Would you be free from the burden of sin?
Would you o'er evil a victory win?
Would you be free from your passion and pride
Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide
Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?
Sin stains are lost in its life-giving flow
Would you be free from the burden of sin? Would you o'er evil a victory win?
Central to the Christian faith are the atoning death and the victorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Cross is the focal point for all that distinguishes true Christianity from both its rivals and its imitators.
All theological discussions of the Cross relate to justification-how the death of Christ makes possible the forgiveness of our sins. Yet the New Testament makes it clear that the atonement has as much to do with sanctification as it does with justification. “Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word” (Eph. 5:25-26). “By the which will, we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:10, 14). “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13:12).
It is by the provision of a real cleansing of the heart from the stain of racial sin that the Cross becomes vital in our understanding of holiness. The writer to the Hebrews asks in one of his great rhetorical questions, “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctified to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (9:13-14)
For what purpose, did Jesus come to the world? Answers to this question can be classified under one or the other of two major theological positions.
The first reason is that Jesus came to give to the world an example of how an ideal person should live in an unrealistic world.
· He came to provide an example which might serve as a pattern for all persons to emulate.
· He was gracious, just, compassionate, and loyal to the truth.
· He was fearless enough to die for His ideals.
· He was crucified as a martyr for moral principles. It is His life, His ideals, His principles, and His martyrdom that are important.
The second reason is that Jesus came primarily as:
· an atonement for sin.
· He is a Lamb to be slain as a propitiation for broken law,
· His death on the cross satisfied the demands of divine justice;
· it protected the moral government of the universe;
· and finally, was an expression of the love of God in giving His own, Son to save mankind.
The importance in the coming of Christ is to be found in His death. His life is an example and is a pattern to be followed, but can be possible only through the death and shed blood. "There is power in the blood" to make us victorious Christians.
Would you be free from your passion and pride, Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide.
Christ wrote His love in blood when He sacrifice Himself for man with His shed blood on the cross. No tongue can match the silent eloquence of the cross-fixed Christ. On the other hand, the appalling shame of Christ's crucifiers represents the last stage of human depravity. There can be no depth beyond this, in the black abyss of sin. Manic madness is the climactic cesspool in the unquestionable wickedness of iniquity, yet God permitted the wrath of these men to crucify His only begotten Son, and at the same time use their wrath to praise Him. While they were killing Him in the malice of maddened rage, God was at the same time providing the world's redemption through His shed blood. The death of Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of more than eight hundred years' standing, which made known that this very scene would take place as revealed by the prophet Isaiah. 53 (Read)
That deadly brutality upon the sacred person of Christ tested the genuine and unshakable reality of His love; for without raising a protesting finger, He received their abusive onslaught to the death. It gave rise to a deeper sadness found in the expression, "He... became obedient unto death."
Today we wonder how any of the hearts and minds of the religious people in that day, could have become so hateful and perverted, as to invoke such slanderous fabrications against Christ, making a mockery of the Law of Moses and contempt for justice. Such thought and action coming from the high priest's chamber, and his ruling ecclesiastic associates, in the name of justice, is to announce their complete severance from the life of righteousness. How could they reject Christ, who lived among them as a friend in every need -- the Redeemer of their lives -- the great miracle healer of their bodies -- the preacher of righteousness, who among them was without parallel; He who was the fulfiller of all their prophecies, the very incarnation of the eternal Godhead? How could they reject Him and choose a thief, who was a notorious murderer?
It was only the pride of these religious leaders that would destroy their temple, pronounce a death sentence on their nation, and make their name a by-word. The offered a criminal to replace the Son of God- Barabbas. Had Barabbas been many times more wicked in character, with crimes more appalling than the darkest in history, that evil crowd still would have cried out in hatred, "Give us Barabbas, give us Barabbas, but crucify Jesus!"
People throughout the generations of time have raised their rebellious voices in pride to seal their own doom. Their voices are being heard this moment, in the choice being made now, between the two alternatives of accepting Christ and the truth personified in Him, and the rejections of Jesus Christ for Barabbas. The unrepentant world today, either voluntarily or involuntarily, is declaring itself for Barabbas and the crucifixion of Christ. Jesus said you are either for me or against me.
