2015.10.18_Be Empowered by the Precious Blood

Know God through the words of Christ

God is the one and only father. Jesus said, “Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven” (Mt 23:9). However, He did not disown earthly relations by saying thus. Earthly fathers are able to give their children the gift of a body. Nevertheless, they do not have the power to save their children’s souls doomed for hellfire on account of sin. Here lies the reason man has to be born again as the child of the Father in Heaven.

Some people criticize the church saying that the church overlooks the issues of reality and only emphasizes eternal life. However they wouldn’t be able to speak so rashly of eternal life if they appreciate the reason God sent His only begotten Son. God gave His only begotten Son for no other reason than to give us eternal life. Jesus Himself highlighted this in saying, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). If we cannot obtain eternal life, the faith life of Christians will be meaningless.

Unless we want to render futile our faith lives, we must know God. Whilst many people claim that they know God, they are in fact, believing in a god they created out of their own conviction and imagination, completely ignoring God’s revelations. As a result, each person’s idea of God is all different and diverse. That is why we need a faith confession. Just as Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say I am?” even now God wants such confession of faith from us. Therefore we must know God (Hos 6:3). God pointed out that His people were perishing because of a lack of the knowledge of God (Hos 4:6). Jesus also stressed that we must know God in order to have eternal life (Jn 17:3).

In order to have God’s-given faith, we need to listen to the words of Christ. His words are the spiritual drink that comes from the spiritual rock called Christ. It is written in 1 Corinthians 10:4, “All drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ”. Without drinking that spiritual drink, no one can receive eternal life. Thus Jesus said, “My blood is real drink. Unless you drink my blood, you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53-56). We need the everlasting life which comes from God. And in order for us to receive that life, Jesus’ blood is that which we must drink.

Be empowered by the precious blood.

The wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23). God said to Adam who became a living soul, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Ge 2:17). However Adam disobeyed God’s word, and consequently, Adam and all man that belong to Adam were doomed to perish forever. It is God’s words which said, “When you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die”. Hence even God cannot undo His words. What God did in order to save the sinful man, was not only to forgive him, but to actually pay the price of sin for him. Thus, sin is so grave that its price has to be paid even by God.

The one that is due to pay the price of sin is not man’s flesh but his soul. Due to Adam’s sin, man’s spirit was doomed to perish, but his flesh can still enjoy good health and live in affluence. For the flesh to be successful however, constant efforts and diligence are demanded. In that sense, man’s flesh is quite the same as that of animals. In the case of the lion, the king of the animal kingdom, only one out of five cubs actually survives to grow into adult lions. Likewise, the flesh of both man and animals require great efforts in order to succeed. Still, no matter how well the flesh does, it cannot save man’s spirit.

For man’s spirit to live, he must be set free from sin, which is only possible through the blood of Jesus Christ. Leviticus 17:11 says, “For life is in the blood, it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.” To make atonement means to pay a price. For the wages of sin is death, life has to be given to pay the price. However life is in the blood, and therefore it is the blood that makes atonement for sin. But since each and every man has died of sin, the blood of man cannot make atonement for anybody else’s sin. For this reason, the blood of one who is without sin is necessary to make atonement for man’s sin. Thus God sent Jesus Christ to die on the cross and atoned for man’s sin by His blood.

God’s forgiveness is grounded in atonement. God forgives a person’s transgressions because he has accepted the atonement made by Jesus Christ and has been saved. There is no forgiveness for the one who have not been atoned for. Whoever wants to accept the atonement of Jesus Christ must first acknowledge that he is a sinner who deserves eternal punishment in hell, and that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is for the atonement for his own sin. Then, by being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, he must come out of Adam and go into Jesus Christ.

A person who has been redeemed could still falter and transgress because of the weaknesses of the flesh, and for that, he needs to be forgiven. When we confess our iniquities, God will forgive us. This is the grace we receive because we are in Jesus Christ. For those outside of Christ, the grace of forgiveness has not been granted. Only they that accepted the merits of atonement can be forgiven. Thus 1 John 2:1 says, “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”.

Let the power of the precious blood take effect

The blood of Jesus Christ has moved us from death to life. Jesus said, “Unless you drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). As a dying person may be saved through a blood transfusion, our souls have come to receive life through the blood of Jesus Christ. And this, we commemorate by taking the Lord’s Supper. A person does not go back into his mother’s womb at every birthday. A birthday party is just a way to celebrate one’s birth the same way, the wine drunk during the Lord’s Supper is not actually the blood of Christ. It is simply a means for us to commemorate the fact that we have the blood of Jesus Christ within us (1 Co 11:25).

