“…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness if sins” – Hebrews 9:22.

“For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” – Hebrews 10:4)

“Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world” – John 1:29.

WHEN JOHN THE Baptist made his statement, it was one of the greatest truths any prophet could utter. Do we seriously realise the implications of the power of these words?

The unregenerate are content to just having their sins ‘forgiven’; the regenerate want more: their sins taken away. The new nature of the regenerate desires to part company with sin, to be done away with it forever – indeed, it longingly looks forward to the day where sin shall be no more.

In the Old Testament era, the act of sin was cleansed away, but Christ’s sacrifice entailed the taking away of such sin that enslaved us. The Old Testament patriarchs and believers by faith embraced this from afar, thus it was accounted to them as saving righteousness. Yes, they did have saving faith back then, but the fruition of Christ’s actual advent into this world was not fully realised as we are able to behold today (the Church of the last two millennia). King David longed to not only be forgiven of his sin, but to be deeply cleansed: “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow…create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:7, 10), he longed to know inner purity where nothing spoiled his communion with God.

Christ’s own blood – not of animals – secures our eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). It is Christ’s blood that is efficacious in setting us free from sin to serve the living God as Hebrews 9:13-14 states: “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God.”

The Spirit-led desire to be cleansed of sin is not to be relieved of a guilty conscience, but that nothing stands in between us and God; nothing stands to mar our relationship with Him. Although we are not sinless, it is ever our endeavour to be so; it is considering ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”; it is a realising that we have been awakened and empowered to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies (Romans 6:11-12) and that is the spiritual reality that surrounds every one of us now who truly behold the Lamb of God.