Death-for-Death
We receive the mercy of God through the blood of Jesus. The blood Jesus spilled on the Cross was his lifeblood and when it's applied to your case or mine, it appeases God’s righteous wrath against us.
Jesus' life is in his blood. That's where you find the appeasement, the atoning sacrifice for sin--in his blood! Call it propitiation. Call it expiation. It appeases God's wrath against us in our guilt.
... let us draw near to God... having our hearts sprinkled [with the blood of Jesus] to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22)
When Jesus' blood is sprinkled on our hearts, it covers our guilt because it replaces the death sentence we deserve. It's a death-for-death deal. Jesus dies; you live. Have you entered into the bargain? Jesus' blood is sprinkled on our hearts when our bodies are washed with pure water--that is, in baptism. Have you been baptized?
Applying the Death of Christ
The death of a righteous man is the only possible substitute for the death of an unrighteous man. When someone dies in place of another, it is called substitutionary atonement.
But let’s get practical. The atonement is not a theory; it's something you either have or don't have. You're either sprinkled by Christ's blood or not.
The atonement doesn’t cover everybody. Only those who have been baptized into Christ are covered by the death of Christ. Only those who partake in Christ’s death reap the benefits of Calvary. Only and exclusively people who have been baptized obtain the forgiveness of their sins.
… don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death (Romans 6:3)?
A Specific Instant
God’s sentence of death against you is cancelled at a specific point in time: the instant you die with Christ. As the verse above says, a repentant sinner is baptized into Jesus’ death. The moment you are baptized is the moment you die with Christ.
So, Jesus’ death counts for you for the first time in baptism. There is no other moment when this legal transaction takes place. It only takes place in baptism. The Bible says ‘Baptism now saves you’ (1 Peter 3:21). That couldn't be clearer.
Jesus himself also declared ‘He who believes and is baptized will be saved’ (Mark 16:15). You either get baptized and get forgiven, or you pay the price for your own sin. Either Jesus dies for you, or you die yourself.
How embarrassing for the so-called Christian who doesn't know 'that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death' (Romans 6:3)! Today's watered-down version of Christianity doesn't demand a commitment. It doesn't bring people into a covenant. It treats baptism as if it were optional and inconsequential. But baptism is a foundational experience of Christianity.
Paul's Foundations
Paul presumed that the churches knew that only those of us who are baptized participate in the death of Christ (Romans 6:3). Times have changed. Right now you cannot presume that people in churches know this anymore.
There are no more churches founded by Paul, so we cannot assume what Paul assumed. On the contrary, the legacy of Paul has vanished. If you defend baptism’s importance the way Paul did in a Christian church today, what you can expect is to be rejected and deemed a heretic!
Slander us as they will, we will not be silent. We cannot conceal the role of baptism in salvation. We will not destroy Christian foundations such as '...the foundation of... the doctrine of baptisms...' (Hebrews 6:1-2; NKJV).
Faith Works Through Baptism
We won't deny the role of faith in a person’s salvation either. Spiritual foes blindly accuse us of denying salvation is by faith. They are so wrong, but this is what they say! They ignore what we affirm: the vital importance of a faith that works. We confidently proclaim that by faith we are saved--a working faith!
But they define faith as mental assent. For them, faith is an idea. For us, faith manifests itself in works. For us, anyone who steps into the waters of baptism steps into those waters and subjects themselves to immersion by faith!
We reject dead faith. We affirm a faith that works. We don't think that faith is invisible. Rather, it can be seen.
Our message is that each repentant believer must exercise a faith that works, and they begin their Christian life by exercising faith through baptism.
Consider what Paul said. He taught that Christ’s sacrifice and blood are received by faith:
God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith (Romans 3:24-25).
How to Cleanse Someone of Sin
This passage brings us back to the question of how we are cleansed by Jesus’ blood. If we boil Romans 3:23-25 down to its essential message, what does it say? If we trim off any extra verbal excess and break it down to its most rudimentary form, it will say this:
… all are justified freely by God’s grace through Christ Jesus who God presented as a wrath-appeasing sacrifice through the shedding of his blood, which you only get by faith.
