This morning I have been thinking about the importance of the power of the blood of Jesus in the life of a believer. Anyone who has been in church for any length of time has probably heard (at least I hope that have heard!) about the power of the blood of Jesus to cleanse us from all sin. That great truth of redemption is one of the bedrock ingredients of the foundation of Christian doctrine. But I have learned over 38 years of being a believer and studying the Bible that there is far more to the blood than just what I stated. God reveals something about the blood that is both a spiritual and scientific truth and we find this truth in Leviticus 17:11: “…the life of the body is in the blood, and I have given you rules for pouring that blood on the altar •to remove your sins so you will belong to the Lord [to make atonement]. It is the blood that •removes the sins [makes atonement], because it is life.” The Expanded Bible I want to highlight that first phrase, “The life of the body is in the blood” and share some insights about it with you. Everyone recognizes that we need blood for the physical body to live. We also recognize that when a physical body bleeds out, the person will die. Any kind of disease that affects the blood is life-threatening. These are all basic understandings that are unarguable. But, have you ever thought about where the blood derives its ability to transmit life to the physical body? I have. And, I have come to realize that the blood is the one of the very few elements of our physical bodies that has a spiritual quality and capability that is the key to its power. I will describe it in this manner: take a perfectly healthy physical body, no sickness or disease in it, and remove all the blood from that body. Can that body sustain life? No. That is what happens when someone sustains an injury that causes a major artery to be severed. They could be otherwise healthy, but when they lose enough blood so that physically they cannot continue to live, they will die. So the reality is that without the blood a person cannot live. Take that same person with a healthy body, and have their spirit depart. Will the physical body continue to live? No, not in the truest sense of the word. You can hook that physical body up to a heart-lung machine that will forcibly work the lungs and pump the heart to circulate the blood and sustain the physical processes of the body, but that is not real life. If you shut the machine off with no spirit present to provide the life force to the blood the body will quit working and it will begin to decay. This reality brought me to understand something that is a powerful concept that reveals the importance of the New Birth to our physical body. The life of the flesh is in the blood, but the life of the blood is derived from the spirit of a man. The blood is not just physical in nature, it is spiritual in nature as well. The blood has the ability to absorb the spiritual life force or energy of the human spirit and translate it into physical life and energy for the body. Something else I have learned as I have researched this subject: The religious tradition of thinking that the father is the source of the blood of a child is actually false. Genetic studies have proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the blood is formed from the bone marrow of the developing fetus and possesses a DNA structure that is unique to that fetus. The DNA is a very intricate and special product of the coming together of half of the chromosomes of the mother combining with half of the chromosomes of the father when the egg is fertilized by the sperm. Without getting too technical in this treatise, the chromosomes of both the father and mother are unique to them and carry the DNA passed on from their parents. When the nuclei of the egg and sperm fuse; the egg and sperm cease to exist individually as they unite to form a single cell that is unique in every way. The 23 single chromosomes from the egg combine with the 23 from the sperm, forming a complete set of 23 pairs, 46 in total; and at this moment, the life of a new and unique human being begins. This singular genetic blueprint, defining every trait of this new person, has been uniquely defined among a billion possibilities, and can never be changed; nor will it ever be repeated. All of your bodys cells contain chromosomes, which are packages of DNA strands; that DNA holds the map of your genes. If youre a human, 46 is the magic number: we have 46 chromosomes, in 23 matched pairs. One chromosome in each pair was contributed by your father, and one by your mother. Every cell in your body contains your complete genetic blueprint in the 46 chromosomes in its nucleus. If the father is the true biological father of the child, a paternity test will reveal that half of the childs genetics will match that of the fathers. The father’s genetics is the result of the previous combinations of genetics passed down from his relatives, all contributing to the ultimate genetic make-up that resulted when he was conceived in the womb of his mother. However, in the case of Jesus, His conception was supernatural. The “sperm” that fertilized the egg in Mary’s womb was the Word of God. The chromosomes and DNA of God Himself would have been one half of the contributing genetic structure that produced the fetus, the other half coming from Mary. It is