Reflections by Anamika
Romans 3:25-26
For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.
The significance of blood can be explained from the book of Leviticus chapter 17 verse 11 from the Bible, where God says that – “the life of the body is in its blood. I have given you the blood on the altar to purify you, making you right with the LORD. It is the blood, given in exchange for a life, that makes purification possible.”
This is the very reason that God told the people of Israel that “The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague of death will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:13)
God is a sovereign God, He knows everything. God who calls all the stars by name, doesn’t need any sign of blood anywhere to save the Israelites. Then why does this all knowing and all powerful God give such an instruction to the people?
I feel it was to prepare the people of Israel for something that was not normal. Every house that had the blood of the lamb was spared from death while the house of the Egyptians which didn’t have any sign of blood on the doors or windows lost their firstborn to death. Imagine opening your house one morning and seeing all your neighbours crying as they lost their loved ones. God asked the Israelites to eat the food in haste as God was preparing them for the great escape, the greatest deliverance of their lives. And that’s what happened the very next day. They were finally freed from the slavery by the Pharaoh.
In the same way, many years later God presented His one and only Son Jesus Christ as a sacrifice (Romans 3:25) to deliver people of this world from their sin and death. What happened on the Passover night was just a shadow of what God was preparing for the world, the greatest deliverance. Just as God established the Passover festival for the Israelites in remembrance of the greatest deliverance, Jesus too established the communion table for each one us to remember that Jesus has freed us by shedding his own blood on the cross. Just as the blood of the lamb saved the Israelites from death, today the blood of Jesus has the power to deliver each one of us from the power of sin and death. You just have to believe in your heart that Jesus died for your sins and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and by faith you will forever be delivered from eternal death.
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