The Blood-Shedding
                                                                              
                              February 22, 1857
                                      by
                                C. H. SPURGEON
                                 (1834-1892)


         "Without shedding of blood is no remission."--Hebrews 9: 22. 

I will show you three fools. One is yonder soldier, who has been wounded 
on the field of battle, grievously wounded, well nigh unto death; the surgeon 
is by his side, and the soldier asks him a question. Listen, and judge of his 
folly. What question does he ask? Does he raise his eyes with eager anxiety 
and inquire if the wound be mortal, if the practitioner's skill can suggest 
the means of healing, or if the remedies are within reach and the medicine at 
hand? No, nothing of the sort; strange to tell, he asks, "Can you inform me 
with what sword I was wounded, and by what Russian I have been thus 
grievously mauled? I want," he adds, "to learn every minute particular 
respecting the origin of my wound." The man is delirious or his head is 
affected. Surely such questions at such a time are proof enough that he is 
bereft of his senses.

There is another fool. The storm is raging, the ship is flying impetuous 
before the gale, the dark scud moves swiftly over head, the masts are 
creaking, the sails are rent to rags, and still the gathering tempest grows 
more fierce. Where is the captain? Is he busily engaged on the deck, is he 
manfully facing the danger, and skilfully suggesting means to avert it? No 
sir, he has retired to his cabin, and there with studious thoughts and crazy 
fancies he is speculating on the place where this storm took its rise. "It is 
mysterious, this wind; no one ever yet" he says, "has been able to discover 
it." And, so reckless of the vessel, the lives of the passengers, and his own 
life, he is careful only to solve his curious questions. The man is mad, sir; 
take the rudder from his hand; he is clean gone mad! If he should ever run 
on shore, shut him up as a hopeless lunatic.

The third fool I shall doubtless find among yourselves. You are sick and 
wounded with sin, you are in the storm and hurricane of Almighty 
vengeance, and yet the question which you would ask of me, this morning, 
would be, "Sir, what is the origin of evil?" You are mad, Sir, spiritually 
mad; that is not the question you would ask if you were in a sane and 
healthy state of mind; your question would be: "How can I get rid of the 
evil?" Not, "How did it come into the world?" but "How am I to escape 
from it?" Not, "How is it that hail descends from heaven upon Sodom?" but 
"How may I, like Lot, escape out of the city to a Zoar." Not, "How is it that 
I am sick?" but "Are there medicines that will heal me? Is there a physician 
to be found that can restore my soul to health ?" Ah! you trifle with 
subtleties while you neglect certainties. More questions have been asked 
concerning the origin of evil than upon anything else. Men have puzzled 
their heads, and twisted their brains into knots, in order to understand what 
men can never know--how evil came into this world, and how its entrance is 
consistent with divine goodness? The broad fact is this, there is evil; and 
your question should be, "How can I escape from the wrath to come, which 
is engendered of this evil?" In answering that question this verse stands 
right in the middle of the way (like the angel with the sword, who once 
stopped Balaam on his road to Barak,) "Without shedding of blood is no 
remission." Your real want is to know how you can be saved; if you are 
aware that your sin must be pardoned or punished, your question will be, 
"How can it he pardoned?" and then point blank in the very teeth of your 
enquiry, there stands out this fact: "Without shedding of blood there is no 
remission." Mark you, this is not merely a Jewish maxim; it is a world-wide 
and eternal truth. It pertaineth not to the Hebrews only, but to the Gentiles 
likewise. Never in any time, never in any place, never in any person, can 
there be remission apart from shedding of blood. This great fact, I say, is 
stamped on nature; it is an essential law of God's moral government, it is 
one of the fundamental principles which can neither be shaken nor denied. 
Never can there be any exception to it; it stands the same in every place 
throughout all ages--"Without shedding of blood there is no remission." It 
was so with the Jews; they had no remission without the shedding of blood. 
Some things under the Jewish law might be cleansed by water or by fire, but 
in no case where absolute sin was concerned was there ever purification 
without blood--teaching this doctrine, that blood, and blood alone, must be 
applied for the remission of sin. Indeed the very heathen seem to have an 
inkling of this fact. Do not I see their knives gory with the blood of 
victims?

