The Purification of Filth
There is a purging of sin which consists in the legal expiation of it, in making atonement; but the purging of a sinner, or of the conscience, is by real efficiency, in sanctification, which is declared to be one end of the oblation of Christ, chap. 1:3. So where he is said to “wash us from our sins in his own blood,”—namely, as shed and offered for us,—Rev. 1:5, it is not only the expiation of guilt, but the purification of filth, that is intended.
John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 630.