Grace and Glory

Through His Blood

      In verse seven we are told that we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, and the richness of God's grace through His blood.  Romans 3:25 tells us that the propitiation that we have received from God is through faith in His blood.  What is the Bible saying when it tells us that redemption is through His blood and propitiation is through faith in His blood?  We all love to sing the songs about the blood of Christ and talk about the Scriptures that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins; but sometimes we do not look as deeply as we should into these great biblical truths.  What does it mean: "faith in His blood?"

      I am going to tell you what this means and I hope you listen carefully because this is a very essential point of truth concerning the meaning of the Gospel.  It means that when Christ died on the Cross, voluntarily gave up His life, and shed His blood for us, God accepted the shed blood of Jesus Christ as complete and total satisfaction for the issue of sin.  All that has to do with man and God, the wickedness of the past, the depravity of our lives before we became Christians, and the future of bliss with God, was made possible because sin was completely taken care of by the shedding of the blood.  God accepted that shed blood of Jesus Christ as total satisfaction.  That is what it means to have faith in His blood.  We believe that the blood of Christ paid it all.

By Man Came the Resurrection from the Dead

      Much more was involved in the salvation that Christ provided for us than just one day on the Cross, important, wonderful, and terrible though it was.  For what we are thinking at the moment, I Corinthians 15:20-22 puts it into perspective for us:

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.  For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Simply put, God is a just God and in one important sense man got himself into this mess by disobeying God and man was going to have to get himself out of it.  Obviously that is not all there is to say about the Great Salvation but the point here is that it is one of the things to say and, the importance of the other things notwithstanding, it is true.  One of the operations of God was that Jesus the Son had to come down into this world as a man, live a life of obedience to the Law of God and please Him perfectly.  Then Jesus had to stand in our place in judgment, bear the wrath of God against sinners, go into hell, the place of the damned, because that is what we deserved.  But then He had to provide the power and the means of man resurrecting from the dead to eternal life.  Jesus did all of those things and all of them were necessary; but do not lose sight of this great truth—now or ever.  It was the shed blood of Jesus Christ that brought it all together and made it all acceptable to God the Father.  All of this was done because it pleased God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

1:8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

Intellectual Power

      But God has not been satisfied with making all of these things for us and activating them.  He wants to share in the understanding of His wisdom on behalf of the Church.  He wants us to know what He has done, why He has done it, and how He has done it.  In order to bring this about God has made His mercy and grace abundant toward us in the matter of wisdom and prudence.

Prudence

Prudence is the Greek word fron’-ay-sis and it means mental action or activity, i.e. intellectual or moral insight.  In the tendency of historic Christianity to sometimes take the letter instead of the spirit of truth it has often been argued that the truth of the Bible is anti-intellectual.  This is simply not the case.  The book of Colossians tells us that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  In this very chapter the Apostle praises the goodness of God because He will give us understanding so that we can see deep and marvelous things.