“Lord, May Thy Blood Now Cleanse Me” by Watchman Nee
Songs and Hymns of Life, #331
Post 1 of 2: in this first post, we will cover the first two verses and chorus of this hymn. Please come back next week to see the post on the third and fourth verses.
Please sing through the hymn before reading through the devotional.
A link to the tune: https://hymnary.org/media/fetch/184960
Verse 1
Lord, may Thy blood now cleanse me,
Wash all my sins away,
That with Thy Holy Spirit
Thou may anoint, I pray.
My service, I confess, Lord,
Is failure-full and weak;
The filling of Thy Spirit
To live for Thee I seek.
This is a precious hymn by Watchman Nee. From beginning to end, there is an air of soberness, honesty, and desperation contained in all the lines. This is not one of those “light and bouncy” hymns that you can sing one minute and resume your day as you would choose; no, if you have an openness to the Lord, it should bring you into a state of desperate prayer and seeking the Lord to go deeper in your heart, to have a renewed desire to be brought past our troublesome selves that assail us and frustrate the Lord from having a free way in us and through us, and to live for the Lord and be filled with His Spirit. I invite you to consider the words of the song, to be open to the Lord with how He would like to touch your heart, and seek to have a deeper life with Christ. Let us take this journey together as we walk through this hymn.
The first lines of the first verse has the best of starting points: invite the Lord to come in and freshly cleanse away all your sins; hidden sins, unknown sins, known sins (perhaps at this time you need to specifically confess some to the Lord). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, ASV). The aim here is to have a clean and clear conscience before the Lord, that we may hear His speaking, and be anointed and filled again with His Spirit. The second half of verse one is filled with an honest appraisal of one’s life and service before the Lord. If I am to be honest with myself and the Lord, I must acknowledge that my service is poor, full of failure, full of my own weakness permeating all that I have endeavored to do for the Lord and is ultimately frustrating to what He would desire to do. It is not easy for me to say this, but the Lord shines His light on me to show this to me. Has He shone in your heart something similar? How much more could the Lord have done through you, if the “you” didn’t get in the way all the time? Nevertheless, I confess my failure, and am brought back to the Lord’s way: that I may be filled with His Spirit, to have a life completely for Him.
I personally have a difficult time thinking that Brother Nee wrote these words. This dear servant of the Lord faithfully served the Lord until he was martyred; he raised up so many churches; he saw so many people be saved and come to the Lord; he had a wonderfully profound impact on the whole Body of Christ; personally, I know that I would not be the Jesus-lover I am today without his influence: how can he say that his service is full of failure? Can we not see his success? Can we not see the fruit born through his service? It could be that, however mature we are in the Lord, in spite of all the spiritual successes that we may have encountered, we are never far from that ‘self’ which is ever the frustration to God’s move on the earth. Which brings us to the Chorus of the hymn.
Chorus:
Oh, from myself deliver,
From all its misery,
I’d henceforth be forever
Completely filled with Thee.
Some of us have received light from the Lord to know just how miserable our “self” is. But do we maybe think sometimes that we are pretty good, we’re doing fine, and we just need a little help, a little boost, to serve the Lord and succeed in living a life that is for Him? Friend, I assure you that this is not true. In Matthew 16, Peter has a revelation and confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God (v. 16), Jesus responds and tells him he is blessed and that upon this rock He will build His church (vv. 17-18). So wonderful! But then, seemingly right after this high point, Peter is rebuked by Jesus and called ‘Satan’ for minding the things of men instead of the things of God (vv. 21-23), after which He tells all His disciples: “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (v. 24). We all think a lot of different things, and sadly to say, often we are not thinking of the things of God. Paul, in his desperation to be freed from flesh and self, exclaims: “Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). We see that his answer is found in the Spirit of Life that we see all in the beginning of Romans 8. Oh, the Lord needs to do so much work in us to bring us into a life that is for Him! May we sing this chorus again and again, “Lord, deliver me from myself! Save me from myself! Let my life be all for You, completely filled with You! Do what You must to gain what You desire in me!”
During Brother Nee’s life, he became increasingly clear about the truths contained in Romans 6, 7, and 8, as well as Galatians 2:20 about being crucified with Christ, being dead to sin, and being able to walk in newness of life and Christ being his life and the wonderful One living inside of him. Though his life was full of so many experiences, many good, so many being rather negative, like being excommunicated from the church life and brethren that he helped to raise up in Foochow, more and more he had the realization that Christ as his life needed to be expressed in his living and ministry in the gospel and among the churches. In light of his life, we can see that this chorus could be considered the application of all those profound truths of Christ as our life, in how we need to be delivered from our self-life, that we can live in the Spirit, experience the filling of the Spirit more, and allow Christ to be lived out in us. Such a desire was so characteristic of Brother Nee’s ministry and life. May we too echo his prayer and seek to have a life that is only for God and filled with His Spirit.
Verse 2
O Lord, how dry my heart is,
It yearns and pants for Thee;
The filling of Thy Spirit
Is now my fervent plea.
Within the smitten Rock, Lord,
I would entirely hide;
Pour through Thy living water,
Till I am satisfied.
Now we come to verse 2. Sometimes we are well-aware that our hearts are so dry. Like the Samaritan woman in John 4, we try the same old things again and again, but they leave us so dry and thirsty. But now, after tasting and seeing that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2:3), we have that spring of living water that gushes up to eternal life (John 4:14), and like deer panting for water brooks (Psalm 42:1), we are seeking and coming to the Lord and His Spirit to quench that spiritual thirst (John 7:37-39). Christ is our smitten Rock from whom flows our spiritual drink (1 Cor. 10:4), and we can seek to just be hidden in Him completely to have His living water flow to quench our dry, thirsty hearts. It is so refreshing to come to Christ as the Fountain again and again. How we all need more of His flowing within!
Verse 3
How cold my heart has been, Lord,
How slow obeying Thee;
So fill me with Thy Spirit,
I’ll ne’er rebellious be.
I lie upon Thy altar
And dare not move away;
Oh, may Thy flame descending
Consume my all, I pray.Verse 4
Oh, may Thy Cross within me
Deepen its work and burn,
In me enlarge Thy measure,
And me to ashes turn.
Oh, may Thy Spirit fill me
Each day more than before,
And may Thy living water
On me and through me pour.
What a rich and profound hymn! May the Lord inspire us all to have more of a life filled with His Spirit! May we come to Him, again and again, not only to have our sins freshly cleansed away, but also to drink of His living waters more and more! May we surrender ourselves to Christ more that He can have His way in us!
Please join us next week as we walk through the second half of this precious hymn.
In what ways have you had experiences of being anointed and filled with the Spirit? How have you been brought to have that desperate cry in your heart to be delivered from your ‘self’? Have you tasted the living waters recently? How have they satisfied you?
