Are You Washed in the Blood of The Lamb

Lyrics from two songs have been randomly running through my head all morning…

“When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory”

and…

“Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power? Are you washed in the blood of the lamb? Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour? Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?”

I have no idea when I last heard either of these songs. Sometimes God just puts in my head what needs to be there.

I get caught up in life and take my eyes off Jesus and Heaven way too often, but God always puts my focus back where it belongs. Today He used two random songs stuck in my head.

It reminded me of what it’s all about. This life is so short and it’s just a speck when we compare it with eternity that goes on forever.

We are going to meet Jesus one day and if we have put our trust in Him, it will be a day of victorious rejoicing and joyous shouts of worship like NOTHING we could ever imagine.

That leads into the second set of lyrics. Which really, without knowing what they are about, sound completely weird and crazy. So, why does singing about a bloody lamb bring me overwhelming peace and happiness?

That “lamb” in the song is Jesus.

Have you ever done anything wrong in your life? Lied, cheated, stolen something, gotten drunk, hated someone in your heart, been selfish? If you have (and we ALL have…..) then you have sinned and need to be punished.

Why? Because sin is wrong, it is unjust, and it is against God who created the universe and makes the rules. Why does He get to make the rules? Because He is God, He created the world, He created you, He created me. As Francis Chan says “God is the only Being who is good, and the standards are set by Him. Because God hates sin, He has to punish those guilty of sin. Maybe that’s not an appealing standard. But to put it bluntly, when you get your own universe, you can make your own standards.” (Crazy Love, page 36)

Because God is totally just and good and hates sin He will not be with it. This creates a problem for us, His creation. We have sinned, therefore we are separated from God. In the Old Testament animal sacrifices were used to atone for sin (hence Jesus being called the lamb) but all these sacrifices had to be performed over and over and they never had the power to truly and fully cover human sin.

But God loves us and wants us. So He sent Jesus to be the “the lamb”, the last sacrifice, and the only ONE who could permanently bridge the gap created by sin. Jesus could be this sacrifice because he was without sin. He was fully God and fully human and he never once did anything wrong.

I used to cringe at this stuff. I thought Christians were weird and pretty crazy even though I called myself one. I wanted to just skip over all this awkward and odd stuff because I didn’t want people to think I was a freak who believed THAT.

But you know what, that was just my pride. This is God’s story and He is telling it perfectly.

Jesus had to die in our place. He took our sin on himself and died. He did this for us, without us asking, knowing many would reject him and his power to save them. He still died for you and for me. And it was a horrendous death. Roman crucifixion was a heinous form of torture. The lamb was bloodied.

Bloody and dead. If that was the end of the story Christians WOULD be crazy to believe and live for it. But that’s not the end.

Jesus rose from the dead. He is alive. But now, he has the power to stand in our place, to take our sin and make us clean before God. We are “washed in his blood” by this death and resurrection, when we turn to Him and begin to follow.

This is all in the Bible. All laid out and detailed and amazing to read. God spelled it out perfectly for us. I could spend paragraphs and paragraphs explaining why I trust the Bible with my whole heart and how I know it is God’s word. I could lay out all the research I did when I was lost and doing all I could to prove God was a fake and the Bible was just a stupid book that meant nothing. But it wouldn’t change your mind, only God can do that, and He does it in His perfect timing.

I’ll just say I searched hard and came to the conclusion I was most trying to escape. God is REAL. The Bible is HIS perfect will for us and therefore it must govern my life. God created me and I belong to Him.

If you’ve read this far, read a little more. Read straight from The Bible. Don’t listen to me, I’m just another person, read what God’s Word says and make your decisions based on that.

Check out the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The stories of Jesus life and death and resurrection.

Read Genesis, the first book in the Bible, about how God created us and how sin began.

Just keep on going from there! You will uncover so much truth and treasure I can’t even begin to explain. There is so much to learn and understand but the basis is so simple.

We need Jesus and He came to save us, if we trust Him we will be with Him in Heaven when we die.

It doesn’t all have to make perfect sense right now. But start praying, start studying, start searching for answers from God. I’ll end this with one more Francis Chan quote that really stirs my mind.

“Not being able to fully understand God is frustrating, but it is ridiculous for us to think we have the right to limit God to something we are capable of comprehending. What a stunted, insignificant God that would be! If my mind is the size of a soda can and God is the size of all the oceans, it would be stupid for me to say He is only the small amount of water I can scoop into my little can. God is so much bigger, so far beyond our time-encased, air/food/sleep-dependent lives.” (Crazy Love, page 34)

(Originally posted at https://injarsofclayfullofgrace.wordpress.com)