THE BLOOD SHED FOR MANY – Charles Spurgeon
THE BLOOD SHED FOR MANY
“For this is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Matthew 26:28.
Introduction to the Lord’s Supper
The Lord Jesus Christ was then alive, sitting at the table and yet, pointing to the cup filled with red wine, He said, “This is My blood, which is shed for many.” This proves that He could not have intended that the wine was literally His blood. Surely it is no longer necessary to refute the gross and carnal dogma of transubstantiation which is obviously absurd! There sat the living Lord at the supper, with His blood in His veins, and, therefore, the wine could not literally be His blood! Value the symbol, but to confound it with the thing symbolized would draw into the idolatrous worship of a piece of bread!
The Anticipation of the Atonement
Our Lord spoke of His blood as shed when as yet the nails had not pierced His hands and feet. And the spear had not broached His side. Is not this to be accounted for by the fact that our Lord was so taken up with the thought of our redemption by His death that He speaks of that as done which He was so resolved to do? Enjoying loving communion with His chosen disciples, He spoke freely. His heart did not study accuracy so much as feeling and so, in speech as in feeling, He antedated His great work of Atonement and spoke of it as done. To set forth the future intent of the blessed ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, He must, of necessity, treat His death as an accomplished fact. And His complete absorption in His work made it easy and natural for Him to do so. He ignores moods and tenses. “His work is before Him.” By the use of such language, our Lord also shows us the abiding presence of the great Sacrifice as a power and an influence. He is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” and, therefore, He speaks of His blood as shed. In a few hours it would be literally poured forth, but long ages before, the Lord God had regarded it as done. In full confidence in the great Surety, that He would never draw back from the perfect fulfillment of His engagements, the Father saved multitudes in virtue of the future Sin-Offering! He communed with myriads of saints on the strength of the purification which would, in the fullness of time, be presented by the great High Priest. Could not the Father trust His Son? He did, and by this act, set us a great example of faith. God is, in very deed, the Father of the faithful, seeing that He, Himself, reposed the utmost confidence in Jesus!
Christ’s Finished Work and Our Trust
And because of what He would yet do in the pouring out of His soul unto death, He “opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all Believers.” What, My soul? Can you not trust the Sacrifice, now that it has been presented? If the foresight of it was enough for God, is not the consummation of it enough for you? “Behold the Lamb of God,” who even before He died was described as taking away the sin of the world! If this was so before He went to Calvary, how surely is it so now that He has said in verity and truth, “It is finished”!
The Cross: The Cornerstone of the Gospel
Dear Friends, I am going to preach to you again upon the cornerstone of the Gospel. How many times will this make, I wonder? The doctrine of Christ Crucified is always with me. As the Roman sentinel in Pompeii stood to his post even when the city was destroyed, so do I stand to the truth of the Atonement, though the Church is being buried beneath the boiling mud showers of modern heresy. Everything else can wait, but this one Truth of God must be proclaimed with a voice of thunder! Others may preach as they will, but as for this pulpit, it shall always resound with the Substitution of Christ. “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Some may continually preach Christ as an example, and others may perpetually discourse upon His coming to Glory—we also preach both of these, but mainly we preach Christ Crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness—but to them that are saved Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God!
The Memorial of the Lord’s Blood
You have before you a cup, filled with wine, which Jesus has just blessed and presented to His disciples. As you look into its rosy depths, hear Him speak of the cup as His blood, for thus He would teach us a solemn lesson!
I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF CHRIST
The vital importance of the great Truth of God of the death of Christ as a vicarious Sacrifice is set before us in this cup, which is the memorial of His blood shed for many. Blood represents suffering, but it goes further and suggests suffering unto death. “The blood is the life thereof,” and when blood is too copiously shed, death is suggested. Remember that in the sacred Supper you have the bread as a separate emblem of the body and then the wine as a separate symbol of the blood—thus you have a clear picture of death, since the blood is separated from the flesh. “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death.” Both acts are essential. Upon the death of Christ, you are invited to fix your attention and upon that only.
