Trusting in Jesus Isn't Witchcraft!

What does washed in His blood mean?

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Matthew 26:28

 

 

Some lessons are best learned going to church and Sunday school, listening, asking questions among anointed people in the church, and searching scriptures with prayer. Sometimes, it helps to just ask the Lord, "Help me with this," when reading the Bible.

 

But understanding the blood of Jesus is something that just happens in the heart of a believer, regardless of any discussion. Understanding the blood that was shed at Calvary, happens in the heart of a believer who honestly seeks the Bible with his or her whole heart.

 

And, when we have that understanding, we have to be offended that anyone would do blood rituals (as in witchcraft) to say anything about a faith whose way is pure.

 

We know the Lord has given us a better way.

 

Because God put Himself in place of blood sacrifices done in the darkness of the Old Testament, it's not okay to tinker with blood. And it's not okay to violate any human being. There's no cure or deliverance in violence or any other evil.

 

Jesus's prescription for the remission of sins isn't evil. We remember the sacrifice of His own body, and the sprinkling of His own blood, through a communion that utilizes the juice of crushed grapes and plain, flat bread, instead of anything of an animal or of a person's flesh.

 

Jesus's own suffering and death is the only sacrifice acceptable to Heaven for remission of sins.

 

It takes faith in order to know that.

 

It also takes faith to understand how Roman soldiers and the thief on the cross were baptized in a unique way on the day Jesus was crucified. No one since that time can be baptized in this way: As Jesus said (and I'm paraphrasing), at the time of His crucifixion: "From today onward, you will see me at the right hand of Power."

 

We look at what He says in context of all of Matthew 26 (http://biblehub.com/aramaic-plain-english/matthew/26.htm), which includes a verse where Jesus is saying He had been in the temple teaching — sharing His power.

 

In the temple, Jesus gave of Heaven's power, and those who went on to teach in the temple that day of the crucifixion, were as if still with Jesus, seated around His word.

 

But what about the thief on the cross physically next to Jesus?

 

I believe the thief's faith was so sincere, that that former thief became the first of the church that day. I believe he received an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

 

That is to say that someone who was physically at Jesus's right hand, became the church's "Power" — became of the Spirit.

 

Like in the case of the woman who believed on Jesus and received His healing power when she touched the hem of His garment (in an event that caused Jesus to feel as if power had gone out of Him), the former thief confessed faith in Jesus and received Holy Spirit power.

 

And, just as astonishingly, the thief also was likely baptized that day through the Savior's own blood spatter. (Jesus had been water baptized in the thief's place, and physically imparted that baptism to the former thief, through a sprinkling of the Savior's own blood!)

 

For background, look at Exodus 29:20.

 

 

Then think about how Jesus "finished" God's work on the cross at Calvary, baptizing a few new believers with a sprinkling of HIS blood (something only Jesus could do). Just like in Exodus 29:30, a few who were predestined to become believers at the foot of the cross, each were touched with a drop of the Savior's atoning blood, maybe on an earlobe, a thumb, a hand. And maybe Mary, Jesus's own mother, was baptized that way, that day, at the foot of the cross.

 

Through Jesus, God made Himself a life-giving substitute for the darkness of the past. He had patiently waited while men made sacrifices in the darkness of Old Testament times; but He was telling men all along (even in the Old Testament), that He needed mercy and not sacrifice.

 

When He gave Himself at Calvary, that opened eyes of those who had known not how unheavenly (how wicked) old sacrifices had been. Israel had even sacrificed some of its children.

 

Today, just keeping the thought of Jesus's atoning sacrifice in heart is cleansing to us as Christians. As the prophet Isaiah foretold: "So He will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of Him. For what what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand."

 

Unlike animal sacrifices of old, Jesus was not consumed by His suffering and death at Jerusalem and Calvary. He did not bodily perish. But He rested three days in a cold borrowed cave, and was revived.

 

Jesus's revival broke the tradition of consuming sacrifice. It broke every curse. And He freed us to live normally and blessed: not only blessed with the bread of His word, but with the freedom to discern what's good for food and abundant food.

 

In the Lord, there's no need for ungodly sacrifice. And scriptures in the New Testament say that just believing on the spilled blood of our salvation, cleanses our consciences of the old evil (Hebrews 9:14).