Redeemed with Christ’s Blood (2)¹: A Sermon by Charles Calder

1 Peter 1:18,19. 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.

A Lamb. The just and delicate emblem of innocence and meekness. Christ was a Lamb as to innocence and purity, as the prophet Isaiah says, “He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth” (Is 53:9). He was perfectly “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners”. He was a Lamb in His meekness and gentleness, which infinitely surpassed all example or comparison. Of Him it was justly said in prophecy: “He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street” (Is 42:2); “He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth” (Is 53:7). “When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not” (1 Pet 2:23).

He is also called a Lamb because of the lambs sacrificed under the ceremonial law, and chiefly the paschal lamb, which was a clear, solemn and memorable type of Christ, who in the New Testament is expressly called “our passover”: “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5:7). Let us therefore notice the resemblance between the type and the antitype, between the Lamb of God and the paschal lamb, by which He was typified and represented to the people of God, under the Old Testament dispensation.

The paschal lamb was to be chosen out of the flock and to be free from blemish. God the Father says of Christ: “Behold My servant whom I uphold; Mine elect in whom My soul delighteth” (Is 42:1); and again: “I have laid help upon one that is mighty. I have exalted one chosen out of the people” (Ps 89:19). John the Baptist says, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). And here He is called a Lamb without blemish and without spot. This, however, was but a faint, imperfect shadow of the spotless purity and the divine perfections of the Lamb of God, who is fairer than the children of men, the brightness of His Father’s glory and the express image of His person.

It was the appointment of heaven that the paschal lamb should be roasted with fire. This was intended to show the excruciating anguish which the Lamb of God endured, both in His soul and His body, when He was bearing the sins of His people, paying their ransom, and suffering the curse of a broken law in their stead, in all its extent and bitterness. He gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. His sacred body was torn with scourges, His head crowned with thorns, His visage marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. In a special manner (for the sufferings of His body were nothing compared with those He endured in His soul) it pleased the Father to bruise Him and to put Him to grief. The full view He had of the evil of sin and His exquisite sense of divine wrath – that wrath which was due to the sins of His people – drank up His spirits and withered His heart like grass. The pressure of these inconceivable sufferings made sweat like great drops of blood fall down from His body in the garden of Gethsemane, and extorted from Him the heavy groans which He uttered in the silence of that solemn night: “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?” “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.” “O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” And finally, on the cross, He poured out in the anguish of His soul that bitter complaint, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

The Israelites were commanded to sprinkle the blood of the paschal lamb on the lintels and posts of their doors, and thus they escaped the sword of the destroying angel. In like manner it is only through the atoning virtue of Christ’s most precious blood that we can be saved from the sword of divine justice, the wrath of God and the flames of hell. Accordingly our Apostle says here: “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold . . . but with the precious blood of Christ,” which, another apostle expressly calls, “The blood of sprinkling”.

As the Israelites had to sprinkle the blood of the paschal lamb on the lintels of their doors in order to be delivered from the Destroyer, so the virtue of the most precious blood of the Lamb of God must be applied by faith to our souls, if we would wish to escape the wrath that is to come.

The paschal lamb was to be eaten completely. So in like manner we must in the gospel receive a whole Christ. We must take Christ and His yoke, Christ and His cross, as well as Christ and His crown. We must take Christ in all His offices to be our Prophet, Priest and King; to be for us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption; otherwise we can have no part or lot in Him. If we would have Him as our Priest and our propitiation, we must cheerfully submit to Him as our Lord and Lawgiver. It is the hypocrite that would separate the offices of Christ. The true believer feels such infinite need of Him, in each of His gracious offices, that He is altogether precious in his esteem. And he discovers so much of the divine wisdom, love and glory, in the constitution of the covenant of grace and in Christ’s offices as Mediator that, with David, he says from his heart about this covenant and the plan of redemption: “This is all my salvation, and all my desire”.

The paschal lamb was to be eaten with bitter herbs, in remembrance of the bitter, grievous bondage in the land of Egypt. Similarly, it is with bitterness of soul for sin that we must receive Christ, if would wish to feed and live on Him. This is what will give us a true relish for the paschal lamb. Christ cannot be precious to us until sin is made bitter. “They shall look upon Me, whom they have pierced [by their sin], and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn” (Zec 12:10). Thus the paschal lamb, and all other sacrificial lambs, were types and emblems; they had no virtue but as they referred to Christ, the precious Lamb of God, who, by one offering of Himself, “hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified”.