The Love of Christ in His Sacrifice
In the suffering of our Lord unto death, we see the boundless stretch of His love. “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus could not be more loving to us than to yield Himself unto death, even the death of the Cross. O My Lord, in Your bloody sweat and in the piercing of Your hands and feet and side, I see the highest proof of Your love! Here I see that Jesus “loved me and gave Himself for me.” Beloved, I beg you to consider often and lovingly the sufferings of your Redeemer unto the pouring out of His heart’s blood. Go with Him to Gethsemane and then to the house of Caiaphas and Annas. And then to Pilate’s hall and Herod’s place of mockery! Behold your Lord beneath the cruel scourges and in the hands of the executioners upon the hill of shame. Forget not one of the sorrows which were mingled in the bitter cup of His crucifixion—its pain, its mockery, its shame. It was a death reserved for slaves and felons. To make its deep abysses absolutely bottomless, He was forsaken, even, of His God! Let the darkness of, “Eloi, Eloi, lama Sabachthani,” bear down upon your spirit till, as you sink in awe, you also rise in love! He loved you better than He loved Himself! The cup means love, even to the shedding of His blood for you.
I.2. The Cup as Life and Peace
It means something more. We have called our Lord, in our hymn, “Giver of life for life,” and that is what this cup means. He gave up His life that we might live! He stood in our place and stead in the day of Jehovah’s wrath, receiving into His bosom the fiery sword which was unsheathed for our destruction! The pouring out of His blood has made our peace with God. Jehovah made the soul of His Only-Begotten an offering for sin, that the guilty might be cleared. “He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” That is what the wine in the cup means—it means the death of Jesus in our place. It means the blood poured out from the heart of the Incarnate God that we might have fellowship with God—the sin which divided us being expiated by His death. Our blessed Savior would have us hold His death in great reverence—it is to be our chief memory. Both the emblems of the Lord’s Supper set forth the Savior’s death.
The Atonement as the Core of the Gospel
This peculiarly Christian ordinance teaches nothing if it does not teach this. Christ’s death for men is the great doctrine of the Church. We profess ourselves partakers of the merit of His death when we come to this table. Our Lord’s death is then remembered, shown, declared, testified and trusted in. Evidently, the Lord Jesus means us to treat the fact of His death as a Truth of God to be made pre-eminently prominent—He would not have instituted an ordinance especially to remind us of the shedding of His blood if He had not regarded it as the forefront of His whole earthly career. The other ordinance of our holy faith also sets forth our Lord’s death. Are we not, “Buried with Him by baptism into death?” Is not Baptism an emblem of His being immersed beneath the waves of sorrow and death? Baptism shows us that participation in Christ’s suffering by which we begin to live—the Lord’s Supper shows us that participation in Christ’s suffering by which that life is sustained. Both institutions point to His death. Besides, Beloved, we know from Holy Scripture that this doctrine of the death of Christ is the very core of Christianity.
II. THE CONNECTION OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST WITH THE COVENANT
Read the text again—“This is My blood of the new testament.” The translation would be better, “This is My blood of the Covenant.” What is this Covenant? The Covenant Is that which I read to you just now in Jeremiah 31:33—“This shall be the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put My Law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people.” See also Jeremiah 32:40—“And I will make an everlasting Covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts; that they shall not depart from Me.” Turn also to Ezekiel 11:19—“I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh.” Look in the same prophecy at 36:26—“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.”
The Everlasting Covenant of Grace
What a Magna Charta is this! The old Covenant says, “Keep the Law and live.” The new Covenant is, “You shall live and I will lead you to keep My Law, for I will write it on your heart.” Happy men who know their standing under this Covenant! What has the blood of Jesus Christ to do with this Covenant? It has everything to do with it, for the Covenant could never have been made, apart from the blood of Jesus! Atonement was taken for granted in the establishment of the Covenant. No one else could have stood as our Representative to fulfill our side of the Covenant, except the Lord Jesus Christ. And even He could only have performed that Covenant by shedding His blood.
III. THE BLOOD HAS AN INTIMATE CONNECTION WITH REMISSION
The text says, “This is My blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Jesus suffering, bleeding, dying, has procured for sinners the forgiveness of their sins! Of what sins? Of all sins of every sort and kind, however heinous, aggravated and multiplied! The blood of the Covenant takes every sin away, be it what it may. There was never a sin believingly confessed and taken to Christ that ever baffled His power to cleanse it! This Fountain has never been tried in vain.
Forgiveness Through Christ’s Sacrifice
Murderers, thieves, liars, adulterers, and what not, have come to Jesus by penitence and faith—and through the merit of His Sacrifice, their sins have been put away. Of what nature is the remission? It is pardon, freely given, acting immediately and abiding forever, so that there is no fear of the guilt ever again being laid to the charge of the forgiven one! Through the precious blood, our sins are blotted out, cast into the depths of the sea, and removed as far from us as the east is from the west. Our sins cease to be—they are made an end of—they cannot be found against us anymore forever. Yes, hear it, hear it, O wide earth! Let the glad news startle your darkest dens of infamy—there is absolute remission of sins! The precious blood of Christ cleanses from all sin!
