When the Blood Gift is Too Precious to Be Treated Casually

When I saw the photo of blood donation tubing connected to my son's arm, his blood racing into the bag, I was shocked. 

His life blood was flowing out, and every single drop of it was valuable to me. 

I remember thinking, "Who's getting my baby's blood?" I'll be honest here. I couldn't imagine anyone I'd want to have his precious blood, for fear they'd squander the gift. 

Several days ago, a friend on FB posted that he was "dropping off a few red blood cells..." He has O negative blood type, which is particularly precious because it's the least common. 

As a former ER doctor, I was reminded that, over the July 4th holiday, there would likely be someone whose life depended on the unit of blood he had given. 

I could see it in my mind's eye. Hospital staff will process, type, and hang the blood. Family members will watch the life-saving flow drip into their loved one's arm. Rarely will anyone remember that someone took the time to donate, in advance, so that a life could be preserved. 

"We're far too casual about blood gifts..." I told my friend. Suddenly, my mind's eye was riveted on the image of Jesus on the cross, His precious blood spilling from hands, feet, and side. 

We're far too casual about Jesus' blood gift, too.

I wonder how God felt when He saw that holy blood being spilled for us. Did He fear we'd squander the gift? No. He knew we'd squander it. God knew we'd grow callous about the blood, casual about the blood gift. He gave it anyway.

One unit of human blood can "save" three lives. The blood of Jesus can save all lives. Every single one. His blood does more than improve our oxygen-carrying capacity and transport desperately needed nutrients to the brain and other vital organs. The blood of Jesus cleanses us, washes away our sin, satisfies our sin-debt. 

His blood sets us free, yet we treat it casually, as if we were somehow entitled to it. We, who sin as if we can't get enough, deserve nothing but death and hell. Still, the blood gift stands ready to wash it all away. 

You have to sign a consent to get a unit of blood. It outlines the risks and benefits of the transfusion. I've often wondered if we should sign a consent form  for the blood of Jesus so we'd understand, in clear terms, how precious it is and how much is required.

Transfusion consent: Benefits: Sin payment completed. Risks: Discipleship required.

The blood of Jesus is the most precious gift of all. It wasn't given lightly, and it shouldn't be accepted lightly, either. It should inform every decision, color every action, influence every thought. We should be different because of His blood. 

Instead of treating it casually, let's live up to the gift of Christ's blood. Live as if it matters, because it does. 

"He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. Ephesians 1:7 nlt
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Teach us to Pray, part 20: Jehovah Mekoddishkem, The Lord Who Sanctifies You

And He said to them, "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. 'Give us each day our daily bread. 'And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.'" (Luke 11:2-4 NASB)

Jehovah Mekoddishkem

Jehovah M'kaddesh

The Lord Who Sanctifies You

M'kaddesh is an alternate spelling of Mekoddishkem and comes from the root word qâdash, a verb meaning to sanctify, dedicate, or make holy. It means to "set apart". It is used twice in Scripture and, in both instances, it indicates that the Lord sanctifies His people. (Exodus 31:13 and Leviticus 20:8). The passage in Leviticus begins with a prohibition against human sacrifice, cursing parents, and witchcraft. It is particularly interesting because, in the verse immediately prior to the name of God, the instruction to "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy" is given. 

1 Thessalonians 4:3 tells us, "This is the will of God, your sanctification..." Oswald Chambers wrote about this process of sanctification and the difficulty of it in My Utmost for His Highest. "There is always a tremendous battle before sanctification is realized - something within us pushing with resentment against the demands of Christ. When the Holy Spirit begins to show us what sanctification means, the struggle starts immediately... In the process of sanctification, the Spirit of God will strip me down until there is nothing left but myself, and that is the place of death. Am I willing to be myself and nothing more? ... We say, 'But this is strict. Surely He does not require that of me.' Our Lord is strict, and He does require that of us."

I have recently been reading a classic book by J.C. Ryle, Holiness, and I strongly recommend it. Ryle speaks of sanctification and emphasizes that there can be no holiness without sanctification. In fact, he suggests that those of us in the church prefer grace to the exclusion of sanctification. That can never be, he says, because we serve a holy God who has called us to holiness, as well. 

Our Lord did not sacrifice His only, much loved Son as the payment for our sins in order to leave us as we were. He intended His sacrifice to cleanse us and change us, yet we kick against the change. We want grace without change, without sanctification, don't we? 

I am not exempt from this rejection of holiness. Although I know the beautiful truth of His divine cleansing for my sin-riddled soul, it is entirely too easy for me to embrace sin long rejected. Pride, self-righteousness, critical and judgmental spirit are welcomed back into my life before I even realize it, and then I have a choice to make. 