that supernatural element, the pure and powerful genetics introduced by God Himself that enabled Jesus body to not carry the tainting element of the sin nature that doomed natural man to a life of sin and death. This actually reveals that the sin nature of the flesh is contained in the genes the father and passed on to the child and that, not necessarily the blood, is what God avoided through the virgin birth. This also reveals that the blood passes on the power of the nature of man’s spirit, and that is the key to the dominating influence of man’s physical nature. Adam, before he sinned, was one with God’s spiritually. He was walking in spiritual union with his Creator, who was God Himself. However, Adam had a will, the ability to make his own personal choice. God warned him that if he chose to partake of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil what would happen to him: he would die. Romans 5:12-14 reveals what happened on the day Adam made the wrong choice: “You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.” The Message Bible. Jesus indicated that even the most religious people of His day had a different father than He. “You’re from your father, the Devil, and all you want to do is please him. He was a killer from the very start. He couldn’t stand the truth because there wasn’t a shred of truth in him. When the Liar speaks, he makes it up out of his lying nature and fills the world with lies.” John 8:44 The Message Bible. When Adam sinned, spiritually he disconnected from God and became spiritually united to a fallen angel called Satan. That spiritual union corrupted man’s spiritual nature and that, in turn, caused his blood to begin to transmit the evil and dark nature of his new spiritual head to his entire physical makeup. It changed his genetic makeup and, spiritual death, the new existence of his spirit through separation from God, began to exercise its influence on Adam’s physical body. Death began to work to eventually corrupt the physical body of Adam until it could no longer support the existence of his spirit and when that point was reached he died physically. Sin opened the door to death, first to man’s spirit through separation from God, and then, over time, brought about the death of man’s physical body. It was this influence of spiritual death that began to cause the mutation of the physical genes and chromosomes that opened the door to sickness and disease. The tremendous disruption of the physical environment of the earth brought about through the flood of Noah’s day set things up for an ongoing degradation of conditions on this planet that ultimately changed from supporting life to supporting death. There were many other results of Adam’s sin, such as the introduction of fear; the influence of darkness and evil upon man’s mind and consciousness; the gradual introduction of words born out of fear and death that man began to speak, which gave the devil greater authority to work to produce things that would ultimately create an environment that was increasingly hostile to man’s life on the earth. And, many, many more things too numerous to mention here. The point I want you to see here is that Adam and Eve, after the fall, could do nothing but give birth to children who carried this corrupted genetics that caused them to ultimately yield to sin and bring about spiritual death. With each successive generation mankind developed this corrupt genetics to the degree that it became a challenge for God to find a man who would listen to Him and exercise faith in Him. Whenever God found a man who would do that and listen to Him and exercise faith in Him, God used that man as an avenue to legally get His Word into the earth. Man’s tongue was still the key to authority and dominion spiritually as revealed in Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the authority (power) of the tongue…” So, if God could get a man to hear, and either speak or write His Word here in the earth, that Word had legal authority granted to it by virtue of man receiving it and giving heed to it. When God was able to secure the avenue of a blood covenant with Abraham; that became a powerful legal avenue for God to use to begin to get His Word in the earth in ever increasing measures. As time passed God called many of those born of Abraham, who were covenant men and women with God, to speak and write His Word under His anointing so that God could legally bring those words to pass at the appointed time set by God. That was the primary purpose of the Old Testament prophet’s ministry, to give God a legal avenue through which He could have His Word spoken in the earth. Once it was spoken by a man in obedience to God it held authority over everything in the earth, including the devil. It was this means of legal entry that God used to introduce every word that ultimately described, in detail, everything that Jesus would be, and do, in His earthly existence. When God had fully described all that Jesus would be and accomplish, including the nature and location of His birth all the way to the nature and manner of His death and what would be accomplished in His work of redemption; those Words supernaturally became the means of conception in the womb of Mary when she stated the faith-filled words of Luke 1:38, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” That is what caused the virgin to conceive