Have I not heard horrid tales of human immolations, of holocausts, of 
sacrifices; and what mean these, but that there lies deep in the human breast, 
deep as the very existence of man, this truth,--"that without shedding of 
blood there is no remission." And I assert once more, that even in the hearts 
and consciences of my hearers there is something which will never let them 
believe in remission apart from a shedding of blood. This is the grand truth 
of Christianity, and it is a truth which I will endeavour now to fix upon your 
memory; and may God by his grace bless it to your souls. "Without 
shedding of blood is no remission."

First, let me show you the blood-shedding, before I begin to dwell upon the 
text. Is there not a special blood-shedding meant? Yes, there was a shedding 
of most precious blood, to which I must forthwith refer you. I shall not tell 
you now of massacres and murders, nor of rivers of blood of goats and 
rams. There was a blood-shedding once, which did all other shedding of 
blood by far outvie; it was a man--a God--that shed his blood at that 
memorable season. Come and see it. Here is a garden dark and gloomy; the 
ground is crisp with the cold frost of midnight; between those gloomy olive 
trees I see a man, I hear him groan out his life in prayer; hearken, angels, 
hearken men, and wonder; it is the Saviour groaning out his soul! Come and 
see him. Behold his brow! O heavens! drops of blood are streaming down 
his face, and from his body; every pore is open, and it sweats! but not the 
sweat of men that toil for bread; it is the sweat of one that toils for 
heaven--he "sweats great drops of blood!" That is the blood-shedding, without 
which there is no remission. Follow that man further; they have dragged him 
with sacrilegious bands from the place of his prayer and his agony, and they 
have taken him to the hall of Pilate; they seat him in a chair and mock him; a 
robe of purple is put on his shoulders in mockery; and mark his brow--they 
have put about it a crown of thorns, and the crimson drops of gore are rushing 
down his cheeks! Ye angels! the drops of blood are running down his 
cheeks! But turn aside that purple robe for a moment. His back is bleeding. 
Tell me, demons who did this. They lift up the thongs, still dripping clots of 
gore; they scourge and tear his flesh, and make a river of blood to run down 
his shoulders! That is the shedding of blood without which there is no 
remission. Not yet have I done: they hurry him through the streets; they 
fling him on the ground; they nail his hands and feet to the transverse wood, 
they hoist it in the air, they dash it into its socket, it is fixed, and there 
he hangs the Christ of God. Blood from his head, blood from his hands, blood 
from his feet! In agony unknown he bleeds away his life; in terrible throes 
he exhausts his soul. "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani." And then see! they 
pierce his side, and forthwith runneth out blood and water. This is the 
shedding of blood, sinners and saints; this is the awful shedding of blood, 
the terrible pouring out of blood, without which for you, and for the whole 
human race, there is no remission.

I have then, I hope, brought my text fairly out: without this shedding of 
blood there is no remission. Now I shall come to dwell upon it more 
particularly.

Why is it that this story doth not make men weep? I told it ill, you say. Ay, 
so I did; I will take all the blame. But, sirs, if it were told as ill as men 
could speak, were our hearts what they should be, we should bleed away our 
lives in sorrow. Oh! it was a horrid murder that! It was not an act of 
regicide; it was not the deed of a fratricide, or of a parricide; it was--what 
shall I say?--I must make a word--a deicide; the killing of a God; the slaying 
of him who became incarnate for our sins. Oh! if our hearts were but soft as 
iron, we must weep, if they were but tender as the marble of the mountains, we 
should shed great drops of grief; but they are harder than the nether 
millstone; we forget the griefs of him that died this ignominious death, we 
pity not his sorrows, nor do we account the interest we have in him as 
though he suffered and accomplished all for us. Nevertheless, here stands 
the principle--"Without shedding of blood is no remission."

