When did God see The Blood?
There
has never been a time when the eternal Jehovah did not look to
Christ, the Lamb slain, as the ground of all His blessings to and the
salvation of His elect. As He said of that earthly people that
picture His redeemed, "When I see the blood I will
pass over you" (Exodus
12:13). It was not when they saw it but when He saw it!
When did God "see" the blood of His Son as the
justice-satisfying sacrifice for the sins of His people? "When"
really doesn't apply to God Who beholds everything in all of time and
eternity with one all-encompassing view. Without a doubt there is a
progressive manifestation and revelation of the purpose and will of
God's grace in Christ, but the unchanging God of eternal glory views
and always has viewed all His grace children in Christ.
Looking
to Christ crucified, He loved them, chose them, established His
everlasting covenant concerning them, all with an eye to "the
blood." Looking to this Lamb slain (there being no
possibility that He could fail), He could justly bless them even then
with "all spiritual blessings." Christ the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is Christ the Lamb
hanging on the cross and the Lamb John sees in the Revelation as
newly slain. Christ's sacrifice for the sins of His people is the
"everlasting righteousness" that was brought
in or made manifest when He came into the world and died the death of
the cross. The great change comes when He enables us to see the blood
by faith! When we see the blood, which occurs when the Spirit of God
reveals it to us and in us through the gospel of Christ crucified, we
change, casting off the rags of our self-righteousness and pleading
the blood of Christ as the only way God has and could be just and
justify us.
We
look to this Lamb slain just as God always has! "Being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans
3:24). "Neither by the blood of goats and
calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place,
having obtained eternal redemption for us" (Hebrews
9:12). The word "obtained" here means to find,
discover, perceive. By His blood (death, sacrifice) Christ entered
into the holy place of heaven and we in Him find or perceive this
"eternal redemption" sure and accomplished
through His blood. His blood is the blood of the everlasting covenant
which is ordered in all things and sure and this is all the salvation
of the people of God!
-Gospel
report by preacher Gary Shepard
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