Will I choose holiness or continue in the sin that seems so insignificant to me in comparison to so much happening in our world today? My sin is not insignificant to God. His Son had to die to redeem me from the price of that sin, and God does not take that lightly, nor should I. 

He demands holiness, and I am to choose holiness. Even when I long to be holy, I find that it is too high a goal for me. I can never achieve it, and that is why I needed the grace of God and the mercy of Jesus' sacrifice for me. 

I cannot achieve holiness on my own, yet choose it I must. Once chosen, God Himself will handle the sanctification process. He is our Jehovah Mekoddishkem, and He will sanctify me, if I am only willing, but obedience to His calling to holiness is required. 

Every day, every moment, I stand at a crossroads with a choice to make. Will I choose the way of the world or the way of the Cross? Will I choose my own path or the path of holiness? 

This is a hard word, but must be spoken. The problems in our nation and in our world are a result of sin. It is not the responsibility of a lost world to act like Jesus, and it is foolishness to expect it. That is the responsibility of His people. I am to be salt and light in a dark and desolate place. Unless I choose sanctification, I can never be the light I am called to be, and those living in darkness can never be drawn to the light of Christ.

One day, I will stand before our Lord and answer for my choices. I shudder to think of it. The Grace of Christ will be sufficient, and I rejoice in that, but I will be accountable for my choice of the world or the way of Holiness, the way of Sanctification. 

Did I love my Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength? Did I love my neighbor as myself? The life I live now will give the answer to those two questions, and I must prepare for the accounting to come. The words of Joshua are as appropriate today as they were when he stood before the children of Israel thousands of years ago.

"If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." 

Joshua 24:15 NASB

Teach us to pray, part 5: The Great Adoption

And He said to them, "When you pray, say: ' Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. 'Give us each day our daily bread. 'And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.'" (Luke 11:2-4 NASB)

Father

The word translated here as "Father" is pater and comes from a root word that means "a nourisher, protector, upholder". This is a terribly difficult concept for me. I don't have any problem understanding God as the Father of Jesus. After all, He was perfect, sinless. What boggles my mind is that God willingly chooses to be Father to me. As anyone who knows me is well aware, I am neither sinless nor perfect. None of us are. 

Ponder that a moment. If we choose a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, His Son, He adopts us as His children, sons and daughters of God. It's absolutely incredible! Equally incredible is that, as Scripture tell us, Jesus is "not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters". (Hebrews 2:11, Mark 3:33-35) and that we are "joint heirs" with Jesus, the Son of God. (Romans 8:17) 

Jesus is not ashamed to be my brother. 

I could ponder that for a lifetime and never get over it. Just to be sure we are on the same page here, I was so sinful that there could never be enough sacrifice on my own to make up for all the sin I had piled up and continued to pile up, and so were we all. God created us for a relationship with him and I messed it up terribly, we messed it up terribly. Something had to be done, so Jesus did it. He wasn't in love with the idea, but He saw it as the only way to save mankind, so Jesus laid down His life to pay for my sin, to pay for your sin. 

He left Heaven, which was a major sacrifice in itself, and came to earth. Consider leaving your beautiful and comfortable home, and all the people you love, to live in the most desolate place on this earth for thirty-three years, knowing that the very people you've come to help will hate you, spit on you, and kill you, then realize that His sacrifice was greater than that. 

On top of leaving Heaven to come to earth, Jesus took my Sin on Himself and died in my place, in your place. That is such a spiritually incredible event that I cannot begin to understand how such a propitiation happened, how He stood it, why He would do it, but He did. I know that's true because of the change His sacrifice has made in my life.

After all of the sacrifice to save my eternal life, made necessary because of my sin, I have the unmitigated gall to continue to sin and ask for more forgiveness. I have not taken sin seriously enough, and few of us do. When I look at the price my sin cost Jesus, it makes me sick. What is even more mortifying is that I continue to sin. I dare to have a haughty heart, a condescending nature, selfishness, greed. You name it. If it's sin, it threatens to entice me, and I'm not the only one. We are all easily entangled by sin. What is heartbreaking is that entanglement is not as horrifying as it should be. If I'm not entangled by some sins (the ones of others, for example) I'm not so worried about the ones that do entangle me, and this should not be. 