Now, I take it, there are two things here. First, there is a negative 
expressed: "No remission without shedding of blood." And then there is a 
positive implied, forsooth, with shedding of blood there is remission.

I. First, I say, here is A NEGATIVE EXPRESSED: there is no remission 
without blood--without the blood of Jesus Christ. This is of divine 
authority; when I utter this sentence I have divinity to plead. It is not a 
thing which you may doubt, or which you may believe; it must be believed and 
received, otherwise you have denied the Scriptures and turned aside from 
God. Some truths I utter, perhaps, have little better basis than my own 
reasoning and inference, which are of little value enough; but this I utter, 
not with quotations from God's Word to back up my assertion, but from the 
lips of God himself. Here it stands in great letters, "There is no remission." 
So divine its authority. Perhaps you will kick at it: but remember, your 
rebellion is not against me, but against God, If any of you reject this truth, 
I shall not controvert; God forbid I should turn aside from proclaiming his 
gospel, to dispute with men. I have God's irrevocable statute to plead now, 
here it stands: "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." You may 
believe or disbelieve many things the preacher utters; but this you 
disbelieve at the peril of your souls. It is God's utterance: will you tell 
God to his face you do not believe it? That were impious. The negative is 
divine in its authority; bow yourselves to it, and accept its solemn warning.

But some men will say that God's way of saving men, by shedding of blood, 
is a cruel way, an unjust way, an unkind way; and all kinds of things they 
will say of it. Sirs, I have nothing to do with your opinion of the matter; it 
is so. If you have any faults to find with your Maker, fight your battles out 
with him at last. But take heed before you throw the gauntlet down; it will 
go ill with a worm when he fighteth with his Maker, and it will go ill with 
you when you contend with him. The doctrine of atonement when rightly 
understood and faithfully received, is delightful, for it exhibits boundless 
love, immeasurable goodness, and infinite truth; but to unbelievers it will 
always be a hated doctrine. So it must be sirs; you hate your own mercies; 
you despise your own salvation. I tarry not to dispute with you; I affirm it 
in God's name: "Without shedding of blood there is no remission."

And note how decisive this is in its character: "Without shedding of blood 
there is no remission." "But, sir, can't I get my sins forgiven by my 
repentance? if I weep, and plead, and pray, will not God forgive me for the 
sake of my tears?" "No remission," says the text, "without shedding of 
blood." "But, sir, if I never sin again, and if I serve God more zealously 
than other men, will he not forgive me for the sake of my obedience?" "No 
remission," says the text, "without shedding of blood." "But, sir, may I not 
trust that God is merciful, and will forgive me without the shedding of 
blood?" "No," says the text, "without shedding of blood there is no 
remission;" none whatever. It cuts off every other hope. Bring your hopes 
here, and if they are not based in blood. and stamped with blood, they are as 
useless as castles in the air, and dreams of the night. "There is no 
remission," says the text, in positive and plain words; and yet men will be 
trying to get remission in fifty other ways, until their special pleading 
becomes as irksome to us as it is useless for them. Sirs, do what you like, 
say what you please, but you are as far off remission when you have done 
your best, as you were when you began, except you put confidence in the 
shedding of our Saviour's blood, and in the blood-shedding alone, for 
without it there is no remission.

