Revelation 5.9 9 And
they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open
its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons
from every tribe and language and people and nation. – St. John
If you want to purchase something, you have to have some
medium with which to pay. Duh, Paul!
Everyone knows that! Yes, but did you know that Jesus bought people from every tribe, language, and people, and nation
with His blood? Think about that for
a moment. Jesus used His life-blood to buy me. I am His. He purchased me. He
owns me.
That ought to shed new light today on who I am and what I
do. That ought to shift my thinking about how I live. I have been purchased by Jesus
to serve God. Revelation 5.10 explains that those who were/are purchased will
reign on the earth. There was/is a
purpose to the purchase.
I looked up the term, blood
money. I found that blood money is money that someone gets from the death
of someone else. Blood money is not a pretty term; it tends to be toward profiting from someone’s death. Like
money paid to someone to kill another. Murder for hire. That sort of thing.
Judas Iscariot profited from the murder of Jesus Christ.
He went to the religious rulers of the day and asked for money in exchange for
information about Jesus. It worked, they paid him thirty pieces of silver for
his work. He earned blood money.
But little did Judas know that Jesus Himself was offering
up blood money for His own death.
Jesus knew what He was doing. Judas didn’t. Jesus was buying people back from
death by offering up Himself to die.
I think one of the things that turns people off about the
Gospel story is the blood. I think we
think we’re too advanced for stuff like that. We don’t quite know what to think
of bloodshed. I think we think it all could have been done some other way. I
think we underestimate things of old and why what was, was. You don’t take down
a fence before you know why it was put up.
Blood is the nth. There is nothing on earth more valuable
than blood – just ask the one about to die. But human blood does only some; God’s blood does it all. The magnitude of Jesus doing what
He did ought to make us sit down in wonder and exclaim in amazement: Huh! The value of a life is in a life.
In Jesus’ case the value of His life was the value of His death and why He did
what He did – allowing Himself to be subjected to the foolishness of man so
that He could bring some of them to the wisdom of God.
Today, I said, Huh!
I said it all over again as I pondered what (and why) Jesus did for me by
pouring out His blood – His life – for me. And I thought again of what it takes
to bring someone from death to life – it takes blood. In amazement and wonder: Huh!
Father, I am purchased, I am owned. Someone did for me
that which I could never, ever do. Thank You. Amen.
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