Spiritual Ponderings

Covered by the blood of Jesus. That's what I have heard all of my life. Yet it seems to be an incomprehensible metaphor that makes no sense, particularly since my picture of God has started being transformed. Since I no longer subscribe to the notion that the Father God is so violently angry against sinners that He has to be appeased by the torture and death of His Son to prevent Him from torturing sinners, the idea of the substitutionary blood of His Son stills seems to not fit within my understanding of theology. But I have long been keeping my mind open for clues as to the real meaning of this blood and what it really means to be covered by the blood in a way that transforms a sinner into a saint. Jesus came to this earth to reveal the truth about the Father's heart and His attitude toward sinners. Very often religion has reversed the concepts of God's feelings toward sin and His feelings toward sinners, ending up with a God soft on sin but very harsh on unrepentant...

God began to discuss with me this morning the real meaning of the concept of His righteousness . The implications that flow from a clearer understanding of this are profound even though I feel like it is just starting to dawn on my consciousness. This word in particular has been one of the most nebulous concepts in religion that I have ever grappled with, so to have a new understanding that actually makes sense, fits in with everything else I am learning about God and has real effect on my own life is exciting to me. About as close as I have come to making sense of this word most of my life was to believe that when Jesus lived on earth He didn't ever commit a sin. So when people talked about the righteousness of Christ, about all I could think about was that I was supposed to believe that Jesus was a perfect man. Well, that has never been hard for me to believe, but it seemed totally disconnected from having much of anything to do with me. So what that Jesus lived a perfect li...