Our title is quoted from 1 John 5:6. Water and Blood: what do they mean? We know how the Roman soldier pierced with his spear the side of the dead Christ and forthwith there flowed blood and water. This was an actual fact, but the scripture in John’s first Epistle clearly shows that both are used as symbols and that a spiritual meaning is to be attached to them.
Water and blood are both cleansing agents. Blood symbolizes judicial cleansing. Water symbolizes moral cleansing.
Here are proof texts. “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). This is judicial cleansing by blood. “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). This is moral cleansing by water.
What is meant by judicial cleansing? The sinner is under the judgment of God. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezek. 18:4). This is the verdict of the Judge of all the earth. Yet a righteous God can justify a guilty sinner, for we read, “that He might be just, and the Justifier of him which believes in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). How was this accomplished? Through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, satisfying God’s righteous claims about the whole question of sin. God is thereby met and satisfied as to His judicial claims, and is thus set free to express righteously His goodness to men in offering them full and free forgiveness of sins.
What is meant by moral cleansing? It signifies the practical effect of the Scriptures, the Word of God, on the conscience of the Christian, leading him to be clean and holy in all his walk and ways.
Judicial cleansing by the blood of Christ is the cleansing of the sinner once for all. Moral cleansing by the application of the Word of God to the walk and ways of the Christian is a process, that goes on as occasion needs, all through his responsible life on earth.
Notice carefully that in the verse we quoted the cleansing by blood is “from ALL sin.” Many think that the word, “cleanseth,” here signifies a. process; that is, that all the sins of the believing sinner are cleansed away up to the time when he believes. But sins committed after that—and what Christian is free from such, alas!—require a fresh application of the blood for forgiveness. This is to confound hopelessly the truth as to the cleansing by blood with the truth as to cleansing by water, to our great loss.
You may ask, How can God forgive future sins till they are actually committed? One verse of Scripture will answer this question. The believer can say of our Lord, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). How many of our sins were committed when our Lord died on the cross and bore them? We have to answer, They were ALL future. And yet the Scripture speaks of their being all borne at the cross as if they were past. The fact is that the present tense of the verb, “cleanseth,” is used to set forth the power and efficacy of our Lord’s precious blood. When it cleanses, it cleanses from all sin.
Another scripture confirms this in a wonderful way. We read, “By one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). Clearly this is not perfection in ourselves, but the believer possessing a perfect standing before God with a purged conscience, in the knowledge that all his sins are forgiven.
A Christian was once charged with believing in sinless perfection. He replied in words something like these: “Yes, I believe in perfection. If I did not, I should not have one moment’s peace of mind. But, thank God, perfection is not in me but in Another. I have a perfect Saviour, who did a perfect work, and has given me a perfect salvation.” It is the privilege of the youngest Christian to know that ALL his sins have been so cleansed that they can never rise in judgment against him. Judicially he is clean.
But the believer would indeed be left in a sad condition if it were possible for him to have all his sins forgiven and yet be left with only a sinful nature, every activity of which is sin. And certainly such a nature will never find a place in heaven. So we find that two things come to the believer as a result of the death of our Lord.
Reading 1 John 4:9-10, we see, firstly, divine life, involving a new nature, every activity of which is pleasing to God; and, secondly, propitiation, the basis of our forgiveness. Note carefully the order of the verses. It is first life and then propitiation.
This is well illustrated in the consecration of the priests, recorded in Exodus 29. First they were washed all over with water, symbolical of the new birth, and then a sin offering had to be slain and its blood applied. The blood gave them their title to their office. The water gave them their personal fitness to stand before God.
A New Testament scripture clearly refers to this. We read, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience [the blood, propitiation] and our bodies washed with pure water [the new birth]” (Heb. 10:22). Then, in addition to being washed with pure water, when the priests went to serve in the sanctuary they passed the brazen laver full of water in which they washed their hands and feet, removing the defilements of the desert from their persons, every time they entered the holy place.
Our Lord uttered very illuminating words when He said to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). In this verse water symbolizes the cleansing effect of the Word of God, bringing in a new nature. The Apostle Peter speaks of this, only he uses the simile of seed and not water. We are born again of incorruptible seed “by the Word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). The Apostle James supports this also in writing, “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth” (James 1:18).
“Born of water and of the Spirit” is a remarkable statement, yet it is simple when we remember it is the Spirit of God who is the active Agent, and that the word of God, living and powerful, is the “water,” or the “seed” He employs. No one understands the wonder of his natural birth. Is it surprising that the surpassing wonder of our new birth baffles our understanding?
Reformation, the turning over of a new leaf, the education of the flesh will not suffice. There must be nothing short of the new birth. An illustration may help as to this. A traveller, stranded late at night among the Italian Alps, obtained a night’s lodging in a goatherd’s cottage, and found the floor of his room so filthy that he was about to ask that it might be cleaned. He was saved from making that mistake by noticing that it was a mud floor. To apply water and a scrubbing brush to that would only make more mud. He realized at once that the only way to get a clean floor would be to get a new floor, made of a material that could be kept clean.
The new floor may serve as an illustration of the new birth, the new life. Once there is the new birth, there is the desire to be kept clean practically in God’s sight, and the means for this is found in the word of God, applied to our souls in the power of the Holy Spirit. This answers to “the washing of water by the Word” (Eph. 5:26).