And now, what is meant by the expression ‘Cleanseth us from all sin?’ I find that it is sometimes supposed to mean, ‘the inward cleansing of the soul,’ or the purifying of the heart by the Holy Ghost, as in Acts, xv. 9: ‘Purifying their hearts by faith.’ But I know of no other passage of Sacred Scripture in which this is the meaning of cleansing by blood; whereas there are many in which it means the removal of all legal guilt, as in Heb. ix. 13, 14, where the blood of the Jewish sacrifice is said to ‘sanctify to the purifying of the flesh,’ and the blood of Christ ‘to purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God.’ The word in that passage in the Hebrews for ‘purging,’ is the same as here rendered ‘cleanseth;’ and, if there were nothing in the context to decide it, the general use of the language of Scripture would be sufficient. But the context appears to leave no doubt on the subject. The ninth verse clearly shows that the subject of the forgiveness of sin is the subject of discussion: ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ And then in the opening of the next chapter you find the full explanation of the text. The first two verses are in fact little more than an expansion of it. The first verse sets before us the highest possible standard of sinless holiness: ‘My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.’ After which the Apostle proceeds to show the provision which God has made for us under the sense of sin: ‘If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sin.’ This is an expansion of the short statement of the text: ‘The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ It teaches of Christ Jesus, the righteous Advocate and the perfect Propitiation; it shows that the blood is the blood of atonement, and the cleansing the blotting out of the guilt of sin through the propitiation; it points the contrite believer, deeply humbled for sin, to what is now passing at the right hand of God, where the Son of God now stands as his Advocate, having completed the sacrifice, and sprinkled the blood before the mercy-seat. That sprinkled blood is the cleansing power, and the cleansing is the blotting out of guilt so completely that the soul stands before God as free from all legal pollution as if it had never been defiled. It is perfectly true that there are other passages in which we read of inward holiness as a purification of the heart: as _e.g._, 1 John, iii. 3. But that is quite a different thing to the cleansing through blood described in our text, the real meaning of which is the removal of all guilt from the guilty sinner by the transfer of it, according to the covenant, to the great sin-bearer: ‘The Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.’