Beware Of Belittling The Blood - 1 Peter 1:17-21 Series

But what if it is not a small thing? What if it is something I feel really passionate about? What if I have spent years of my life preparing for it, and it is right at the core of my whole mission in life? Get in my way now and it’s time for bulldozer mode. (At least that is how it should be. Many times I fail at this – I get real bull headed on some minor little thing and insist on my way. And then on some real important thing I hit resistance and just take the easy way out and fold rather than persevering. So I am not saying I always get this right – I am just saying that generally speaking, the more invested a person is in something, the more passionate he is about that thing, the more he will tend to plow through resistance.)

Now let me ask you this – how invested is God in redemption? How much time and effort and expense have gone into His purpose in making you holy? It has been on His mind … forever! Literally – throughout eternity past, God was planning this – planning your holiness. These four things that God the Father did to God the Son show us an eternal purpose that is a freight train that you do not want to oppose or resist.

The Only Way

When it says Jesus was foreknown – that is not just a reference to knowledge. When God foreknows something that points to His plan and purpose regarding that thing. And God’s eternal plan and purpose regarding Jesus was that He would accomplish redemption through His bloody death on the cross – which makes Jesus the only way to the Father. That is why no other religion can save you, because no other religion has God suffering punishment in your place for your sin, which means you have to be punished for your own sin. And so Jesus is the only way to salvation.

Through Him You Believe

21 through Him you are believers in God who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him so that your faith and hope are in God.

Through Jesus we are believers in God; through Jesus our faith and hope is in God. God raised Jesus from the dead and glorified Him. And part of the way He exalted Him was by making Him the only way to salvation.

John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus is the only way to God. People pray to God all the time, imagining that He listens, but He doesn’t. They are speaking to the air. Their hopes that maybe there is a God on the other end who is somehow hearing those prayers – is a dream, a superstition. Human beings cannot just approach God by simply wishing it to be so. Sinful human beings could no sooner approach a holy God than you could travel to the inside of the sun. God is utterly unapproachable by anyone who has any sin whatsoever. God will not accept their worship, which means He will not accept them. The only worship God will accept is perfect, spotless, unblemished, uncontaminated, holy worship.

“How is that possible?”

The Only Way to Acceptable Worship (Unblemished)

Go back to verse 19.

19 […redeemed] with precious blood, as a lamb, without blemish and spotless – the blood of Christ.