“There is nothing but blessing left for us to enjoy” by Charles Spurgeon

“Follow me with all your ears and hearts while I now speak to you about WHAT JESUS DID.

He who is all that I have tried to describe, did what? First, he effectually purged our sins: “when he had by himself purged our sins.” (Hebrews 1:2-3)

Listen to those wondrous words. There was never such a task as that since time began. The old fable speaks of the Augean stable, foul enough to have poisoned a nation, which Hercules cleansed; but our sins were fouler than that.

Dunghills are sweet compared with these abominations; what a degrading task it seems for Christ to undertake,—the purging of our sins! The sweepers of the streets, the scullions of the kitchen, the cleansers of the sewers, have honourable work compared with this of purging sin.

Yet the holy Christ, incapable of sin, stooped to purge our sins. I want you to meditate upon that wondrous work; and to remember that he did it before he went back to heaven. Is it not a wonderful thing that Christ purged our sins even before we had committed them?

There they stood, before the sight of God, as already existent in all their hideousness; but Christ came, and purged them. This, surely, ought to make us sing the song of songs. Before I sinned, he purged my sins away; singular and strange as it is, yet it is so.

Then, further, the apostle says that Christ purged our tins by himself; that is, by offering himself as our Substitute. There was no purging away of sin, except by Christ bearing the burden of it, and he did beat it.

He bore all that was due to guilty man on account of his violation of the law of God, and God accepted his sacrifice as a full equivalent, and so he purged our sins. He did not come to do something by which our sins might be purged, but he purged them effectually, actually, really, completely.

How did he do it? By his preaching? By his doctrine? By his Spirit? No “By himself.” Oh, that is a blessed word!

“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth 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?”

He gave himself for us; not only his blood, but all that constituted himself, his Godhead, and his manhood. All that he had, and all that he was, he gave as the ransom price for us; can any of you estimate the value of that price?

The acts of one, Divine as he is, are Divine actions; and there is a weight and force about them that there could not be about the deeds of the best of men or even of all the holy angels: “He by himself purged our sins.”

Now, let every believer, if he wants to see his sins, stand on tiptoe, and look up; will he see them there? No.

If he looks down, will he see them there? No.

If he looks round, will he see them there? No.

If he looks within, will he see them there? No.

Where shall he look, then? Where he likes, for he will never see them again, according to that ancient promise, “In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve.”

Shall I tell you where your sins are? Christ purged them, and God said, “I will cast all their sins behind my back.” Where is that? All things are before God. I do not know where behind God’s back can be. It is nowhere, for God is everywhere present, seeing everything.

So that is where my sins have gone; I speak with the utmost reverence when I say that they have gone where Jehovah himself can never see them. Christ has so purged them that they have ceased to be.

The Messiah came to finish transgression, and to make an end of sin, and he has done it. O believer, if he has made an end of it, then there is an end to it, and what more can there be of it? Here is a blessed text for you; I love to meditate on it often when I am alone: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

This he did on Calvary’s cross; there effectually, finally, totally, completely, eternally, he purged all his people from their sin by taking it upon himself, bearing all its dreadful consequences, cancelling and blotting it out, casting it into the depths of the sea, and putting it away for ever; and all this he did “by himself.”

It was indeed amazing love that made him stoop to this purgation, this expiation, this atonement for sin; but, because he was who and what he was, he did it thoroughly, perfectly.

He said, “It is finished,” and I believe him. I do not—I cannot—for a moment admit that there is anything to be done by us to complete that work, or anything required of us to make the annihilation of our sins complete.

Those for whom Christ died are cleansed from all their guilt, and they may go their way in peace. He was made a curse for us, and there is nothing but blessing left for us to enjoy.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “Depths and Heights,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 45 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1899), 45: 390-392.