And note again how universal it is in its character. "What! may not I get 
remission without blood-shedding?" says the king; and he comes with the 
crown on his head; "May not I in all my robes, with this rich ransom, get 
pardon without the blood-shedding?" "None," is the reply; "none." 
Forthwith comes the wise man, with a number of letters after his name--
"Can I not get remission by these grand titles of my learning?" "None; 
none." Then comes the benevolent man--"I have dispersed my money to the 
poor, and given my bounty to feed them; shall not I get remission?" "None;" 
says the text, "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." How this 
puts everyone on a level! My lord, you are no bigger than your coachman; 
Sir, squire, you are no better off than John that ploughs the ground; 
minister, your office does not serve you with any exemption--your poorest 
hearer stands on the very same footing. "Without shedding of blood there is 
no remission." No hope for the best, any more than for the worst, without 
this shedding of blood. Oh! I love the gospel, for this reason among others, 
because it is such a levelling gospel. Some persons do not like a levelling 
gospel; nor would I, in some senses of the word. Let men have their rank, 
and their titles, and their riches, if they will; but I do like, and I am sure 
all good men like, to see rich and poor meet together and feel that they are 
on a level; the gospel makes them so. It says "Put up your money-bags, they 
will not procure you remission; roll up your diploma, that will not get you 
remission; forget your farm and your park, they will not get you remission; 
just cover up that escutcheon, that coat of arms will not get you remission. 
Come, you ragged beggars, filthy off-scourings of the world, penniless; 
come hither; here is remission as much for you, ill-bred and ill-mannered 
though ye be, as for the noble, the honorable, the titled, and the wealthy. 
All stand on a level here; the text is universal: "Without shedding of blood 
there is no remission."

Mark too, how perpetual my text is. Paul said, "there is no remission;" I 
must repeat this testimony too. When thousands of years have rolled away, 
some minister may stand on this spot and say the same. This will never alter 
at all; it will always be so, in the next world as well as this: no remission 
without shedding of blood. "Oh! yes there is," says one, "the priest takes the 
shilling, and he gets the soul out of purgatory." That is a mere pretence; it 
never was in. But without shedding of blood there is no real remission. 
There may be tales and fancies, but there is no true remission without the 
blood of propitiation. Never, though you strained yourselves in prayer; 
never, though you wept yourselves away in tears; never, though you 
groaned and cried till your heart-strings break; never in this world, nor in 
that which is to come, can the forgiveness of sins be procured on any other 
ground than redemption by the blood of Christ, and never can the 
conscience be cleansed but by faith in that sacrifice. The fact is, beloved, 
there is no use for you to satisfy your hearts with anything less than what 
satisfied God the Father. Without the shedding of blood nothing would 
appease his justice; and without the application of that same blood nothing 
can purge your consciences.

II. But as there is no remission without blood-shedding, IT IS IMPLIED 
THAT THERE IS REMISSION WITHOUT IT. Mark it well, this remission 
is a present fact. The blood having been already shed, the remission is 
already obtained. I took you to the garden of Gethsemane and the mount of 
Calvary to see the bloodshedding. I might now conduct you to another 
garden and another mount to shew you the grand proof of the remission. 
Another garden, did I say? Yes, it is a garden, fraught with many pleasing 
and even triumphant reminiscences. Aside from the haunts of this busy 
world, in it was a new sepulchre, hewn out of a rock where Joseph of 
Arimathea thought his own poor body should presently be laid. But there 
they laid Jesus after his crucifixion.

He had stood surety for his people, and the law had demanded his blood; 
death had held him with strong grasp; and that tomb was, as it were, the 
dungeon of his captivity, when, as the good shepherd, he laid down his life 
for the sheep. Why, then, do I see in that garden, an open, untenanted grave? 
I will tell you. The debts are paid, the sins are cancelled--, the remission 
is obtained. How, think you? That great Shepherd of the sheep hath been 
brought again from the dead by the blood of the everlasting covenant, and in 
him also we have obtained redemption through his blood. There, beloved, is 
proof the first.

Do you ask further evidence? I will take you to Mount Olivet. You shall 
behold Jesus there with his hands raised like the High Priest of old to bless 
his people, and while he is blessing them, he ascends, the clouds receiving 
him out of their sight. But why, you ask, oh why hath he thus ascended, and 
whither is he gone ? Behold he entereth, not into the holy place made with 
hands, but be entereth into heaven itself with his own blood, there to appear 
in the presence of God for us. Now, therefore, we have boldness to draw 
near by the blood of Christ. The remission is obtained, here is proof the 
second. Oh believer, what springs of comfort are there here for thee.

