Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Part III: By Blood Alone Are we Saved..

In the past two entries, the main subject has been blood. Blood it is the only thing that cleanses from sin and it is the unbreakable bond in family. Here is the miraculous thing: Blood creates family. In the Bible it was Christ’s blood shed for us that was the road to not only the presence of God without condemnation but also the birth into the family of God.  This is the conclusion we can reach by reading the New Testament teaching. It is heretical to think otherwise. Those groups that proclaim themselves the true followers of God while considering others only nominal, have forgotten the most important principle of the shed blood of Christ: it covers. This leads to inevitable conclusions that there is no difference in the eyes of God. We all entered the same way: under the blood covenant of Christ. To say otherwise is to deny the power of that blood and does that sacrifice a great disservice.

The fact is that the blood that covers me is the same that covers any believer. What we choose to relate as truth after that is what separates us. The blood never does. It never has. In its truest and purest action and purpose, it unifies, it brings together the prostitute with the little old lady in the fourth pew who has served in particular church all her life. It brings together the criminal with the enforcer of that same law. It joins together the prejudiced with it target. The blood.. the blood is what is important. It is the ONLY thing that is important and all hinges in its application to the sinner of which I am chief.

When we begin to add to the blood is when we enter the realm of the Judaizer, the Gnostic, the Mormon, the Jehovah’s witness and the list goes one. It is the oldest satanic trick: to ADD to the truth. This was the original temptation and its power is still in force. I fell for this trick. I was told that the blood was not enough, to enter the Kingdom of God fully, I had to be baptized in a certain way by a certain person. I had to have the baptism of the holy spirit . If these were not present, I was in the twilight of God’s plan. What a lie. This is the same arguments used by those who taught that the following Mosaic law after belief in Christ was compulsory. Without these practices God would not be pleased. It is the Apostle Paul who spoke directly to the situation: it was another gospel (Galatians chapter 1). It added to the finished work of Christ. As such, it was called for what it was: another gospel. And it is the old story and lie played over in every generation it would seem. Will we ever learn?

How much pain does this lie inflict? Untold damage and its source is not the God we pray to it is the God we really serve.  This is the reality. Those who participate in such things do not serve the true God but the God they have manufactured.

Jesus came to break down barriers with love and give hope to the hopeless. He did not spend much time with the religiously pure but kept telling them and teaching them by example that God was love and He had come to bridge the gap we could not ever build to God (as the religious have always attempted).

No, there is only one way to God, through the blood and nothing else. Oh, I know we all have things to answer for in the end. What we did that we should not have done and what we left undone. It is that latter one I want to talk about now. What may be on that on that list of ‘undones’? Will it be the things that had to do with ministry or the services we missed or perhaps the person we refused to listen to? I guess that is possible but perhaps in the spirit of Christ and why Christ came I think it will be the smile we did not give, the person we did not forgive, the one who loved us we refused to let in. In short, the times we forgot or refused to be like Him. In all our religious effort, we are usually the one who Jesus mentions in the parable of the good Samaritan who crossed to the other side of the path. When we saw the hurt, we did not stop it. When the prisoner called, we did not visit. When the sick needed something we did not give it. When we received a letter, a birthday card, a text message from one reaching out, we did not. This is not Jesus at all, it is religion and it is ugly. It is of its father the devil and we the obedient sons when we refuse to forgive, eschew the ones not like us. Who will be on the left of Jesus? The ones who said they did great things for God. They enumerated the buildings they built, the dogma they wrote that separated and made ones more sons of hell than themselves. What will Jesus say to them? I never knew you.

The blood is our hope, it measures our indebtedness and is our motive to be like Him. God came to build a family and all families are imperfect and to a sense dysfunctional but love is the force that built it and sustains it. Blood is thicker than anything and is more powerful than any word or act. Good or bad.

In the book of Leviticus, it is forbidden to eat blood. God explains why. ‘Life is in the blood’. I can only conclude from this that blood is the important application. It caused the death angel to pass over the slave and made him free, it was the covering that protected and clothed one in the presence of the Almighty, it was the flow from Calvary that once and for all settled the state of man: It is finished.

I ask you, what else is there to do? Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe, sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.

We are left in wonder and awe at that act of mercy. There is no other way and to take away or add to is the way of Cain.