What Jesus Really Gave Us

Last night I woke up and started praying. When I pray these days, I spend a lot of time apologizing and thanking God for not destroying me. I ask him to help me appreciate him and fear him more. The older I get, the more I realize how filthy human beings are. We are just monkeys who contain our disgusting thoughts and desires behind a veneer of civilization. Good is in there, too, but if you’re both good and bad, you’re bad.

Here is what Eliphaz the Temanite said to Job: “How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?” That was very accurate.

While I was praying, God gave me a new understanding of what it means to be washed in the blood.

We love to say we are washed in the blood, and we refer to the blood all the time in prayers and blessings, treating it as though it were as expensive as tap water. Last night, I found myself presented with a more accurate conception.

Suddenly, I imagined myself with my arms out in front of me, covered in cool wet, fresh, sticky blood. I imagined my face and hair coated with it, along with all of my clothes. I imagined the smell of blood, thick in the air. Blood has a disctinctive smell. I thought of the fact that this blood had to come out of a person who was cut up for me.

When we say, “Wash me in your blood,” it’s as though we think Jesus can just open a tap and fill a vat for us to soak and scrub in, as though there were a river or reservoir of blood somewhere and a blood company pumped it into our plumbing for a few dollars a month. It’s not like that. Every drop of his blood came out of a single innocent man, through lacerations and punctures made by murderers. He died like an animal in a Satanic ritual, and he had never done anything wrong.

Imagine going to your neighbor’s house, shooting him dead, cutting his head off, and collecting his blood in a bucket. Then imagine reaching into the blood and spreading it all over yourself. That’s what being washed in the blood of an innocent person is like.