The thing that we all need to save us from eternal death is not merely Christ’s incarnation and life, but Christ’s death. The atoning “blood” which Christ shed when He died, is the grand secret of salvation. It is the blood of the second Adam suffering in our stead, which alone can give life or health and peace to all who have the first Adam’s blood in their veins.
I can find no words to express my deep sense of the importance of maintaining in our Church the true doctrine of the blood of Christ. One plague of our age is the widespread dislike of what men are pleased to call dogmatic theology. In place of it, the idol of the day is a kind of jelly-fish Christianity — a Christianity without bone, or muscle, or sinew — without any distinct teaching about the atonement or the work of the Spirit, or justification, or the way of peace with God — a vague, foggy, misty Christianity of which the only watchwords seem to be, “You must be earnest, and real, and true, and brave, and zealous, and liberal, and kind. You must condemn no man’s doctrinal views. You must consider that everybody is right, and nobody is wrong.” And this Creedless kind of religion, we are actually told, is to give us peace of conscience! And not to be satisfied with it in a sorrowful, dying world, is proof that you are very narrow-minded! Satisfied, indeed! Such a religion might possibly do for unfallen angels. But to tell sinful, dying men and women, with the blood of our father Adam in their veins, to be satisfied with it, is an insult to common sense, and a mockery of our distress. We need something far better than this. We need the blood of Christ.
–JC Ryle, The Upper Room: Being a Few Truths for the Times (1888), pp.46-47
JC Ryle 'I call on all who profess to believe the Bible, 2 B on their guard. I know that some do not believe there is any hell at all. They think it impossible there can B sch a place. They call it inconsistnt w the mercy of God. They say it is 2 awful an idea 2 B really true' TK pic.twitter.com/fjnBLH4Yyn
— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) June 15, 2019