“Thank you Jesus for the blood applied
Thank you Jesus it have washed me white
Thank you Jesus You have saved my life
Brought me from the darkness into glorious light”
What a direct reminder of what occurred at Jesus’ cross. Not to be merely an annual reminder on Good Friday, but a daily reality to walk in: washed clean in the blood of Jesus. Oh what love this is! That takes on my very real and persistent and personal sin and crushes it finally and completely and then declares me a ‘new creation’ in this Jesus who died and then rose from his tomb three days later. Again, not an annual reminder but a daily reality.
“There is nothing stronger Then the wonder working power of the blood
The blood That calls us sons and daughters
We are ransomed by our father
Through the blood, The blood.”
Ransomed, indeed! Ransomed defined is “a consideration paid or demanded for the release of someone or something from captivity.” What the cross demonstrates it also causes us to consider. At the cross, we see the power of God in salvation, breaking us free from sin’s curse and power and ultimate penalty. But we also must consider that we were slaves to sin. The good news of the gospel involves bad news, also: we were sinners. The cross loses its effect if we, in our human ignorance and arrogance, assume that we weren’t ‘really that bad’ to begin with. “Sure, I’ve done some things I ought not to do or spoken mean things or thought a few deplorable things, but surely these are all common experiences of humanity? I’m not that bad.” The cross shows the exact opposite: we are worse off than we thought for, even if we sin once (just once) – we have broken the entire law and incur God’s judgment and wrath. Yet in Jesus, God’s judgement and wrath toward sin (and sinners who commit that sin) was fully exhausted. Now, as God instructed Abraham, if we walk by faith in this Jesus – no judgement or wrath remains because ‘it is finished’ Jesus said upon the cross and God seconded, for God and Jesus are one. However, if we do not cling to the cross of Christ and wonder off on another path, a broad path that leads to destruction that many are on – there is nothing but judgement and wrath for sin and sinners. For sin must be dealt with. God has given us the only solution: his only begotten Son, Jesus. It seems narrow because it is narrow. The way, Jesus said, is narrow, and few there be that find it. Either our sin has been dealt with at the cross of Jesus or our sin is laid upon ourselves for the Day of the Lord. There is no other option because there is only one Savior, and you ain’t it and I ain’t either.
The blood of Jesus is celebrated as we consider what it did, what it does, and what it will continue to do within us. It ransoms us, it saves us from our sins, from the wrath of God that those sins deserve, and carries us into a new position of grace and mercy and favor and love by God and with God. It cleanses us and reveals who we truly are: loved by God, made in His image, restored in Christ to do new works in our life that glorify God. In Christ, we can now be near God and God near us. God can be for us, in Christ, and this is all that truly matters at the end of the day and at the end of a life. “If God be for us – who can be against us?” The answer: no one. I think about being a young boy and being terrified of going to hell. I knew I sinned, I knew what sin was. Like the apostle Paul stated, my paraphrase here, ‘when the law came, I understood what sin was and I immediately, spiritually died because I knew I was guilty.’ For me, that was around the age of 9, a couple months shy of my 10th birthday. I had wrote several questions in a little notebook my grandma had; I would write a question, hand it to her, she would write her answer and hand it back. Yeah, I was extremely shy as a kid. And teen. And adult. I can’t really recall what those questions were, honestly. But I knew they pertained to the gospel and to salvation. I knew I was guilty. And that’s what initially lead me to Christ as Savior.
But guilt itself is similar to a radar. It detects the presence of sin but doesn’t really deal with it. Sure, guilt produces a certain depressed-like feeling for ‘missing the mark’ as the bible calls it. But radars can’t save. Neither can finger-pointers or very accurate stone-throwers. Jesus called them Pharisees in his day but they exist throughout all time and place in human history. What I’m trying to get at is: guilt can draw you to the Savior but it certainly won’t keep you close to Him. We so very badly want a salvation built on works – until we don’t. Grace – true, raw grace – goes against everything society is built upon. It certainly conflicts with Darwin’s theory of evolution where only the strong survive. Certainly, we can look to the followers of Jesus and the early Church and find ourselves within the apostle Paul’s description: ‘not many of you were of noble birth’ (my paraphrase, again). In other words, by worldly standards…most of us are losers. We don’t have wealth, not the brightest bulbs in the drawer, many carry around physical ailments, mental health issues, we have relational problems, we have anxieties and fears. From a more modern viewpoint, we probably aren’t ‘influensters’ with millions of followers. And yet. Here we stand, claiming this one simple truth: Jesus Christ – and Him, crucified. This leads me to another thought, that the hardest thing to accept in life, I realize as I get older, is this reality:
God really loves me.
Period at the end of that sentence. Man, it’s a hard lesson for those who never accept the period there but seem to want to add a comma or another word on to it.
God loves me, if I…
God loves me, so long as I…
God will love me, when I…
God could never love me, because I…
If I believed that God loved me, I don’t think I would’ve been desperate to seek love in failed relationships. If I believed that God loved me, I don’t think I would’ve turned to pornography for so many years to find a thrill or temporal fulfillment. If I believed that God loved me, I don’t think I would’ve sought to please so many people and I would’ve spoken how I truly felt and said what I needed to say.
And yet. Even with all the sin I just described in the above paragraph that spans 33 years – God really loves me. Friends, if we seek to add a comma, add another condition to the reality that God really loves us – then grace is not really grace. God’s grace is unmerited favor not tied to anyone but God Himself. God doesn’t love you because you’re good – His goodness makes you loved. God doesn’t love you because you’re faithful – His faithfulness makes you loved. THIS is the essence of the cross of Jesus: For God so LOVED the world, that He gave Jesus. And until we receive the love of God in Jesus, we will continue on with hopeless lives as orphans – estranged from God as Father and widows – estranged from Christ as our groom/friend. We may be influential in society, we may make tons of money, we may even give to many good causes and charities – but it all comes to an eternal halt at death, apart from Jesus.
The blood of Christ will continue its perfecting work. The sins of my youth produced guilt, as did the sins of my younger adult years, as will the sins of my older adult years. When you sin as a single person, there’s an effect to be sure. But when you get married, the effect of your sin immediately doubles. And then, Lord help us, when you have children – your sin and its effects triples most of the time. What am I getting at here? We will never get beyond needing the blood of Jesus to cover our sin. THIS is the foundation of our faith. If Christ had not died and if Christ was not raised from the dead, we can all stay home and go about our lives as usual. But if Christ did die and if Christ did rise on day # 3, then we have a hope eternal and a gospel to both cling to and share.
Thank you, Jesus.
The War Within 