That is why today there are those who push their anti-Christian propaganda, in an endeavor to promote hatred of Christ and the Bible, with the same motivating hostility that moved the Jerusalem crowd to crucify Christ. The tragedy of it comes from the fact that much of this propaganda has taken root in our Nation and even in our churches. The cross of Christ furnishes the complete answer to all the concerns of human existence. But in their pride and rebellion there are in pulpits today those who have betrayed Christ. We see false-teachers stirring the crowd against Jesus, telling us there is more than one way to heaven. We see educational trusts violated in the persistent cry for the release of the godlessness of socialism, and humanism, and the equally unyielding demands of skepticism that absolute truth be crucified on the cross of unbelief. That is why today we see almost one million unborn babies murdered, alternative life-styles that destroy the sanctity of marriage, rebellious and perverted actions committed daily, lives destroyed by drug and alcohol abuse, human trafficking taking place in our cities, mockery of Christian values every day on TV and in the media.
The world needs a drastic and uncompromising moral and spiritual purging. We need to return to the old paths. We need to see the crucified Christ through the eyes of Thomas, who cried out My LORD, and My God.
That Christ is rejected and Barabbas chosen becomes the more serious when we stop and realize the enormous cost paid for our salvation. The sinless Son of God died for a world that became victimized, by its own staggering sins, imposed by many and terrible transgressions. The cost was tremendous, while we yet sinners Christ died for us.
Do you see in Barabbas, a symbol of the whole human race, hopelessly mired in its squalor, the perishing victim of its own blighting sins? Will you see, also, that in Christ we are face to face with a heaven-born truth, telling us with an inescapable conclusion, that to bring humanity from death to life, from its sin-polluted state to regeneration, and to destroy that body of sin coiled so deeply about the human heart and removable only by the world's Savior, we must submit to His demands; for He is the only Redeemer and salvation for mankind. If our nation is to avert the wrath of God, we must cling to the Christ of the cross. It has been through His generous, enriching work of redemption in the hearts of obedient men, that has allowed our nation to have the freedom and liberty we enjoy. God decreed that the Holy One should suffer for the unholy, the just for the unjust, to buy back mankind from the custody of the devil's prison house of bondage and torment.
Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow? Sin stains are lost in its life-giving flow.
The cross is the light of the world an alternative, which determines the destiny of men. The most appalling depth of ingratitude to be witnessed today comes through the rejection of Christ by men. You are called upon now to make a choice -- it is Jesus or Barabbas.
· To accept Christ means to ally yourself with the most heroic and ennobling aspiration of the human mind. It places you side by side with the pioneer heroes of righteousness, who have blazed the trail of human progress upward, to the place our nation once occupied.
· In accepting Christ, you are aligning yourself with the unconquerable moral forces for the annihilation and overthrow of criminal actions of all types, the cleansing of political life in the chamber of our state and federal legislative bodies, and the strengthening of our courts of justice.
· In accepting Christ as your personal Savior, you are attaching yourself to a fountain opened for all, whose seat is God, whose majesty is love, power, and dominion, world without end.
· In accepting Christ, you have the solution to, and freedom from, the destruction which sin has laid at your door. This deliverance brings the sweet assurance which silences the condemning voice of an accusing conscience. It brings you the joy of a testimony, in which you can say with the Apostle Paul, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."
But if, on the other hand, you elect to make any Barabbas of our modern world your choice, let me warn you that by so doing, you identify yourself with the darkest destructive forces that conspire against the welfare of humanity. Consciously or unconsciously, it means that you are aligning yourself with some of the most diseased and perverted minds, as well as the most degenerate criminals, that ever worked at the destruction of humanity's highest ideals. It means that you are latently or actively aligning yourself with the enemies of the cross, to bring about the destruction of this nation, to doom the people of this nation to judgment, to bring the wrath of God upon us. Salvation is a matter of life and death.
Your denial of Christ means that the cross, which now holds the door of God's pardoning mercy open, will serve as the bar to bolt you from His presence unless His merciful forgiveness is graciously given to you in answer to your contrite cries before you pass from this world to the next. Your only hope is in the saving power of the blood of Jesus Christ. Would you be free from you burden of sin? There is power in the blood.
It is not my duty to beg you to come to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit will do His work to convict you of your sins. It is my duty to tell you when the Holy Spirit speaks to your heart and you recognize that you are a sinner to confess your sins and repent of you wicked ways and God the Father will forgive you of your sins because of the sacrificial death on the cross of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ who shed His life’s blood that you might have life.
There is power in the blood of Jesus Christ to change your life and set you free from the power and bondage of sin. Will you allow the blood of Jesus Christ to set you free from the power and bondage of sin? There is power in the Blood to transform your life and bring you into the family of God.
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