— John Stott
The Cross of Christ

That is exactly what Christians say today. If you trust in Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice, the greatest longings of your heart will be satisfied on the day you sit down for that eternal feast in the promised kingdom of God.”

–Timothy Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (New York: Dutton, 2011), 172.

“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)

Messenger 2011 – Defend and Confirm the Gospel
Messenger 2011 – Defend and Confirm the Gospel

“The cross, says Martin Hengel in his classic little book Crucifixion, ‘was not just any kind of death. It was an utterly offensive affair, ‘obscene’ in the original sense of the word.’ So obscene was it in fact, that the sophisticated, cultured people in Greek and Roman societies would not even utter the word cross in polite company. It was a reviled word, and it conjured disgusting and nauseating images.

Crucifixion was never a private event. It was always raw, and searingly public, because its purpose was to terrify the masses into submission to the authorities. Crosses often lined the main roads into cities, holding the broken writhing bodies of the condemned, or displaying the rotting corpses of the dead. The Romans even scheduled public crucifixions to coincide with religious festivals, insuring the maximum number of people present to witness the horror.

I think we underestimate just how serious Paul was when he said that the cross was an ‘offense’ to the people around him. We chalk it up to good rhetoric when he says that the message of the cross was a ‘stumbling block’ to some people and ‘madness’ to the rest. But that wasn’t just cheap overstatement. It was Paul’s matter-of-fact acknowledgment, born of twenty years of first-hand experience, that the message he was preaching—that salvation was to be had through a crucified God—was considered by everyone to be either deeply obscene or totally, completely, tin-foil-hat ridiculous.

Surely Paul could have made the gospel more palatable—and less dangerous—by saying it was about something else. Something cleaner and less ridiculous than the cross. Something more glorious. Less disgusting

He didn’t do that, though. ‘I decided,’ Paul said, ‘to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2:2). In the face of the worst cultural prejudice imaginable, he fixed the entire gospel squarely and immovably on the fact that Jesus was tacked to a stauros (Greek – Cross) and left to die. If he had been trying to find a surefire way to turn first-century people off from his ‘good news,’ he couldn’t have done better than that! So why did he do it? It’s simple. He did it because he knew that leaving the cross out, or running past it with a glance, or making it peripheral to the gospel, or allowing anything else to displace it at the center of the gospel would make it, finally, no gospel at all.”

- Greg Gilbert in Don’t Call It a Comeback

Reading two books at the same time that should prove to be really instructive or send me hurtling into a deep theological vortex from which I may never recover.

John Piper’s  The Future of Justification is on my Kindle. (Amazon seems to like Piper, as almost anything  he does goes right to Kindle) Piper says that while N.T. is not preaching “another gospel” (Gal. 1:8-9) he is portraying the doctrine of justification in such a way that is “sodisfigured that it becomes difficult to recognize as Biblically faithful.” Piper will proceed to clarify what he views as the correct doctrine of justification. As for Wright, his Justification, recently released and so far only available in harback, is a response he wrote to Piper’s work to clarify his stand on justification. From what I’ve read in the introduction, Wright’s view is not that Piper’s stand on how justification occurs is not wrong, but rather insufficent to communicate the vast implications of the saving work of Christ. I hope that reading them together will be a blessing and not a burden.