Nonetheless the power of the precious blood is still at work within us. The blood pumped from the heart circulates the body through blood vessels, the total length of which is almost 120,000 km. If blood circulation stops because of heart abnormalities, the body can no longer function. In the same way, the precious blood of Jesus needs to keep working inside us in order for our souls to be filled with blessed joy. Christ is interceding for us even today and bestows His grace and blessings upon us because of the precious blood at work within us.

The flesh may not be prosperous if we are not met with favorable conditions or because we are lazy. Nevertheless, we must have blessedness in our souls in all circumstances. For a person, whose soul is not in a state of blessedness, to have prosperity is like a cut flower in a vase, without roots. If we want prosperity anchored firmly, we first have to be blessed in our souls and not despair in our bleak state conditions. Even the most beautiful flower quickly withers if the branch is cut and rootless. However, branches that are rooted will definitely flower the following year if not already.

If we want the precious blood of Christ within us to be at work continuously, we have to acknowledge the power of the blood. “I believe in the Lord’s precious blood!” Wherever people acknowledge the merits of His blood, people will turn to repent, the Holy Spirit will come and spiritual gifts will be given. Demons will be cast out of those who confess the power of the blood, and they will be healed of their sicknesses. For this reason, we must actively confess the power of the precious blood, sing of the blood and bear witness of it.

Receive the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord’s blood, however, cannot be seen. It was through the word that we came to hear and know about the blood. For us to receive that word into our souls, we must have inspiration to understand the word. Doctrines of religions or theological knowledge do not enter our souls, and thus it is not necessary to have inspiration to accept them. However the word of God is spiritual, and thus we need inspiration to receive it into our souls. Hence only those who have inspiration can confess the precious blood within them. And the Holy Spirit is He who testifies to this.

It is written in 1 John 5:5-8, “Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” The inspiration of the word, and the blood, and the Holy Spirit cannot be separated. If we have confessed the power of the blood through the word, now we must be filled with the Holy Spirit. Otherwise our faith in the blood may become clouded. Thus we must be blessed through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We must have the precious blood of the Lord rushing through us like the beating of our hearts.

Ministry, as I came to realize through life’s experiences, is similar to my life as a sixteen-year-old boy when I was the breadwinner of the family. At that time, my mother, two aunts, one younger cousin, one older cousin who returned from a five-year military service, two nephews aged five and eight, two of my younger brothers and myself – the ten of us – were living together in one room. There was no one that earned a living except for me; all that we had to live on was the salary I earned as an errand boy at the livestock farming union and whatever I got from any odd jobs I could find on weekends. The ten of us barely survived living on one serving of porridge a day, or if lucky, twice a day.

I closed my eyes but there wasn’t any hope. I opened my eyes and nothing had changed; every day was bleak and hopeless. During those days, snacking was out of the question, and I hardly bought any new clothing for myself. Instead I bought secondhand military uniform that was bleached, and wore it to work.

In autumn, when the rice fields were cleared of all the rice sheaves, I picked tender mugwort shoots and made porridge, which hardly filled our hungering family. I was hungry, but I wasn’t the only one; all ten of us were starving, that our faces were yellow as if we had jaundice and our legs barely kept us standing. It was utterly dismal. Yet outside, I never gave the slightest indication of my poor condition. Even so, it was extremely difficult to control the thought and the intense desire to take my own life.

As such, I made up my mind to end my life on a certain date. Until that day, I was just the same, still cleaning the house and spending a good time with my friends. And then that day arrived. I went to the place that I already had in mind, but the church bell rang so loudly in my ears. I took a step back and thought to myself, if God does exist, I want to ask Him who I am and why everything has to be so miserable for me. That was my first visit to Yesan Methodist Church, and I’ve been receiving God’s love ever since. Five years later, the Lord called me to be a preacher. I was filled with the sense of duty as a preacher – that I should evangelize and spread the Gospel every single day. Later on, I became a pastor.

As I come to think of it now, all those difficulties and sorrows I experienced as the sole breadwinner of the family in my young age, is similar to the patient endurance required of me as a pastor in ministry and the hardships I have to bear. I’ve been in ministry with the same endurance that got me through my difficult childhood, and my heart has always remained the same as that time. My present ministry is similar to the weariness endured by a child breadwinner.

Pastor Ki-Dong Kim
Lord’s Day Worship Column

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Outline and Summary translated by Sarah Nam
Letter translated by Sarah Nam
Interpretations by Sarah Nam

Chief Editor: Helen Nam
Korean Summary by Ki-Taek Lee