Peace Through The Blood
By Rosco Brong
Former Dean, Lexington Baptist College
[A Bloodless Religion Makes War Against God – Only Christ’s Blood Can Make Peace.]Colossians 1:19-22 "For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled. In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:"
Christianity without blood is not Christianity at all: it is religion without the Christ of the Bible; it is the religion of anti-christ. This bloodless religion has become the fashionable so-called Christianity of our generation, so that the most destructive enemies of God in the world today are not professing atheists or infidels, but professing Christians who have no faith in the blood of Christ.
Satan inspires two main lines of attack upon the Bible doctrine of the blood: first, a denial that the condition of man is bad enough to need so drastic a remedy; second, a denial that the blood of Christ is good enough to effect a cure.
That these two items of false doctrine are mutually contradictory does not bother Satan in the least: he has blinded the minds of lost sinners so that they lack spiritual logic. (II Corinthians 4:4.)
ALIENS AND ENEMIES Now, the simple truth of God’s word is that every human being in the world is by natural inheritance a sinner. A race whose first father was created upright has become totally twisted with the corruption of his fallen nature. Man created in the image of God has become by nature a foreigner, having no hope of heaven and without God in the world.
Moreover, man is not a friendly or neutral foreigner, from God’s standpoint. Every morally responsible man inheriting Adam’s sinful nature has in turn, by his own choice and practice, made himself an enemy alien. His whole frame of mind is enmity against God; his whole course of life is filled with wicked works in the sight of God.
Rebellious sinners already condemned, haters of God and hated by God, cursed children on their way to everlasting destruction, despising all the lovingkindness of God and rejecting His mercy – such is the natural condition of lost men; and we who have redemption through the blood of Christ (Colossians 1:14) were by nature the children of wrath even as others (Ephesians 2:3)
ONLY BY BLOOD Zipporah called Moses “a bloody husband, because of the circumcision” (Exodus 4:26), but God’s people have always been a bloody people, circumcised or not. This is so because, from the garden of Eden onward, God has always required blood as an atonement for sin.
Squeamish charlatans may shrink with real or feigned horrow from what they are pleased to call slaughter-house religion, but we had better be Biblically bloody than inanely anemic.
“It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11) “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” (Hebrews 9:22.)
BLOOD OF THE CROSS Blood of old Testament sacrifices illustrated the substitutionary principle of life for life, but ”It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:4.) Only the blood of Christ could accomplish this in the actual judgment of God.
Further, it was not blood as it flowed through the veins of live animals that made atonement in the Old Testament types, but the blood of slain animals offered on the altar. Even so, it was not the blood of Christ maintaining life in His human body that made peace for us, but that blood poured out in His death upon the cross.
Theologians may produce what theories they will of what they miscall the atonement, but the Bible teaching on the blood is clear enough for believers who are willing to accept the truth from God. Abhorrent as it may be to the hypocritical enemies of divine truth and righteousness, the blood of Christ is precious to God and to his people. (I Peter 1:19)
PEACE - REAL AND LASTING Our text declares that God in Christ "made peace through the blood of his cross." This is true, first, legally and potentially; second, actually in human experience; third, perfectly and eternally.
Little gods of human fancy may be too weak or too lacking in moral principle to execute justice, but the God of the Bible is as just as He is merciful. How could He deal in mercy with His Old Testament saints before their sins were punished at Calvary? The Bible answers:
God set forth Christ "a propitiation through the faith in his blood, for an index of his righteousness, because of the passing by of the sins done before in the forbearance of God; with an index of his righteousness in the present time, with regard to his being just and justifying him that is of the faith of Jesus." (Romans 3:24-26, improved translation.)
In other words, it is in Christ that God is able to be both just and merciful: it is the shed blood of Christ, appropriated through faith, that satisfies the justice of God and frees the believer from legal condemnation. (Romans 8:1)
Legal justification, however, important as it is, must not be imagined to exhaust the virtues of the blood of Christ. On the contrary, no sinner can be justified before God in mere legal standing without a present experience of regeneration and sanctification, as the Holy Spirit makes effective in his life, through faith, the merits of the blood of Christ.
Peace with God, peace through the blood of Christ, is not a legal fiction, but a present reality in the heart, mind, conscience, in the very soul of the believer in that precious blood. Otherwise divine mercy could only contribute to spiritual anarchy, but now "it is of faith, that it might be by grace." (Romans 4:16)
Finally, peace through the blood is not a temporary truce or armistice, holding the possibility of another outbreak in hostilities. No:
"You, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: if ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel..." (Colossians 1:21-23) - a description of all genuinely born-again believers for:
"We know that everyone that has been born from God does not go on sinning: but he that was born from God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him." (I John 5:18, improved translation.)
As Isaiah declared, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." (Isaiah 26:3.)
Things upon earth as well as things in the heavens will ultimately all be reconciled to their Creator (Colossians 1:20); only the lake of fire will have room for creatures that continue in rebellion. (Revelation 20:15; 21:8.)
Have you found peace with God through the blood of Christ's cross? It can be yours through simple repentance and faith in Him.
======================= [From the Ashland Avenue Baptist paper, November 29, 1968, pp. 1 & 3. Transcribed and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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