I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Of First Importance, and today’s quote was from U.K. church leader Terry Virgo.
“The Israelites at the time of the exodus knew they had escaped the night of God’s judgement through trusting in the blood of the Passover lambs on their doorposts.
Notice that the blood was to be placed on the outside of their houses. The blood was for God to see, not for their benefit. The blood was not to make them feel good or feel safe. The blood was not for their feelings at all. The blood was to satisfy God. It was for his eyes alone. God said, ‘When I see the blood I will pass over you’ (Exodus 12:13).
We have peace, not because we feel good, but because God is satisfied with the blood. Only he can evaluate the worth of the lamb. Because he is satisfied, we have peace.”
— Terry Virgo God’s Lavish Grace (Oxford, UK: Monarch Books, 2003), 4
This was remarkably similar to Watchman Nee’s words in The Normal Christian Life, a book that profoundly affected me in my early years as a believer. In the opening chapter of that book, Watchman Nee stresses that we must be ever cautious not to value the blood of Christ according to our sense of it’s “worth.” It’s simply not possible.
Nee gives center stage to the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament and the idea that the High Priest did his work away from the eyes of the people. The point is clear. The blood was not for them, it was for God. He then references the Passover in the same way Virgo does:
” ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you’. Here we have another illustration of the fact that the blood was not meant to be presented to man but to God, for the blood was put on the lintel and on the door-posts, where those feasting inside the house would not see it.” (Location 252)
Nee speaks in the first chapter of three aspects of the blood’s work. First, it answers and satisfies God’s righteous requirement, secondly, it answers man’s conscience and thirdly, it answers the accuser of the brethren. Nee tackles all of this with a profound simplicity that lets the revelation of the blood’s real power soar in our hearts. For Nee, the fundamental key to understanding the efficacy of the blood of Christ is to acknowledge the value that God places on it. This is not arrived at by subjective experience but by faith. One of my highlighted, underlined and marked up passages from the Normal Christian Life reads:
Watchman Nee
“Now the whole trouble with us is that we are trying to sense it; we are trying to feel its value and to estimate subjectively what the Blood is for us. We cannot do it; it does not work that way. The Blood is first for God to see. We then have to accept God’s valuation of it. In doing so we shall find our valuation. If instead we try to come to a valuation by way of our feelings we get nothing; we remain in darkness. No, it is a matter of faith in God’s Word. We have to believe that the Blood is precious to God because He says it is so (1 Peter 1:18, 19). If God can accept the Blood as a payment for our sins and as the price of our redemption, then we can rest assured that the debt has been paid. If God is satisfied with the Blood, then the Blood must be acceptable. Our valuation of it is only according to His valuation–neither more nor less. It cannot, of course, be more, but it must not be less. Let us remember that He is holy and He is righteous, and that a holy and righteous God has the right to say that the Blood is acceptable in His eyes and has fully satisfied Him.” (Location 277)
This gave rise to a question that has lived with me for the last 38 years: If the blood satisfies God, how can it not satisfy me? What level of my own personal holiness and justice could require something greater than what God requires? How insulting to the Spirit of Grace!
“It is God’s holiness, God’s righteousness, which demands that a sinless life should be given for man. There is life in the Blood, and that Blood has to be poured out for me, for my sins. God is the One who requires it to be so. God is the One who demands that the Blood be presented, in order to satisfy His own righteousness, and it is He who says: ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you.’ The Blood of Christ wholly satisfies God.” (Location 259)
What confidence this brings to us! God’s demand is met. His holiness is satisfied. There is no wrath left for those who are in Christ. I’ll add three more passages here. Nee says it so well. Read and be encouraged.
“As soon as we find our conscience is uneasy our faith leaks away and immediately we find we cannot face God. In order therefore to keep going on with God we must know the up-to-date value of the Blood. God keeps short accounts, and we are made nigh by the Blood every day, every hour and every minute. It never loses its efficacy as our ground of access if we will but lay hold upon it.” (Location 327)
The Normal Christian Life
“What, after all, is your basis of approach to God? Do you come to Him on the uncertain ground of your feeling, the feeling that you may have achieved something for God today? Or is your approach based on something far more secure, namely, the fact that the Blood has been shed, and that God looks on that Blood and is satisfied? Of course, were it conceivably possible for the Blood to suffer any change, the basis of your approach to God might be less trustworthy. But the Blood has never changed and never will. Your approach to God is therefore always in boldness; and that boldness is yours through the Blood and never through your personal attainment. Whatever be your measure of attainment today or yesterday or the day before, as soon as you make a conscious move into the Most Holy Place, immediately you have to take your stand upon the safe and only ground of the shed Blood. Whether you have had a good day or a bad day, whether you have consciously sinned or not, your basis of approach is always the same–the Blood of Christ. That is the ground upon which you may enter, and there is no other” (Location 361)
“We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong. No trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because of the Blood: Lord, I do not know fully what the value of the Blood is, but I know that the Blood has satisfied Thee; so the Blood is enough for me, and it is my only plea. I see now that whether I have really progressed, whether I have really attained to something or not, is not the point. Whenever I come before Thee, it is always on the ground of the precious Blood. Then our conscience is really clear before God. No conscience could ever be clear apart from the Blood. It is the Blood that gives us boldness.” (Location 397)
06. Apr, 2012 
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“All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell–deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.”
“Imagine you were in Egypt just after that first Passover. If you stopped Israelites in those days and said, ‘Who are you and what is happening here?’ they would say, ‘I was a slave, under a sentence of death, but I took shelter under the blood of the lamb and escaped that bondage, and now God lives in our midst and we are following Him to the Promised Land.’
