October 21

The Remission of Sins

This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. — Matt 26:28

So right in the heart of the Lord’s Supper we are reminded of two things, — of the price paid for our redemption, and of the deliverance that this redemption brings to us. The price paid was the precious blood of Christ; the deliverance is the remission of sins.

There is a singular Oriental custom which may help us better to understand the way Christ made atonement for our sins. “When a debt had to be settled,” says Dr. A. J. Gordon¹, “either by full payment or forgiveness, it was the usage for the creditor to take the cancelled bond and nail it over the door of him who had owed it, that all passers-by might see that it was paid. Oh, blessed story or our remission! There is the cross, the door of grace, behind which a bankrupt world lies in hopeless debt to the law. See Jesus, our bondsman and brother, coming forth with the long list of our indebtedness in His hand. He lifts it up where God and angels and men may see it, and then, as the nail goes through His hand, it goes through the bond of our transgressions, to cancel it for ever, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. He took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross.”

This is the wonderful act of remission that is portrayed for us with such vividness in the cup of the Lord’s Supper. The nail that went through those bonds and fastened them there on the cross went also through the body of the Lord Jesus. Blood flowed at the remitting or our sins — the blood of the Son of God. The cup that is so sweet to us was emptied of terrible bitterness by the Lord Himself, then filled with heaven’s choicest blessings and brought to us. While we rejoice at the remission, let us not forget what it cost our Redeemer; nor let us forget the wonderful grace that puts all our sins away “as far as the east is from the west.”

1: Adoniram Judson Gordon (1836 - 1895) a well-known evangelical pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church of Boston, Massachusetts. He was born in New Hampton, New Hampshire, and was named for the famed pioneer Baptist missionary to India-Burma.

He wrote the book The Ministry of the Spirit and the music for My Jesus, I Love Thee!