Uniquity

In Him we have redemption, through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

Just watched the Passion last night, it reminded me more than anything why Jesus died (yes, yes, "for our sins" - but how often do we really stop and wonder what that means, how it affects us every day, even this very moment?), I gives us no room to hold anything against our fellow man/woman, no matter how cruel, when we hear "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" coming from the Innocent One covered in His own blood referring to men responsible for his cruel torture and death-who by every appearance knew exactly what they were doing. But then also, it is why we need no longer to be afraid of anything, including death and torture. Fear should be foreign to a disciple of Jesus, one who has received the sonship through faith in Jesus - Jesus has gone through the worst there is, Death and suffering and all the unnatural dark happenings of our twisted and broken universe resulting from Satan's work and our complicity is no longer the unknown.

Jesus as both a Jewish thirty-something-year old tradesman-turned-rabbi, and at the same time as the Logos IAM God who created and upholds the universe has assured us that we will be hated by the world inasmuch as we align and ally ourselves with Him...it's no longer a question - it's a certainty (which is in a way comforting. when it's unsure, we spend so much time trying to avoid suffering and death, but knowing that it's a certainty frees us from struggling to avoid it). Best of all, He's given us life, bought us back into unbreakable connection with God - He will protect us from the spiritual forces of darkness, and will not let his holy one see decay. Death isn't the end, it's the veil that we as His children and those connected by death with Him pass through-to the presence of Jesus the Crucified and now the Victor and LORD who sits at the right hand of the Father. And in his Humanity, (for in Jesus now God is human as well as God) He sympathizes with our weaknesses as a Brother, a Friend, and oversees the details of our lives as an all-seeing Father. He (as Kurios/LORD over the universe from the galactic scale to the quantum scale) is neither ignorant nor passive in our sufferings. We face nothing to be really afraid of anymore. We have the constant assurances of God that all will be well come the conclusion, and all will be concluded soon. Without Jesus, we would have every reason for every fear - vulnerable on every side and in every way. But now we have a very present help in trouble and a reason behind what was once the dark unknown, and a Spirit not of fear, but of Love, and of Power, and of a sound mind.
It's good to know that it's not just a "religious story" - but a real historical event, one that is backed with reasons.

There was a reason for everything that Jesus went through for us. I watched "The Passion" with a friend and we had communion together afterwards, just staring at the grape juice in the cup and thinking: "one day, Jesus' real blood came dripping in pain through His broken skin, it wasn't a happy thing, it wasn't an effortless thing - God in Jesus didn't fall back on His omnipotence but was in all ways as we are when that happened. When I sin, and I do sin, I can remember as I look at that red liquid we all drink, and remember that many days past He told us that we didn't start this relationship. We aren't the initiators. He's the one who started it, and His commitment to our rescue is that serious. Anytime I question if God could really want to forgive my sins, willful and disgusting and persistent, You, Jesus, point to that cup and that bread and say that you take it that seriously, and it is for such a vile one as I that You died, to provide the spiritual nourishment necessary for me to be joined to You, and blood to wash away my many, many, sins, removing them. As we drink in the red vehicle of His life, and take in the bread that He declared His body, God counts it as us truly receiving the life of His Son, Jesus said "My body is real food, and my blood is real drink - unless you eat the body of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you." - without His life streaming in at His initiative and our acceptance, we are lifeless. As much as a baby in its mother's womb relies on its mother's blood to stay alive and grow (we don't think of that as "cannibalism") Jesus has washed away the stains of our sin in His blood. The life everlasting, creative, pure and passionate that courses in the Godhead is ours inasmuch as we have received the free gift of God. It's free, but it's costly. God help me to examine myself before your cup and before your body, to remember what you did and why you did it and that it is just as much for this moment as it was for then. Not so I could flippantly go on sinning, but that I could be joined to you in love and grow up to be like You.

And you, reader, if you have turned to God in repentance and Faith in Jesus Christ, you also are in fellowship with me in this. We both get our life from the same Father-greater than any allegiance we owe to any earthly family, we are His, you and I. We experience the same forgiveness from the same sin through the same blood, the same rescue from the same Dominion of darkness and deliverance from the same slavery to sin. We share a homeland and a first love. We have the same Spirit now at this moment working in us to both will and do the Will of God. We are brothers and sisters in the same Lord. Jesus, who unites us in Love.

So when we see each other, we can really know each other, in a way the world never can.
All because of You Jesus, what you did and what you continue to do.