And now let me commend this remission by the shedding of blood to those 
who have not yet believed. Mr. Innis, a great Scotch minister, once visited 
an infidel who was dying. When he came to him the first time, he said, "Mr. 
Innis, I am relying on the mercy of God; God is merciful, and he will never 
damn a man for ever." When he got worse and was nearer death, Mr. Innis 
went to him again, and he said, " Oh! Mr. Innis, my hope is gone; for I have 
been thinking if God be merciful, God is just too; and what if, instead of 
being merciful to me, he should be just to me? What would then become of 
me? I must give up my hope in the mere mercy of God; tell me how to be 
saved!" Mr. Innis told him that Christ had died in the stead of all 
believers--that God could be just, and yet the justifier through the death of 
Christ. " Ah!" said he, " Mr. Innis, there is something solid in that; I can 
rest on that; I cannot rest on anything else;" and it is a remarkable fact 
that none of us ever met with a man who thought he had his sins forgiven 
unless it was through the blood of Christ. Meet a Mussulman; he never had his 
sins forgiven; he does not say so. Meet an Infidel; he never knows that his 
sins are forgiven. Meet a Legalist; he says, "I hope they will be forgiven;" 
but he does not pretend they are. No one ever gets even a fancied hope apart 
from this, that Christ, and Christ alone, must save by the shedding of his 
blood.

Let me tell a story to show how Christ saves souls. Mr. Whitfield had a 
brother who had been like him, an earnest Christian, but he had 
backslidden; he went far from the ways of godliness; and one afternoon, 
after he had been recovered from his backsliding, he was sitting in a room in 
a chapel house. He had heard his brother preaching the day before, and his 
poor conscience had been cut to the very quick. Said Whitfield's brother, 
when he was at tea, "I am a lost man," and he groaned and cried, and could 
neither eat nor drink. Said Lady Huntingdon, who sat opposite, "What did 
you say, Mr. Whitfield?" "Madam," said he, "I said, I am a lost man." "I'm 
glad of it," said she; "I'm glad of it." "Your ladyship, how can you say so? 
It is cruel to say you are glad that I am a lost man." " I repeat it, sir," 
said she; "I am heartily glad of it." He looked at her, more and more 
astonished at her barbarity. "I am glad of it," said she, "because it is 
written, 'The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.' " With 
the tears rolling down his cheeks, he said, "What a precious Scripture; and 
how is it that it comes with such force to me ? Oh! madam," said he, "madam, I 
bless God for that; then he will save me; I trust my soul in his hands; he has 
forgiven me." He went outside the house, felt ill, fell upon the ground, and 
expired. I may have a lost man here this morning. As I cannot say much, I will 
leave you, good people; you do not want anything.

