THE SERVICE OF THE LORD JESUS IN WASHING PERSONS

W. McKillop

Isaiah 1: 18; John 19: 32–34; 1 John 5: 6–8; Revelation 1: 5, 6

I want to speak about the service of our Lord Jesus as washing us; first, washing us from our sins in His blood, and then washing us as to our state in the water that came out of His side. I read first in Isaiah because the Lord is really appealing to us in regard of this matter of our sins. I might assume that all who are here are forgiven sinners, but I do not really know that.

Therefore I want to draw to your attention that, if your sins are still attached to you, there is a way you can be washed from them. The word is, “Come now, let us reason together, saith Jehovah”. That is, God is speaking of Christ in the glad tidings and coming down in condescending grace to speak about reasoning. There is not much need to reason about sins, because if I am still in my sins that is hardly a matter to reason about. It is a matter that I should be convicted about because there is no need for me to be still in my sins. There may be many persons who are still in their sins. The glad tidings are addressed to them, and addressed on this basis, that “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”.

I suppose these colours would indicate that sins are of a different character and they stand out differently in the history of persons. I suppose the sins of the woman in John 4 stood out like scarlet. She came to draw water when she was sure that no one else was at the fountain of Jacob. Her history would have been one of public disrepute in that day. There is not much of that in the world today because sin is thought of so lightly; sinners generally do not feel the stigma of disrepute

among their fellows. Indeed it is solemn, as scripture says, that men have fellow delight in those who do these things (Romans 1: 32). I suppose the thought of scarlet would be that it would stand out, it would catch your eye, but such sins can be as white as snow. You might ask. What means could accomplish that? Well, it is the blood of Christ. And then it says,

“though they be red like crimson”, that would be a deeper stain, a deeper colour, I suppose more like the woman in Luke 7. She is called “a woman in the city, who was a sinner”. After dealing with her sins the Lord said, “Her many sins”. Her history would be one that was deeply dyed in sin, and so her sins were red like crimson, but the word here is, “they shall be as wool”. Again the means of cleansing is the blood of Christ. If there is anyone here who is still in his sins or her sins, whether they are scarlet or crimson in the eye of God, the point of this meeting for you, is they should be as white as snow and that they should be as wool. “White as snow” would mean, I suppose, that something pure in character replaces that scarlet stain, and being “as wool” would mean that some evidence of life according to God now will characterise you instead of the working of the flesh in its lawlessness.

The passage read in John’s gospel is to remind us of how this can be. “The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first and of the other that had been crucified with him”. That brutal act was to hasten their deaths, “but coming to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead they did not break his legs”. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Not a bone of him shall be broken”. But think of the solemnity of this matter, that Jesus was already dead.

He had delivered up His spirit, it was His own action, but what was seen publicly was that He was already dead. Although John is not dealing exactly in his gospel with sins, what the glad tidings would bring home to you is that He was dead for your sake and mine. Then what followed was “but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and

immediately there came out blood and water”. The means of changing your sins from scarlet into white as snow, and from red like crimson to as wool is that “immediately there came out blood and water”. No sins could ever be changed in that sense apart from the shedding of the blood of Christ. I want you to think about the fact that, in making the proposal of grace in Isaiah, the Lord Jesus would have you understand what it cost Him to propose to you that those sins that are so outstanding, those sins that are so ingrained in your sinful nature, required the shedding of His precious blood so they might be as white as snow and as wool.

Immediately what an answer there was to this act of violence. The crucifixion itself was an act of violence, but think of this soldier’s action plunging his spear into the side of a dead Christ, and immediately, as we sometimes sing, ‘Thy blood love’s answer gave’. It was the immediate answer of the love of God to the wanton cruelty of man. We need to think about this because the blood of any other dead man would be a gruesome thing, which would have no efficacy whatsoever. It would simply point to the fact that a human life was ended. Here a divine Person gives up His spirit. When the soldier pierces His side with the spear the blood that comes out is efficacious to wash us from our sins. It is a wonderful matter to consider that I can be separated eternally from my sins by what came out of a dead Christ, His blood. Scripture tells us elsewhere, “without blood-shedding there is no remission”, Hebrews 9: 22.

Had your blood been shed for your sins there would have been no remission; had mine been shed for my sins there would have been no remission. It required the blood of a perfect sacrifice, of a sinless holy Person, and that Person was Jesus, the Son of God. The means of our being cleansed is blood and water.

What I would like you to think about is that not only was the Lord’s blood shed but also, according to what the redeemed say in Revelation 1, “To him who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his blood” (Revelation 1: 5). Maybe you have not thought about that; maybe you thought the forgiveness of sins was a simple matter, and that at some time in your life you acknowledged that you were a sinner and needed a Saviour, so you went on with your conscience at rest. It was a much deeper matter than that because His blood must be shed, but then He Himself has washed us from our sins in His blood. Revelation 1 is really the outpouring in unison of an ascription of praise on the part of all the assembly of the firstborn to Christ, “to him who loves us”. You see you need to understand that in what the Lord did He was demonstrating His love for you. The apostle says, “the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Galatians 2: 20. Can you look back to this scene on the cross and say, That was the Son of God; I believe in the Son of God and I see clearly now that He loved me? Let that come home to all our hearts that He loves each one of us, and that He gave Himself, as the apostle says, “for me”. We sometimes sing that gospel hymn ‘Was it for guilty sinners such as I ...?’ (Hymn 423). The answer of course for every believing heart is, Indeed it was for me. There are a great many persons who have some sense of the forgiveness of sins and are greatly concerned about others who may not know it. That is fine, but I want you in this preaching to bring home to yourself, in a fresh and deeper way, that it was for me. It is very fine to think about all men. God is thinking about them, but I want you in this preaching to think about this as bearing on you and on me. Never mind all those others at the moment. God is attending to them, but the word in this preaching is for you and for me.