IV. THE CONNECTION OF THE BLOOD WITH MEN
We are told in the text that this blood is shed “for many for the remission of sins.” In that large word, “many,” let us exceedingly rejoice. Christ’s blood was not shed for only the handful of Apostles. There were but eleven of them who really partook of the blood symbolized by the cup. The Savior does not say, “This is My blood which is shed for you, the favored eleven,” but “shed for many.” Jesus did not die only for the clergy! His blood is shed “for many,” and not for the few. He is not the Christ of a caste, or a class, but the Christ of all conditions of men. His blood is shed for many sinners, that their sins may be remitted.
The Universal Scope of Christ’s Sacrifice
His eyes, I doubt not, glanced at these far-off islands and at the vast lands beyond the western sea. He thought of Africa, India, and the land of Sinim. A multitude that no man can number gladdened the far-seeing and foreseeing eyes of the Redeemer! He spoke with joyful emphasis when He said, “shed for many for the remission of sins.”
V. THE CONNECTION OF THE BLOOD WITH OURSELVES
Dear Hearer, are you among the many? Why are you not? May His Grace bring you to trust in Him and you may not doubt that you are among the many.
The Simplicity of Receiving Christ
Do you see that wine cup which I set before you just now? How are you to enjoy that wine which fills the cup? Its ruddy drops—how are they to be yours? The matter is very simple. I think I see you take the chalice in your hand and raise it to your mouth. You drink and the deed is done! This is no mystery. Bread and wine are ours by eating and drinking. Christ is ours by our receiving Him. The merit of His precious blood becomes ours by that simple childlike faith which accepts Jesus to be our All.
Faith as Simple Reception
We say, “Here it is. I believe in it. I take it. I accept it as my own.” It is yours. No man can take from you that which you have eaten and drunk. Christ is yours forever if you receive Him into your heart. If you have any question as to whether you have drunk, I will tell you how to solve it—drink again! If you have been eating and you have really forgotten whether you have eaten or not—such things do occur to busy men who eat but little—if, I say, you would be sure that you have eaten, eat again! If you will be assured that you have believed in Jesus, believe again!
Confidence in God’s Word
Whenever you have any doubt about whether Christ is yours, take Him again! I like to begin again. Often I find the best way of going forward is to go back to my first faith in Jesus and, as a sinner, renew my confidence in my Savior. “Oh,” says the devil, “you are a preacher of the Gospel, but you do not know it yourself.” At one time I used to argue with the accuser, but he is not worth it and it is by no means profitable to one’s own heart. We cannot convert or convince the devil—it is better to refer him to our Lord. When he tells me I am not a saint, I answer, “Well, what am I, then? “A sinner,” he says. “Well, so are you!”
Conclusion: The Assurance of Faith
“Ah,” he says, “You will be lost!” “No,” say I, “that is why I shall not be lost, since Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and I, therefore, trust in Him to save me.” This is what Martin Luther calls cutting the devil’s head off with his own sword and it is the best course you can follow! You say, “If I take Christ to myself as a man takes a cup and drinks the contents, am I saved?” Yes, you are. “How am I to know it?” Know it because God says so! “He that believes in Him has everlasting life.”
Final Assurance
If I did not feel a pulse of that life, (as I did not at first), I, nevertheless, would believe that I had it simply on the strength of the Divine Assurance. Since my conversion I have felt the heavenly life joyously leaping within me, but there are times when it is not so. Just now I feel the heavenly life joyously leaping within me, but when I do not feel it, I fall back on this—God has said, “He that believes in Him has everlasting life.” That is enough for me! I believe and, therefore, I live! Our inward experience is fine corroborative evidence, but God’s testimony is the best foundation our confidence can have! I recollect a story told of William Dawson whom our Wesleyan friends used to call Billy Dawson, one of the best preachers that ever entered a pulpit.
Invitation to Trust Christ
He once gave out as his text, “Through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.” When he had given out his text he dropped down to the bottom of the pulpit, so that nothing could be seen of him—only there was a voice heard saying, “Not the man in the pulpit, he is out of sight, but the Man in the Book! The Man described in the Book is the Man through whom is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.” I put myself and you and everybody else out of sight, and I preach to you the remission of sins through Jesus only! I would sing with the children, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.” Shut your eyes to all things but the Cross. Jesus died and rose again—and went to Heaven—and all your hope must go with Him! Come, my Hearer, take Jesus by a distinct act of faith this morning! May God the Holy Spirit grant you Grace to do so and then you may go on your way rejoicing! So be it in the name of Jesus!