Have I got a lost man here? Lost man! Lost woman! Where are you? Do you 
feel yourself to be lost? I am so glad of it; for there is remission by the 
blood-shedding. O sinner, are there tears in your eyes? Look through them. 
Do you see that man in the garden? That man sweats drops of blood for you. 
Do you see that man on the cross? That man was nailed there for you. Oh! if 
I could be nailed on a cross this morning for you all, I know what you 
would do: you would fall down and kiss my feet, and weep that I should 
have to die for you. But sinner, lost sinner, Jesus died for you--for you; and 
if he died for you., you cannot be lost. Christ died in vain for no one. Are 
you, then, a sinner? Are you convinced of sin because you believe not in 
Christ? I have authority to preach to you. Believe in his name and you 
cannot be lost. Do you say you are no sinner? Then I do not know that 
Christ died for you. Do you say that you have no sins to repent of? Then I 
have no Christ to preach to you. He did not come to save the righteous; he 
came to save the wicked. Are you wicked? Do you feel it? Are you lost? Do 
you know it? Are you sinful? Will you confess it? Sinner! if Jesus were here 
this morning, he would put out his bleeding hands, and say, " Sinner, I died 
for you, will you believe me ?" He is not here in person; he has sent his 
servant to tell you. Won't you believe him? "Oh!" but you say, "I am such a 
sinner;" "Ah!" says he, "that is just why I died for you, because you are a 
sinner." "But," you say, "I do not deserve it." "Ah !" says he, "that is just 
why I did it." Say you, "I have hated him." "But," says he, "I have always 
loved you." "But, Lord, I have spat on thy minister, and scorned thy word." 
"It is all forgiven," says he, "all washed away by the blood which did run 
from my side. Only believe me; that is all I ask. And that I will give you. I 
will help you to believe." "Ah!" says one, "but I do not want a Saviour." Sir, 
I have nothing to say to you except this--"The wrath to come! the wrath to 
come!" But there is one who says, "Sir, you do not mean what you say! Do 
you mean to preach to the most wicked men or women in the place?" I mean 
what I say. There she is! She is a harlot, she has led many into sin, and 
many into hell, There she is; her own friends have turned her out of doors; 
her father called her a good-for-nothing hussey, and said she should never 
come to the house again. Woman I dost thou repent? Dost thou feel thyself 
to be guilty? Christ died to save thee, and thou shalt be saved. There he is. 
I can see him. He was drunk; he has been drunk very often. Not many nights 
ago I heard his voice in the street, as he went home at a late hour on 
Saturday night, disturbing everybody; and he beat his wife, too. He has 
broken the Sabbath; and as to swearing, if oaths be like soot, his throat must 
want sweeping bad enough, for he has cursed God often. Do you feel 
yourself to be guilty, my hearer? Do you hate your sins, and are you willing 
to forsake them? Then I bless God for you. Christ died for you. Believe! I 
had a letter a few days ago, from a young man who heard that during this 
week I was going to a certain town. Said he, "Sir, when you come, do 
preach a sermon that will fit me; for do you know, sir, I have heard it said 
that we must all think ourselves to be the wickedest people in the world, or 
else we cannot be saved. I try to think so, but I cannot, because I have not 
been the wickedest. I want to think so, but I cannot. I want to be saved, but 
I do not know how to repent enough." Now, if I have the pleasure of seeing 
him, I shall tell him, God does not require a man to think himself the 
wickedest in the world, because that would sometimes be to think a 
falsehood; there are some men who are not so wicked as others are. What 
God requires is this, that a man should say, "I know more of myself than I 
do of other people; I know little about them, and from what I see of myself, 
not of my actions, but of my heart, I do think there can be few worse than I 
am. They may be more guilty openly, but then I have had more light, more 
privileges, more opportunities, more warnings, and therefore I am still 
guiltier." I do not want you to bring your brother with you, and say, "I am 
more wicked than he is;" I want you to come yourself, and say, "Father, I 
have sinned;" you have nothing to do with your brother William, whether he 
has sinned more or less; your cry should be, "Father, I have sinned;" you 
have nothing to do with your cousin Jane, whether or not she has rebelled 
more than you. Your business is to cry, "Lord, have mercy upon me, a 
sinner!" That is all. Do you feel yourselves lost? Again, I say,--

                      "Come, and welcome, sinner, come!"

To conclude. There is not a sinner in this place who knows himself to be 
lost and ruined, who may not have all his sins forgiven, and "rejoice in the 
hope of the glory of God." You may, though black as hell, be white as 
heaven this very instant. I know 'tis only by a desperate struggle that faith 
takes hold of the promise, but the very moment a sinner believes, that 
conflict is past. It is his first victory, and a blessed one. Let this verse 
be the language of your heart; adopt it, and make it your own:

                      "A guilty weak, and helpless worm.
                        In Christ's kind arms I fall;
                     He is my strength and righteousness,
                            My Jesus and my all."



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