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The Sacrificial Blood of Christ, April 5
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with
corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation
received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious
blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.
1
Peter 1:18, 19
.
Upon Christ as our substitute and surety was laid the iniquity of us
all. He was counted a transgressor, that He might redeem us from the
condemnation of the law.
Hating sin with a perfect hatred, He yet gathered to His soul the sins
of the whole world. Guiltless, He bore the punishment of the guilty.
Innocent, yet offering Himself as a substitute for the transgressor. The
guilt of every sin pressed its weight upon the divine soul of the world’s
Redeemer. The evil thoughts, the evil words, the evil deeds of every son
and daughter of Adam, called for retribution upon Himself; for He had
become man’s substitute.
Behold Him in the wilderness, in Gethsemane, upon the cross! The
spotless Son of God took upon Himself the burden of sin. He who had
been one with God, felt in His soul the awful separation that sin makes
between God and man. This wrung from His lips the anguished cry,
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Matthew 27:46
. It was
the burden of sin, the sense of its terrible enormity, of its separation of
the soul from God—it was this that broke the heart of the Son of God.
“Ye know,” says Peter, “that ye were not redeemed with corruptible
things, as silver and gold.”
1 Peter 1:18
. Oh, had these been sufficient to
purchase the salvation of man, how easily it might have been accom-
plished by Him who says, “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine”!
Haggai 2:8
. But the sinner could be redeemed only by the precious
blood of the Son of God.
By pouring the whole treasury of heaven into this world, by giving
us in Christ all heaven, God has purchased the will, the affections, the
mind, the soul, of every human being.
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