3. A few reflections from what has been said on (1) the evils from which Christ redeemed His people and (2) the price of their redemption.

1. The infinite evil and danger of sin. Much of the evil of sin may be learned from the woes without number under which creation groans; yet none of its dismal consequences, nor all of them united, sets its evil and danger in so awful a light as the cross of Christ. The dying groans of the Son of God declare more loudly than the wailings of the damned how atrocious that guilt must be, which nothing less than the costly sacrifice of the Lamb of God could expiate; how deep and inveterate is the stain which nothing but the blood of God (Acts 20:28) could efface. So infinitely hateful is sin in the sight of a holy God that, when His only-begotten and well-beloved Son was made “to be sin for us”, when sin was laid upon Him, “it pleased the Lord to bruise Him” and to “put Him to grief” – though He did no violence, neither was guile found in His mouth.

How dreadful then must be the danger of the careless, impenitent sinner! Only such as flee to Christ for refuge shall have redemption from the curse of the law. All those who reject Him, who are not interested in His righteousness, are continually exposed to this curse, which must certainly fall on the sinner who continues impenitent, to his eternal ruin. For if God spared not His own Son, when He stood in the room of His people and had their sins imputed to Him, how can they escape who shall stand charged with the guilt of their sins before His righteous tribunal! And if the curse of a broken law brought such inexpressible anguish on the Son of God as you have heard, how intolerable must be the fate of the sinner who shall be doomed to suffer this curse to all eternity! “For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (Lk 23:31). No language can represent the danger of Christless sinners in so just and awful a light as God has done in His Word. “The Lord Jesus”, says Paul, “shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2 Th 1:7,8,9). On that great and solemn day when the Son of man shall come in His glory, and the dead, small and great, shall appear before His throne, that solemn sentence shall be pronounced against the wicked: “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41). And shall the thought that he is in danger, in hourly danger, of being sealed up under this sentence not awaken the most unconcerned sinner and bring him to cry out, with all earnestness, “What shall I do to be saved?”

1. The doctrine of our text is full of the strongest encouragement to the soul awakened to a sense of sin, trembling at the Word of the Lord, and seeking to have peace made with God, for Christ has paid for a ransom – a complete, ample ransom. He has satisfied all the demands, and borne the whole curse, of a broken law. He has finished transgression, made an end of sin, made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness. As Paul says, this “is unto all and upon all them that believe” (Rom 3:22) – upon them as a pure and perfect robe, in which they may stand with acceptance before a God of perfect holiness. No man needs despair on account of the greatness of his sins, for “this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” even the very chief of sinners (1 Tim 1:15). God has, by a voice from heaven, declared Himself well pleased with Christ as a Surety, and consequently He must be well pleased with all who come unto Him through Christ. Salvation is of grace, without money and without price. Christ is the gift of God, free as the light of the sun. “Look unto [Him], and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” When the Israelites, journeying through the wilderness, were stung by the fiery serpents, Moses made a brazen serpent by God’s appointment and raised it on a pole, so that it might be visible from the utmost part of the camp. And whoever looked to it was healed and lived. So we are, by nature, stung with the poison of that old serpent, the devil, and Jesus Christ has been lifted up on the cross for the healing of the nations. And however desperate his case appears, whoever turns his eyes by faith to the dying Saviour, shall find relief from the wounds of conscience and feel the sting of death plucked from his heart.