I have been given the greatest gift imaginable in this unfathomable adoption by Almighty God, despite my bent for sinning. I have not always understood the magnitude of this gift, but I pray that I will not only get an inkling of understanding, but that I will never get over the wonder of it, and that I will choose to live in accordance to the gift. Oh dear ones, the right to call God Father is something we should treasure, for in that gift He has transformed our lives and changed our eternal destiny.

Selah. Pause and consider.

Today, before we dare to speak His name, let us consider the price that was paid for our adoption, as well as the audacious insult of our ongoing choice to continue in sin. May we treasure the gift of our adoption so much that we choose to live accordingly. 

The Journey, part 30: recognition

And it happened that while He was praying alone, the disciples were with Him, and He questioned them, saying, "Who do the people say that I am?" They answered and said, "John the Baptist, and others say Elijah; but others, that one of the prophets of old has risen again." And He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" And Peter answered and said, "The Christ of God." (Luke 9:18-20 NASB)

In a series that began with the apostles' journey of obedience, the traditional stopping point would be when those apostles returned from their travels and gave their report to Jesus. The miracle of the loaves and fish was included in our study of the journey because of one very important point. That event demonstrated the vital truth that no miracle was possible without the blessing of God, but with His blessing, no miracle was impossible. 

This verse is another natural transition point. The narrative changes here from an account of the miraculous feeding of the multitude to a discussion of whom Jesus was believed to be, and is another point before which the study of the journey of obedience might end. This passage is included because it contains a question we all must answer.

"Who do you say that I am," Jesus asked Peter. It is a question we are compelled to consider. Is He just a religious zealot? Is He a madman with delusions of grandeur? If those are true, then we must not follow Him, for He is not God. If, instead, He IS the Son of God, the Christ, the Promised Messiah, then we dare not follow Him. If His claims that He died as a sacrifice to pay our penalty for sin are true, if He was resurrected to demonstrate His power over sin and death and set us free, then a decision to follow Him is the most important decision we can ever make. If we choose to stake our eternal destiny to the claims of Jesus, then we must also stake our present life to Him as well. 

If, like Peter, we believe that He is the Christ, then we will follow, as the disciples did, in a journey of obedience that changes everything. Decisions must then be based on His will and not our own. Our sin must be relinquished and purification and sanctification must become our goal. If Jesus is who He claims to be, and if we choose to follow Him, then we cannot remain the same. Our following must lead to transformation into the very image of Christ. 

 "But who do you say that I am?"  This is the question we must answer. It is the question on which our lives, our eternity, depend. Consider well, dear ones, and be certain that you have joined your life with the only One who holds the present and the future in His nail-scarred hands. 

The Journey, part 29: The Blessing

Then He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed them, and broke them, and kept giving them to the disciples to set before the people. (Luke 9:16 NASB)

In every instance of Jesus breaking bread, whether to feed a multitude or for a meal with his disciples, it was preceded by blessing the bread. The word translated as "blessed" is eulogeō, and literally means "to speak well of". In this instance, it is used to indicate words of consecration and request for God's blessing. This word can also be used to indicate the offering of praise for God's goodness and to indicate a desire for God's glory.  In essence, when Jesus looked up to heaven, holding the bread and fish in His holy hands, and "blessed" the food, He was consecrating it to God, asking for His blessing, and praying that the blessing would bring glory to God. When the disciples starting taking up those twelve baskets of leftovers, it was apparent that God had done just that. No one there that day had any doubt that the feeding of the multitude was a miracle of God. 

As the body of Christ, we commonly "ask blessings" for our food as well as for our plans and actions. I wonder, though, if our eulogeō might not sometimes become a eulogy of rote, just words without heart. Are we consecrating our food, plans, lives to God alone? Do we want God alone to be glorified? 

Lest we misunderstand this business of consecration, let's examine the word a bit. To consecrate something is to dedicate it to God or to sanctify it. To sanctify something is to purify it or free it from sin. Of course, only God can sanctify us. When we ask for God's blessing, we are asking Him to begin His work of blessing by purifying us and freeing us from the sin that so easily entangles us. If we want Him to be glorified, this purification, freeing us from sin, must be done. 

When Jesus, who never sinned, but remained pure and sanctified, asked God to bless and be glorified in the breaking of the bread, a miracle happened. Perhaps if we were more intent on being purified than on receiving blessings, we, too, would see the miraculous intervention of God in response to our prayers. 

Understanding this work of consecration and purification is a vital part of the journey of a disciple, and must be developed if we are to become all God intended us to be. As we bow our heads to ask God's blessing, may we ask first for His purification, for it is only in the purifying that we see all the blessing He intended to give. It is in that holy cleansing that the miraculous begins and our Lord is glorified.