When I was a very young minister (more years ago than I care to think about) I was pastoring a tiny pioneer church in Wollongong, on the south coast of New South Wales. In the congregation was a young couple whom I had joined in marriage just a few months before, and who were very new Christians.
One day the young husband approached me, looking very concerned. “Pastor Lynn,” he said, squirming awkwardly. “Someone told me the other day that we should put the “blood line” around our property. How do we do that? Do we need to kill a chicken or something?… ” Trying hard to suppress a chuckle at his innocence, I explained to him about the blood of Jesus.
People who have not been brought up in Christianity find it bizarre when we talk about the blood. Some have even accused the Christian faith of being a “butcher shop” religion. Sadly, even within the Church some find the blood too hard a concept to handle. I was recently visiting a church for their Sunday night service. The pastor talked about the sinless life of Jesus, and said that we are saved by that life. “Jesus looks at Fred,” he said, “and says, ‘Father, I like him’, so Father God says, “O.K., he can come in.” This was a most dreadful perversion of the Gospel, and I left vowing never to go to that church again.
The truth is, we are not saved by Jesus’ life. Jesus’ life demonstrates to us how man can and should live, if he is filled with and dependent upon the Holy Spirit. But if Jesus had just lived on earth for a time, and then been caught back to heaven without passing through death, His life would have been to us much as the Law was to the people of Israel in the Old Testament: a pointer to an unattainable standard which offered us nothing that would enable us to reach that standard.
Something else was needed first, and that something was death, the shedding of blood. God had set the death penalty for sin, and His justice demanded that penalty be paid. We are not saved by Jesus’ perfect life, but by the fact that He went to the Cross, shed His blood, and paid that death penalty on our behalf. Because of His shed blood, our sins are forgiven. Because our sins are forgiven we are reconnected with the life of God, and He sends the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts. When we have the Holy Spirit living within – and only then – we are able to live as Jesus lived, by allowing the Spirit to live His life through us.
So, what about my young friend and the blood line? In the Old Testament, at the Passover, the people were told to kill a lamb. Some of the lamb’s blood was to be daubed on the door posts and lintels of their home, and they were to eat the lamb inside the house. When the angel of death came through the land to kill all the firstborn – the final plague that God brought against the Egyptians to convince them to let the Israelites go – he would see the blood and pass over that house.
This sacrifice was symbolic of the far greater sacrifice that was to come, that of Christ on the Cross. Just as the blood of the Passover lamb provided protection for the people of Israel, so the blood of Jesus provides protection for anyone who will receive Him. It protects us from the attack of the devil, when he comes and accuses us, because we can now tell him that the sins he is trying to dredge up have been forgiven because of the blood of Jesus.
It also protects us from the kind of demonic attacks that would try to harm us or damage our property, because the blood of Jesus has brought us into covenant relationship with God. That covenant relationship means that God has committed Himself to defending us.
When we “place the blood line” around a property, we are simply declaring that this territory is under God’s protection, because the blood of Jesus has been shed for us. The blood of Jesus is the only antidote to sin, and is the source of our authority over the enemy.
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This blog is © copyright Lynn Fowler.
There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
English: World English Bible - WEB
5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
WP-Bible plugin)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
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9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,
WP-Bible plugin)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name;
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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