Let no self-condemned soul then fear being rejected by God in applying for salvation by this new and living way of access to His presence and His favour. God has opened a glorious sanctuary in the blood and righteousness of Emmanuel; flee there for your life, and the Avenger of blood can never hurt you. Lift up your eyes to Mount Calvary, and behold the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world – the sins of every soul in this assembly who has been brought from the dust of self-condemnation and self-loathing to renounce, as refugees of lies, every other ground of hope on this side of Christ and to rest on Him and on His finished work alone for salvation. Behold Him groaning, bleeding, dying to save from eternal death! Why was that precious blood shed? Why were those deep wounds opened? Why was that heavenly bosom pierced? Why but to open a place of refuge from divine justice for prisoners of hope, for men condemned by the divine law and convicted in their own consciences. Seek then to draw near to Christ by faith; seek for sanctuary in the clefts of this Rock of Ages and you shall be perfectly and eternally safe and happy. Confess your sins, with your hand, the hand of faith, on the head of the great propitiatory sacrifice, the Lamb of God, and God will no more remember your sins and your iniquities. “If we confess our sins,” says the Apostle John, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9).

Hear how God the Father – in looking forward to the sacrifice to be offered up by Christ in the fullness of time, and prefigured by all the sacrifices under the law – addresses His eternal Son: “As for thee also, by the blood of Thy covenant I have sent forth Thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water” (Zec 9:11). And hear how, in the next verse, He addresses those prisoners in the pit wherein there is no water: “Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope; even today do I declare that I will render double unto thee”. Now that the guilt is atoned for, now that justice is satisfied – for even under the Old Testament dispensation, the great work of redemption was considered already accomplished, as it was undertaken by a Surety able to fulfill what He undertook and had faithfully promised to complete. Now that guilt is atoned for and justice satisfied, go forth, prisoners of hope, from your prison houses; go forth in peace; go forth with liberty and joy; turn to the stronghold, to your sure refuge under the covert of Emmanuel’s blood and righteousness, for the Lord declares, “Even today . . . I will render double unto thee”; “[I will give unto thee] beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Is 61:3).

1. Let us contemplate with wonder and gratitude the glory of God’s perfections as they shine forth with united splendour, in the mystery of redemption by Jesus Christ. To reconcile the seemingly-opposite interests of justice and mercy in the salvation of sinners must have appeared to us for ever impossible. But in the cross of Christ, the incomprehensible wisdom of God has revealed a method for accomplishing this infinitely-important object, a method which excites the wonder and animates the praises of the blessed saints above, a method from which glory arises to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will to men, a method by which the glory of God’s justice and holiness is reconciled with the amplest exercise of His mercy and love in the eternal salvation of the guilty sinner. It would be easy to conceive of God’s righteousness being declared in the punishment of sin; it is the cross of Christ alone that declares His righteousness in the forgiveness of sin. It manifests justice in the way of pardoning sin, and mercy in the way of punishing it. In the sufferings of a Surety of such infinite dignity, the justice of God is more awfully displayed than if the whole human race had been doomed to everlasting destruction. And mercy shines forth more than if justice had been entirely dispensed with and sin left altogether unpunished. Here spotless justice, inviolable truth, infinite mercy and love shine out all at once; none of them obscures the other; each gives lustre to the rest; they mingle their beams and shine forth with united, eternal splendour, as the Psalmist says, “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps 85:10).

To the sinner convinced that he is liable to divine justice – to that eternal death which is the just wages of sin – how attractive is the cross of Christ! How gracious! How welcome the call to go to it! There he beholds God at once just and the most merciful justifier of the penitent believer in Jesus. There he beholds sin condemned, punished and blotted out for ever by the precious blood which streamed down from the cross; there he hears divine justice crying, as from above the cross, It is enough. And it calls aloud for grace, mercy and peace to be multiplied to every prisoner of hope, to every self-condemned soul that will take the cross as his sanctuary. While beholding all this, must he not feel powerfully, irresistibly drawn to it? Must the language of his heart – in yielding to its blessed influence – not correspond to that of Scripture in such texts as these: “This is my rest for ever, here will I dwell, for I have desired it”; “Who is a God like unto Thee that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of Thine heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy”; “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgements, and His ways past finding out!”

1. The Apostle’s weighty question, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” (Heb 2:3). Let one and all of us be exhorted in the name of God, and in the bowels of Jesus Christ, to beware of despising this great salvation. If we despise it, we despise the wisdom, goodness, love and sovereign authority of the great God who made us, and in whose hands is the life of our souls, and the disposal of our whole being throughout a boundless eternity. If we despise this great salvation, we despise the matchless, redeeming, dying love of the Lord Jesus Christ – that love which yearned over a guilty world going down to perdition, which brought Him to stand between sinners and the flaming sword of divine justice, which makes Him plead in heaven for sinners like us and plead with us here on earth, as He is doing this day, to be reconciled to God through Him.

