April 5, 2013

A Brilliant Strategy

By Skip Heitzig

It mystifies me when churches today want to de-spiritualize their worship and take away the songs that talk about the blood of Jesus. They think it’ll turn people off. But let’s be clear: You have no gospel without the blood of Jesus Christ, and you have no standing before God!

At the original Passover, the blood of a lamb was applied to the doorposts and the lintel post in the form of a cross, and that blood protected the household from death (see Exodus 12). And in the same manner, you are saved from eternal death not because you're a good person, not because you pray two hours a day, or whatever, but because of the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ.

The blood is also how you overcome sin and the devil. 1 John 2:1 says, “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” I’ll raise my hand on that one—and you should too! We are all guilty of sin.

Advocate means lawyer. So we’re in court: Satan is the prosecuting attorney, and he’s condemning you and me constantly before the throne of God. But Jesus Christ is our defense attorney, our advocate. And what would our defense attorney have us do? Yell at the devil, rebuke him for being so harsh in his accusations? No, and you know why? Because they're all true! All of the accusations Satan would make about you and me before God are true. You really don't deserve God's love, and neither do I. We are utterly sinful.

But Jesus said something interesting in Matthew 5. He said, “Agree with your adversary.” It's a brilliant strategy. So when Satan condemns us, we don't answer, “Well, I didn't mean to do it. I'm really not a bad person at heart.” No, we should say something like, “He's right. In fact, there's a lot more stuff on me he doesn't know about because he can’t read my mind. I'm probably even worse than he is accusing me of before the throne of God. But the blood of my defense attorney has cleansed me from it.”

So it's not anything we’ve done, it's not any righteousness that we have, it's all about the blood. That's why Romans 8:32 says that God “did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.” And verse 33 says, “Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.” And that’s because of the blood.

There's a beautiful old hymn with these words: “I hear the accuser roar, of ills that I have done. I know them well, and thousands more; Jehovah findeth none.” All those accusations against us are true. We can’t argue with them. We can only agree and say, “But the blood of my attorney, my advocate Jesus Christ, is enough to overcome it all.”

So in this Easter season, let’s not be reluctant to sing about the blood of Jesus Christ. Let’s celebrate it!

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