Hymn Study - There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood

1 There is a fountain filled with blood Immanuel was slain And sinners who are washed therein Lose ev'ry guilty stain, Lose ev'ry guilty stain. 2 The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day; And there have I, as vile as he, Washed all my sins away, Washed all my sins away. 3 Dear dying Lamb, your precious blood Shall never lose its pow'r Till all the ransomed Church of God Be saved and sin no more, Be saved and sin no more. 4 E'er since by faith I saw the stream Your flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been my theme And shall be till I die, And shall be till I die. 5 When this poor lisping, stamm'ring tongue Lies silent in the grave, Then in a nobler, sweeter song I'll sing your pow'r to save, I'll sing your pow'r to save.

I'm not the guy who does the laundry at my house. Sometimes my wife will ask me to throw something in, or simply just start the machine and looking at the number of settings and timers and measurements I'll ask her is this right which she sighs and says yes. Needless to say I don't know a lot about cleaning tough stains. One that always got me was you would get certain stains out with red wine. I'm still not sure it sounds right or if even it's just a simple wives tale or even a joke but can you imagine, a bride, who wears white, because at the moment she's supposed to look perfect gets some sort of blemish and someone says put some red wine on that, it will come right out.

How about blood, as any rough and tumble boy can tell you at one point you've bled and if you've bled a lot it gets on your clothes and it doesn't seem to bode well for saving light colored fabrics. So how would a fountain filled with blood make us blemishless? If you've witnessed someone with a severe enough wound or maybe just a bad bloody nose you can confirm that person looks far from blemishless. It's an interesting concept of being washed clean with Jesus' blood.

Now obviously we don't mean clothes or physical hygeine. We're talking about the washing away of sin from our soul. But it's fitting imagery. A few pictures come to mind. The first is the historical significance. Sacrifices needed to be made by the Jews up until Jesus' death as nothing they could do could take away their own sin. Now, these sacrifices hadn't lived perfect God pleasing lives in their place, instead God wanted His people to understand that the price of sin is death. Death in this world as our bodies our wrecked by it and death meaning separation from God as we have nothing to offer when it comes to a judge looking for perfection. God needed the Jews and us to understand that sin is not without consequence. But Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for us.

The second image is simply blood, if you get queasy from blood there's a good reason, visible blood is often an indication that something has seriously gone wrong with whoever is bleeding. No one knew this more than a bloody Jesus, though willing, He took a torment meant for us, both physical and spiritually and because of this we can point toward Jesus and because of it, our soul is blemishless. We appear as pure as brand new white cloth.

As morbid as all of this sounds with the talk of blood and death, the hymn uses its final verse to address death. When we die, we have nothing to fear. As we face our eternal judge on our first day in eternity we will stand there blemishless pointing towards what Jesus has done. We should look dirty, bloody, and any other word you can use to describe unsightly but instead will look as pure as Jesus because of Jesus. The judge won't even acknowledged a sin forgiven as it was already paid for and forgotten, as though it never happened. Now this doesn't give us permission to do as we please, though forgiveness is always available. Instead we try to live as though we were Christlike in thankfulness of our Savior's sacrifice.

We thank Jesus for giving us forgiveness of all of our sins through His sacrifice on the cross. We pray for the Holy Spirit to keep us from further blemishes and to point us on the correct path when we stumble. We thank the Father for remembering us and sending us a savior, His Son. Amen.