Only the active power of His Blood within me can reproduce His character in me.
During the past few weeks and months, the focus of my meditation has been on the Blood of the Lamb. As I have considered a particular verse or phrase and asked the Holy Spirit to teach me, I have been amazed at the thoughts which expand in my mind. When I wake during the night, whole thoughts are right there for me to explore.
I know that I can never exhaust the treasures of these truths or probe to the depths, but I am so thankful for the richness of the truth which is becoming more and more my personal truth.
John 6:47-58; Vs.53 - Except you eat My flesh and drink My Blood, you have no life in you.
Just as I take food and drink into my body and it becomes a part of me, my source of strength; like the manna the people ate during Israel's wilderness wanderings ... (just the same and yet so very different because they ate regularly but still they died) ... so you must receive Me within your innermost being in order that I can give you life, can be your life. He that has the Son has Life (I John 5:12).
ETERNAL LIFE -- not just life that continues forever, not just life that never ends.
Unbelievers have that. What is eternal life?
It is IN ITSELF a life which is independent of time, it is always a glorious present; it brings with it the power of an endless life always at work within me. If my faith lays hold of what eternal life really is, it will reveal itself in me as a power superior to all my circumstances and changeable feelings; it brings a youth that never grows old and a freshness which never withers.
Drink HIS Blood because the poison of Satan is in my blood. It was not what we consider to be the gross sins that changed angels into demons, but PRIDE ... and that poison is in my blood.
When Jesus described Himself, He said, "I am meek and lowly in heart." How very opposite to the natural bent of my selfish heart! I must live entirely in the lowliness of Jesus. Pride must die or nothing of Heaven can live in me. What became visible on Golgotha was a manifestation of the character which inspired the whole life of Jesus. Only the active power of His Blood within me can reproduce His character in me. If I don't have Jesus, I don't have life. If the full life of Jesus doesn't invade every part of me, the life I'm living is not the Christian life. The work which the Cross accomplished IN HIM must THROUGH HIM be accomplished in me also(Galatians 2:20).
The Holy Spirit reveals the full power and works in us through the Blood. The outpouring of the Blood was FOLLOWED by the outpouring of the Spirit. The Blood and the Spirit are inseparable because only through the cleansing Blood can the Spirit dwell in the one who has been cleansed by that Blood.
Suddenly my thoughts take me back to Eden where God saw that everything He had made was good and that man, CREATED IN HIS IMAGE, was very good.
So stupendous was the privilege of being created a human being and so colossal was the ability of a human being, that God turned His perfect world in all its pristine loveliness over to Adam and Eve.
Then came the appalling Fall and the IMAGE OF THE CREATOR was horribly defaced. From far above the abyss of hopeless despair there came down an amazing Solution; all the way down came One, Who promised that if we eat His flesh and drink His Blood, we would actually become partakers of the Divine nature again and be conformed and restored to HIS IMAGE!
Oh boundless salvation!
There is a saying among diet promoters that we are what we eat. I don't think there is much truth in that statement. However, I do know that in the spiritual realm this is totally true.
When Jesus said, "Eat My flesh and drink My Blood," He was talking about the glorious, exchanged life, where all that I am is exchanged for all that He is. Like John 3:30, my longing is that He must increase and I must decrease.
We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead,
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.