Power in the Blood of Jesus

When people first open the Bible, they often come away thinking they have met two different Gods, a fierce God in the Old Testament and a gentle one in the New. But there is only one God, and He does not change. From the very beginning He describes Himself the same way.

The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

Exodus 34:6-7

This is who God has always been. He says over and over, in words that have echoed across the ages, that He is good and ready to forgive, plenteous in mercy. Through the prophet Jeremiah He tells His people, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." And Paul writes that even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be His through Christ, deciding in advance to make us His children. That was His pleasure and His purpose.

Notice what that means. God did not create you first and foremost so that you could serve Him, worship Him, and run errands for Him. He created you because He had so much love in Himself that He wanted someone to share it with. God made you to love you. Hold on to that, because everything that follows only makes sense once you know it is true.

The problem we would rather not name

There is, however, a problem. The Bible calls it sin, and at its root it is simpler and more personal than we like to admit. Sin is living for your own selfish self, putting yourself first, ahead of everyone and everything else. Ahead of God, and ahead of other people.

Think about how this works. What is stealing? It is putting yourself ahead of the person you took from. What is lying? It is putting yourself ahead of the person you are lying to. Whether it is a small deception or a business that defrauds its clients of millions, the machinery underneath is the same: I matter more than you do. And the moment you place yourself ahead of God or ahead of others, the next thing you do begins to bend out of shape.

This is because of how God built the world. In God Himself, love flows outward. The Son lives for the Father and the Spirit; the Spirit lives for the Father and the Son; the Father lives for the Son and the Spirit. God made us to live the same way, for Him and for one another. That is exactly why, when Jesus was asked for the greatest commandment, He gave two that belong together.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22:37-39

Why sin cannot simply be overlooked

It helps to see sin for what it really is. It is a kind of cancer, and it sits at the root of so much of our pain. It is the same self-first impulse that has torn apart marriages and homes, hardened children against their parents, and, magnified across nations, produced the great horrors of history. We are tempted to measure ourselves against those horrors and feel safe. Do not tell me you are fine simply because you have never committed genocide or robbed a bank.

The uncomfortable truth is that the same bitterness that keeps you from forgiving a neighbor is the same root that, given power and opportunity, has driven men to murder millions. It may not be the same quantity, but it is the same quality. And God does not weigh us by quantity; He weighs us by quality. Placed in exactly the same position as history's worst, none of us can be sure we would do better.

So the Bible does not flinch. Sin is evil. Sin is destructive. Sin subjects all of creation to corruption. "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:20), and "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). What then should a good and loving God do with something that poisons everything it touches?

Consider what a surgeon does with a cancer. He cuts it out. He does not do it because he hates the patient; he does it because he loves the patient and refuses to let the disease win. People sometimes say they cannot imagine a loving God who would judge sin. I understand the feeling, but I have come to the opposite conclusion: I cannot imagine a loving God who would not. If He shrugged at everything that destroys the people He made, He would not be loving at all. The opposite of love is not anger; it is indifference.

And here is where the story catches us all. Scripture is honest that there is none righteous, no, not one. We have all gone our own way.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:6

That is our situation. A God who made a people so that He could love them, and a people who have chosen to live the opposite of His nature. Loved, and yet deserving of judgment. So the question hangs in the air: is there any way both to honor the seriousness of sin and to rescue the sinner?

An old law about a ransom

The Old Testament actually gives us a picture of the answer, tucked into an ancient farming law in Exodus 21. Imagine a man who owns an ox. In that world an ox was precious, not only for food but as the engine that worked the fields. But a strong ox could also be dangerous; it could gore a person. So the law held owners responsible for their animals.

If an ox with no history of violence gored someone, the ox was put to death. But if the owner already knew the animal was in the habit of goring and did nothing, and then the ox got loose and killed someone, the owner himself was held liable. He had been negligent. Under the law, his own life could be required.

And yet the law made room for mercy. The offended family could choose to place a ransom on him instead, a set payment accepted in exchange for his life. Sit with what that meant. First, the guilty man deserved death, but was allowed to pay something less; the penalty was mitigated. Second, the offended party was never obligated to offer that ransom. To let a man live who had cost you someone you loved was a staggering act of grace. And third, once the ransom was accepted, it did more than spare a life. It ended the enmity and restored the relationship. The wronged party was, in effect, saying: I am choosing for us to be friends rather than enemies.

The ransom God provides is Himself

Now hear what God says in the book of Leviticus, and let it land.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul.

Leviticus 17:11

God is speaking to us the way that grieving family could have spoken to the negligent man. You have deeply hurt me by your selfishness and sin. In justice, the price is your own life. But because I love you, I will provide the payment myself. Take it, bring it to me, and let it stand as a ransom for your soul.

This is the heart of it, and it is almost too good to say plainly. God does not merely tell us a ransom exists. He provides the ransom Himself, and the ransom He provides is Himself. In the old covenant, all those sacrifices, all that blood of bulls and goats, were never the real payment. They were signposts pointing forward to the one ransom God would one day pay in person. And unlike the ox owner's ransom, which was worth less than the penalty, God gives a ransom worth infinitely more: His own blood, shed on the cross.

• "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him." (Romans 5:9)
• "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace." (Ephesians 1:7)
• "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." (Ephesians 2:13)
• "Making peace through his blood, shed on the cross." (Colossians 1:20)

That is the power in the blood of Jesus. It is not a slogan. It is a payment strong enough to cover everything sin has done to you and stronger still than the penalty you were owed.

How much greater the new covenant is

You cannot really understand the New Testament without the Old, but once you stand inside the New you would never trade back. Under the old covenant, if you touched a leper you became unclean and had to bring a sacrifice to be made clean again. Under the new, Jesus touches the leper and the leper is made clean. Under the old, touching a dead body left you defiled for days. Under the new, Jesus takes a corpse by the hand and life returns. That is the difference the ransom makes; it does not merely cover the uncleanness, it overwhelms it.

There is one more difference, and it is the greatest of all. In the old covenant the people came year after year, sacrifice after sacrifice, to cover their sin for one more season. But the blood of Jesus was shed once, for all people, for all time. That means it does not expire. Whether someone turned to Him the day He was crucified, a year later, or thousands of years on, the same ransom holds, because it is the blood of God Himself.

This is for you

So here is the invitation, and it is meant personally. Whatever your record, whatever you feel you deserve, God has already provided the ransom. Anyone in any generation who brings that ransom, who simply trusts in what Jesus has done, is welcomed home. The blood of Jesus saves us from the guilt and grip of sin. It meets us in our sorrow, our discouragement, our sense of failure, and speaks a stronger word over our lives than any of them can. It carries us near to the God who made us to love us.

You do not have to clean yourself up first, and you do not have to pay a debt you could never afford. That is exactly what the cross was for. If you have never received this gift, you can do it now, right where you are, with a prayer as simple as: Jesus, I have gone my own way. Thank you for giving your blood as my ransom. I receive it, and I give you my life. Heaven is not reluctant. The offended party has already decided; He is choosing for you to be family rather than strangers. That is the power in the blood of Jesus.