Samuel Daniels

Welcome back, my amazing Compadres!

Thank you for following me throughout this series. It is always a blessing to have you here. In my previous blogs, I touched on the discipline of fasting, types of fasting, whether or not Christian couples should have sex while fasting, how fasting after prayer, and what it means to prayer in the name of Jesus. I would like to continue in this article by discussing the power in the blood of Jesus. Fasten your seatbelt and let’s begin to cruise.

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I told you here that we were at war with a very vicious enemy, who attempts to defeat us with strategy and deceit, through well-laid plans and deliberate deception. If we are going to overcome this devil, we need to learn how to deploy all the weaponry we have at our disposal. However, “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds [1].”

We can be sure that the only way we can win this war is to learn how to use our weapons. We may have the best of arsenals but if we fail to use them effectively, we may encounter inevitable defeat. I introduced two of these weapons in this blog, the next weapon I want to talk about is the blood of Jesus. We can never overemphasise the power in the blood of Jesus.

The Way Back

It all began from the garden of Eden, humanity sinned against God, and found themselves in a state of hopelessness and nakedness. God had said

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die [2].

Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and became conscious of their nakedness. They died instantly the moment they ate the fruit, in that they were alienated from God. Death, whether physical or spiritual, has always meant “separation”. Spiritual death is when you are separated from God and physical death is when there is a separation between the spirit, soul, and body.

After the fall of humanity, God did two things for them:

1. He killed an animal and used the hide to make dresses for both of them [3].

2. He provided a temporary substitute for their sins. Leviticus 17:11 says

For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.

The reason for this was that God never contradicts His divine nature. How then could God express simultaneously, His holiness in judgment and His love in pardon? Only by providing a temporary substitute for the sinner, so that the substitute would receive the judgment and the sinner, the pardon [4]. This was the reason why God allowed them to kill animals as sacrifices.

Obviously, this substitute could not deal with the problem of sin completely. This was because, human beings sinned against God, and human beings needed to die. Therefore, the sacrifices of animals were just temporary substitutes. In order words, the blood sacrifices of the Old Testament ritual had a substitutionary significance. This was why the shedding and sprinkling of blood were indispensable to atonement, and therefore, eating of blood was prohibited [5].

It is ‘by the blood of Jesus’ that God’s wrath against sin was propitiated, and by the same blood of Jesus that we have been redeemed, justified and reconciled [5a].

The Composition of the Blood

Blood is the symbol of life. Therefore, the blood of a creature is a symbol of the very life of that creature. Leviticus 17:11 reads, “the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement.” As I have established earlier, the blood of animals was a temporary substitute. Therefore, to remove the original sin once and for all, God sent Jesus Christ to die and shed His blood on the cross.

The blood of Jesus is a crimson fountain that not only flows across centuries and spans the generations, but also supersedes cultures and customs. It breaks down walls that divide people. It can melt the most callous, murderous, vengeful, and spiteful heart known to mankind. It touches broken and despised hearts. It brings hope, cleansing, healing, and deliverance [5b].

A Perfect Substitute

Jesus’ blood that was shed on the cross was a perfect substitute because he was a man yet without sin. One of the requirements about the animal for sacrifice was that, it was to be without blemish. Whatever Jesus is, His blood is. It was required that the animal that was used for sacrifice must be clean. Blood that has the power to cleanse must come from a clean source, and the blood of Jesus has no equivalence because He is holy. And therefore, his blood is holy and cannot be compared to any other.

The Old Testament sets the stage for us to understand two crucial texts in the letter to the Hebrews. The first is that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” [6], and the second is that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” [7].

No forgiveness without blood meant no atonement without substitution. There had to be life for life or blood for blood. But the Old Testament blood sacrifices were only shadows; the substance was Christ. For a substitute to be effective, it must be an appropriate equivalent. Animal sacrifices could not atone for human beings, because a human being is ‘much more valuable…than a sheep’, as Jesus Himself said (Mt, 12:12). Only ‘the precious blood of Christ’ was valuable enough [8].

This implies that our redemption was accomplished not with something cheap or temporary, but with something valuable and permanent [8a].

The Power in the Blood of Jesus

It is the blood of Jesus that purged us and brought us back to God. Romans 5:9 reads, “Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God”. Every bondage and oppression terminates in the blood. The blood of the Passover lamb in the Old Testament was a shadow of the blood of Jesus in the New Testament. When Moses employed the blood of the Passover lamb, he never again said to Pharaoh, “God says let my people God [8b].

The key to Israel’s sacrificial system was the Passover (pesah) in Egypt (Exod 12:1-30). God commanded each Hebrew household to slay an unblemished yearling lamb or goat at twilight and to apply the blood of the victim to the door frame. For the Israelites who obeyed God’s instruc­tions, the sprinkled blood secured exemption from the divine judgment. But in the case of the unbelieving Egyptians who were not sheltered by the blood, the Lord struck dead all their firstborn men and animals [9].

The blood of Jesus is able to pull down strongholds because, whenever we invoke the blood of Jesus, since the life of the flesh is in the blood [10], we are invoking His very presence on the scene. The blood of Jesus, therefore, is what terminates every oppression and enforces our complete emancipation. It is the trump card for the righteous. It is the last straw that breaks the back of the camel.

Thank you for stopping by. Watch out for my next blog in this series. Subscribe to my newsletter from below, and get notified of new posts. You may also drop a comment or question in the comment section below.

References

[1] 2 Corinthians 10:4 (KJV)

[2] Genesis 2:17

[3] Genesis 3:21

[4] John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ. (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1986), 134

[5] John, The Cross of Christ. 137-138

[5a] John, The Cross of Christ, 238

[5b] Mary, K. Baxter, The Power of the Blood, (New Kensington, Whitaker House, 2005), 17-18

[6] Hebrews 9:22

[7] Hebrews 10:4

[8] John, The Cross of Christ, 138

[8a] J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Jesus our Immanuel: An Exercise in Homiletics Christology, (Accra: Step Publishers, 2020), 208

[8b] David O. Oyedepo, Signs & Wonders Today: A Catalogue of the Amazing Acts of God, (Canaan Land, Ota: Dominion Publishing House, 2008), 117

[9] Bruce Demarest, The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1997), 168-169

[10] Leviticus 17:11

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