bleeding love

i wrote this for the Easter edition of my church bulletin and planned to keep it unposted until it actually comes out on paper but i just cannot resist the urge to share it here :p

“for you know that it was not with perishable thing such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
(1 Peter 1:18-19)

there’s this classic saying that you don’t know how important something is until you lose it. likewise, never will we understand the preciousness of a trickle of blood until it is lost and we thus suffer from the dear consequences of our anaemic situation.

remember two weeks ago? i said goodbye to some of my blood, it being taken away from me via the bag, intravenous catheter and needle of the Australian Red Cross, and only then i appreciate what great part those litres of thick fluidic substance play in maintaining my life. i learned it the hard way, more precisely, the embarrassing way. imagine a room with approximately two dozens people donating blood and i was the only one they held up until very late that night since i was feeling woozy, light-headed and seeing stars, not only once, but twice, from having the same 470 mls taken away from my vein, whereas the same amount didn’t really affect all those other people.

being of a medical background, i understand to the littlest scientific detail what blood does in our body, which would bore you out and make you click that “x” mark at the corner of your explorer window if i explain it in great details. the point is, even a grade-schooler knows that blood is essential for one’s well being. if our blood is already that precious, how much more is the blood of Christ?

“but Christ came as high priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. for if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
(Hebrews 9:11-14)

purifying, sanctifying blood of Christ, that washes all our filthy sins away. the precious blood of Christ, that was spilled on the cross.

how painful it would have been, to be hung up there on the rough beam side-by-side with a couple of criminals, all your body weight supported by two mere nails that were jammed right across your palms, wearing a crown that sunk deeper and deeper with every lift of an eyebrow, bled, being spat on, mocked, whipped, and then died after long hours of humiliation and extreme excruciation? doesn’t sound pretty at all, i know. but He did it nevertheless, spilled all those precious blood, at the climactic first part of the salvation grand plan. and of course, three days later, He was raised from the dead and you know the rest of the story.

even as a redeemed sinner, the idea of Son of God died for me still seems outlandish and incomprehensible. it does not make sense for someone of such sovereignty to have endured such suffering just for the sake of us who are definitely unworthy to receive any redemption. we are freaking condemned to die.

i think it only makes sense just to say God loves us so much.

“for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
(John 3:16)

who wouldn’t want to love back that kind of God?