Where I read in John’s epistle it says, “This is he that came by water and blood”. You notice that the water comes first in John’s epistle. The blood is not forgotten but the water comes first because John is writing to believers who know that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. You need to think about the water too, John would say, because that has to do with your state and with your associations of life. In Revelation 22 it is those who wash their robes who have the right to go into the city by the gate and eat of the tree of life.

The washing there is not by blood but by water. The Lord has washed us by His blood, but the water is available and you need to use the water. That is a word for each one of us—it is not only the blood but also the water. “This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus the Christ”. The water is put first because John is dealing with the state and the associations of life of believers. Then he says, that we might not think the blood is being overlooked, “not by water only, but by water and blood”. Here the blood is really the evidence of the love of God.

In John 19 the blood glorifies God and meets my scarlet sins, but in the epistle the blood manifests the love of God. John writes in the previous chapter, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins”, 1 John 4: 10.

God has done that and now the water is available to us that we might enjoy divine love. The love of God and the love of Christ cannot be enjoyed only on the basis of the forgiveness of sins. What really is required to enjoy divine love is a new state by the gift of the Spirit. So it says here, “And it is the Spirit that bears witness, for the Spirit is the truth”. The sinner who believes and whose sins are washed from him is intended to receive the Spirit of God, who then becomes the Witness in your heart of the love of God and of the love of the Christ. John says, “it is the Spirit that bears witness, for the Spirit is the truth. For they that bear witness are three—the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and the three agree in one”.

In that verse he puts the Spirit first because it is only persons who have the Holy Spirit who value the water and who value the blood. It is wonderful that God should consider for us to the extent, that not only should we have by faith an objective knowledge of forgiveness, but also by the Holy Spirit we should have the consciousness of it, and have the consciousness of the divine love that has so acted toward us.

You might say, How can I say to any person that I know my sins are forgiven? The real evidence to me is that God has given me His Holy Spirit. Have you really thought of hat? Many persons go on very happily talking about being forgiven, and about being born-again Christians, which is an unscriptural term. You could not be a Christian without being born again, but being born again does not make you a Christian. You are only a Christian by faith in Christ and the reception of the Holy Spirit. You are not in the assembly because the blood has washed you from your sins; you are in the assembly because you have been given the Holy Spirit, and He has baptised you into one body. We need to have clear thoughts about these matters so that we begin to make soul progress in the knowledge of God. There is so much murkiness in what is spoken of and taught about us. It is no wonder that persons are dark and confused even though they trust in the blood. They cannot find their way to the city, as it says in Ecclesiastes 10: 15, because bad teaching has mixed things up for them. One great matter in our preachings is to help you sort things out in your conscience, your heart, and your mind so that you are an intelligent Christian.

So he says, “For they that bear witness are three”. That is, they are to one point in their testimony, and the first is the Spirit. How could I, except for the gift of the Spirit, value the fact that I have a new state before God? Paul says, referring to what our state was, “when we were in the flesh”, Romans 7: 5. The believer who has the Spirit is not in the flesh; granted the flesh is in him, but in his moral state before God he is not in the flesh, he is in the Spirit.

His moral existence before God is in the Spirit, and the Spirit is life on account of righteousness. But then the Spirit would give me to understand that I constantly need the water because I am going through a defiling scene and I must keep my state right. I must keep my mind pure, and the only way to

do that is to avail myself morally of the cleansing power of the water that came out of the side of Christ. Then as the third item, John brings in the blood. That brings us back to the great and wonderful thought that God is love and gave His only-begotten Son because He loved us. But without the Spirit, and without the constant purifying effect of the death of Christ, I could not enjoy the holy love of God. In the glad tidings God has furnished all this through Christ and by the Spirit.

You can understand why in Revelation 1 those who compose the assembly break out into this doxology, “To him who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his blood”. I would invite your consideration to this very touching fact, that not only did He shed His blood, but also He has Himself washed us from our sins in His blood. It is His own personal action because He loves us. We could go to the Old Testament too, and find that, in type, He has also washed us with water. It says, “Moses brought Aaron near, and his sons, and bathed them with water”, Leviticus 8: 6. That was to bring them to a point that they could be consecrated to God. While bathing with water is not stated here, it is clearly in mind, because He has “made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father”. Think of all that the Lord has undertaken, washing us from our sins in His blood, washing us that we might be practically pure and able to approach God, and giving us the Holy Spirit in order that we might serve God in a priestly way. So it says, “and made us a kingdom”. A kingdom is a system of subject persons who are under Christ, who is over the kingdom; He has made us “priests to his God and Father”. The Lord had great joy in doing that with us. On our side we ought to have great exercise to wash our robes that we might have part in this priestly service Godward.

I have spoken mainly about what divine Persons have done for us. The thing I would like to leave with you is that in regard of washing, the only thing that you need to wash are your robes, that is your associations of life. You want to use this water freely so that there is not a single thing in your associations of life that would preclude your going in by the gates into the city, eating of the tree of life, and having part in this wonderful service Godward because He has made us priests to His God and Father. I would encourage every Christian here to be among these persons who ascribe this doxology to Christ. Notice it says, “to him”, that is Christ, the One who “loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father—to him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen”. Well that would be a fitting thing for us all to come to in our souls at the end of this day and at the end of this preaching; that we joyfully, exultantly, ascribe glory and might to Christ who has done such wondrous things for God and such wonderful things for us. Think of the time when the whole assembly, all from Pentecost to the rapture, all those persons will join in this doxology to Christ. It is our privilege by the Spirit to join in it now. “To him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages, Amen”. May God bless the word.

Preaching at Los Angeles
30 April 2000