree; but there is not the slightest proof that it did any good to their souls. If that blood were really in the Communion cup at the Lord’s Supper, and we touched it with our lips, such mere corporeal touch would avail us nothing.

Oh no! When I speak of the “blood” of Christ as the cure for the deadly ailment which we all inherit from the blood of Adam, I mean the life-blood which Christ shed, and the redemption which Christ obtained for sinners when He died for them on Calvary — the salvation which He procured for us by His vicarious sacrifice — the deliverance from the guilt and power and consequences of sin, which He purchased when He suffered as our Substitute.

This and this only is what I mean when I speak of “Christ’s blood” as the one medicine needed by all Adam’s children. The thing that we all need to save us from eternal death is not merely Christ’s incarnation and life, but Christ’s death. The atoning “blood” which Christ shed when He died is the grand secret of salvation. It is the blood of the second Adam suffering in our stead, which alone can give life or health and peace to all who have the first Adam’s blood in their veins.

A Vital Doctrine in Our Squeamish Age

I can find no words to express my deep sense of the importance of maintaining in our Church the true doctrine of the blood of Christ. One plague of our age is the widespread dislike to what men are pleased to call dogmatic theology. In the place of it, the idol of the day is a kind of jelly-fish Christianity —

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