Why do we reduce the passage to the lowest possible denominator? Because we’re trying to understand the basics of what it takes to be justified through Jesus’ blood. We want the naked truth about redemption. If we're going to minister the Gospel, we must know precisely what it takes for someone to be cleansed of their sins!
The principles that underly God's law of cleansing from sin are based on the ancient rule of blood sacrifice. Let's delve into these principles.
Blood Sacrifice
How important was it that Jesus shed his blood for us? Very. You’ve already heard the super-important Bible verse that says: ‘without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins’ (Hebrews 9:22). That's one big piece of evidence that the shedding of blood is a universal law.
Yes, the shedding of blood for forgiveness is required of all people from all places at all times. It was required of Adam and Eve. It was required of Abraham. It was required of Moses, the Jews, and it's required even today of us Gentiles.
Until this very day, the rule of blood sacrifice applies to every soul on the planet!
Going from Old to New
So then, if the same rule applies, why is there even a difference between the Old Testament and the New? The following passage (it's a long one) explains how we got from the Old Covenant to the New. It explains how the High Priest performed sacrifices that were not meant to be permanent--but that those sacrifices were meant to foreshadow what Jesus would do in the New Covenant.
Read on.
… only the High Priest entered the Inner Room [Holy of Holies], and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.
The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place [the one in Heaven] had not yet been disclosed as long as the First Tabernacle was still functioning.
This is an illustration for the present time [the author means the time he was living in, the period prior to the 70AD destruction of the Temple when the priests still ministered there], indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered (not being able to clear the conscience of the worshipper) are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings—external regulations applying until the Time of the New Order.
But when Christ came as High Priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect Tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this Creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.
The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the Living God!
For this reason, Christ is the Mediator of a New Covenant (Hebrews 9:7-15).
You’ll notice that the main theme to which this passage drives is the New Covenant in Christ. The passage (inspired by the Holy Spirit) focuses on how our consciences may be cleansed. And why do we want clean consciences? We need them to serve God.
We can only serve the Living God if we are pure, and a clean conscience is the groundwork for such purity. We need clean hands!
Another Summary
Let’s again summarize the Scriptures to extract the essential meaning. If we do, the very long passage above—which is essentially about the need for a blood sacrifice—can be paraphrased like this:
Jesus entered the Most Holy Place in Heaven once for all by his own blood to obtain our redemption. How much more than the Old Testament sacrificial system does the blood of Christ, which Jesus offered to God, cleanse our consciences?
Washing in Water
Did you notice that the long passage we read (and summarized above) concludes with a statement to the effect that God ‘cleanses our consciences’ from sin through Jesus’ blood? Here's the key section of the passage once more:
How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death... (Hebrews 9:14).
Those acts that lead to death are the ones God washes away when we are baptized. Any person baptized properly will go to the waters pleading to God for a new conscience--and God can provide it for someone who trusts in Jesus!
They won't have to worry any more about any sins (acts that lead to death) they had committed in the past. They will have been forgiven. As Luke reminds us, in baptism we ‘wash away our sins’ (Acts 22:16).
Without a doubt, the author of Hebrews is talking about baptism when he says that we '... cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death...' (Hebrews 9:14)
If we keep reading the Epistle to the Hebrews, we will get to the next chapter (chapter 10), and what do we find? We find confirmation that the author of Hebrews has all along been talking about baptism.
His focus on cleansing the conscience is reinforced with a statement as to how ‘our bodies [are] washed with pure water’ (Hebrews 10:22). That washing takes place in baptism. If you've had it, then the blood of Jesus has been applied to your conscience.
You don't ever have to say "I cover myself in the blood of Jesus." You don't have to say in your prayers "I claim the blood of Jesus." His blood is not an amulet. It's not a charm. You don't reapply it to yourself once it was applied in baptism.
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