If we despise this great salvation, we despise – indeed we ruin and destroy – our precious, immortal souls by neglecting the only means of their peace, safety and happiness. We despise all the joys of heaven, we defy all the terrors of God and all the terrors of the second death. Thus, as it were, we proclaim war with the Almighty and bring upon ourselves the woe Isaiah spoke of: “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth” (45:9). As you would wish to avoid all this guilt and all the dreadful wrath and misery consequent on it, be persuaded to prize and embrace this great salvation, to flee as if hearing the footsteps of the Avenger of blood behind you – to lay hold of the hope set before you in the gospel, to flee to Christ as the city of refuge God has appointed. It is the high tower to which the righteous run and are safe, a high tower open to receive sinners from every kindred and tribe, and of every age, rank and description.

The cheering words from Christ’s own blessed lips are, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out”. Whoever he is, he may be assured of a most gracious welcome, of being received with outstretched arms, and admitted to a union with the Saviour of the lost which the combined force of earth and hell shall never be able to dissolve. The door of mercy, the gates of salvation, are open today. Enter in without delay, for they may be shut eternally before tomorrow. “Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart,” lest He swear in His wrath that you shall never enter into His rest. “Now is the accepted time . . . now is the day of salvation.” “Now then”, as Paul speaks, “we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20).

1. The Christian, who has experienced the healing virtue of the precious blood of Christ is under infinite obligations to render to his Great Deliverer fervent love and gratitude for the inestimable blessings of redemption. When the believer reflects on the long train of reproaches, miseries and torments which the purchase of his salvation cost the Lord of life and glory; when he beholds on the one hand the fathomless abyss of woe from which He has rescued him, and on the other the eternal glory which He has obtained for him as his blessed inheritance – while he meditates on these things, under the melting influences of the Spirit of God – must he not cry out, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His people.”

To remember His rich and wonderful love was the last, indeed the dying, command of Christ. “This do,” He says, in instituting the sacrament of the Supper, “in remembrance of Me.” Do this in remembrance of that glorious deliverance from sin, death and eternal perdition, which He has accomplished. Let us therefore, in this sacred ordinance, seek to fix the eye of faith on a crucified Redeemer, till we feel our hearts affected with holy contrition and godly sorrow for our sins, which slew the Lord of glory; and let this pious penitential sorrow be mingled with a vein of humble spiritual joy, when we reflect that the Lamb which was slain is now alive and lives for ever and ever; that He is now exalted at the Father’s right hand to make intercession for us, and that He has the keys of hell and of death, the control of the whole invisible world, and all power in heaven and earth in His sovereign, omnipotent hand.

Though the believer cannot but mourn after a godly sort when he considers his sins as the procuring cause of all the sufferings and sorrows of the Son of God, he must feel a humble, grateful joy when he beholds Him gloriously emerging from that deep and awful abyss of sorrow and suffering, having expiated all His people’s guilt and obtained eternal redemption for them. Of this He gives them in the holy sacrament a pledge and earnest, admitting them to sit as friends and children at His table, a table provided with the most precious blessings that He can bestow or that they can enjoy. He bids them welcome to it in the most cordial manner, saying, “Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved”. True believers, whose minds are seasoned with sentiments of devotion and acquainted with the exercise of religion, know well that those various affections of godly sorrow and humble joy mingle and, as it were, run into each other on such occasions. They know that looking unto Him whom we have pierced by our sins, and mourning for them in bitterness of soul, is happily consistent with sitting down under His shadow with great delight and finding His fruit sweet to their taste. May God in His mercy grant to His people at this time the renewed and comforting exercise of this truth, and bless the administration of His Word and sacrament to this end. To His name in Christ Jesus, through the blessed Spirit, be all the praise and glory for ever.

¹The first of two parts of this sermon, printed last month, contained the first head, “what believers were redeemed from”; and part of the second head, “the price of this redemption”. This section begins with the rest of the second head, where Calder goes on to consider the expression, “as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot”.