the Word of God effect the creation of what the New Testament calls “the Last Adam.” (1 Corinthians 15:45) The Book of Hebrews describes this very clearly in Chapter 10,, verses 5 through 7: “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.” God, through all the different avenues of types and shadows and prophetic utterances, had finally been able to create a new Adam, just like the previous Adam, with one major difference. Whereas the first Adam was a son of God by creation and spiritually was one with God; that man was not God in the flesh. He, according to Psalm 8 was made just a shade lower that God. He was made in the image and likeness of God, but still had to have a spiritual head through a living union with God. Jesus, on the other hand, was God by virtue of being the Second Person of the Godhead. God was not entrusting the outcome of this next Adam to a spirit that would disconnect from its Creator. God was taking the redemption of man upon Himself; and His Son, the Christ, took upon Himself flesh and became a man. Thus, being the Christ, He was God and lived in a fellowship with His Father, who was God, a fellowship that had existed for eternity. However, becoming a man, Christ had to live in the earth as man was designed to live, albeit He could demonstrate how God had intended man to live in the earth while in perfect union and fellowship with His creator. Here is what I want you to get an understanding of in this posting… Jesus is the Second Person of the Godhead in spirit. He was God, manifested in the flesh. His blood was deriving its energy and life from His nature which was the nature of God. He was truly the Son of God by birth, but also, by the fact that He took a flesh body, He became the Son of Man. He was the God-Man, the perfect union of God with man and thus the perfect Substitute to carry out the work of Redemption that had to be performed to reconcile God and man. The end result of His work of redemption produced the ability for a fallen man to come back into union with God through the agency of the New Birth. What is called being “Born Again” is the Biblical terminology of the work of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life when they accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. They are brought into a living spiritual union with Jesus Christ and the Father by virtue of the recreation of their spirit. That all takes place by faith and is a work of God’s grace and is entirely supernatural in its nature. Once you are born again and are brought into that living spiritual union with Christ, the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit in union with your spirit can have a dramatic effect on the quality and quantity of your earthly life when you learn how to cooperate with God in a life of yielded obedience. That is why renewing your mind to the Word of God, especially the New Testament letters, is so important, for in those writings is where your new spiritual life and union with God is described in detail. You also learn how to talk words of life and blessing that are major keys to allowing the Holy Spirit having license to bring the Life of God, which is in your spirit through the living union, to bear in an ever increasing measure in every area of your life. This is what give real power to your tongue, when you learn to say what He is wanting you to say on an ongoing basis. Those are words of life that authorize God’s life to have full unfettered power in your entire being and surroundings. Romans 8:11 reveals that the power of the Holy Spirit, which dwells in you through that spiritual union produced by the new birth, is to have a major beneficial effect even upon your physical life now. “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Your spirit, once born again, is alive with the very life of God. Your blood, as a result, is able to transmit that life to your physical body in an ever increasing measure as long as you continue to get your thoughts and words in ever increasing alignment with the way God wants you to think and speak. This is actually how God designed your redemption from sickness and disease to be actualized in this earth. But, few of God’s people ever really master the art of living this way for it takes discipline and effort to renew the mind and break the habit patterns learned when you were spiritually disconnected from Him and living in an environment where this fallen world and the devil had unhindered influence on your life. The blood of Jesus is an important element to living a successful Christian life. It is a powerful tool and even weapon that enables us to secure victory in a myriad of situations and circumstances when we have faith in it and learn how to release its power in our lives and on our behalf. The secret to its power is that is both the blood of man and the blood of God are united in one being, Jesus Christ. He is the mediator between God and man and His blood is the means whereby God was able to secure the victory over sin and death and in turn, give that victory to us when we will believe in it and receive it. There is so much more to this, but I will stop here. I think there is enough here for you to study out for yourself and keep you in the Bible for a while!
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 22:08:22 +0000
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