TUESDAY 29th
Colossians 1:9-14
NIV (v14) – ‘. . . in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.’
ESV (v14) – ‘. . . in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.’
The previous verse to our text says, ‘He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son’ and continues with our text ‘in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.’
The older translations have inserted in this verse how this redemption has come about with the words ‘through his blood’. Thus, making it read ‘In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ Personally, I wish the translators of the NIV and ESV (and others) had kept those words in their translations, for it is essential that we understand the importance of the blood in our redemption.
Our redemption hasn’t come about because Jesus was a good man, (although we know he was), it isn’t as a result of the miracles he performed, (as amazing as they were), it isn’t even because he was raised from the dead, (as important as the resurrection is) It was because he was willing to shed his blood for us, for without the shedding of blood, there would be no remission of sin. Ironically as I am preparing these devotions I have put an old CD on that I haven’t listened to for years, and as I write these very thoughts the song is being sung, ‘Jesus Lamb of God’ with the words ‘that I the guilty one may know the blood once shed, still freely flowing, still cleansing . . .’
The blood of Jesus was essential for our salvation, the blood of the sinless and spotless Son of God who became the Lamb who was slain. In my own personal devotions this morning (the day I was preparing this) my thoughts were around the Cross and as I contemplated Calvary, in my mind I tried to imagine the horrors that surrounded it. The blood of Jesus began to flow long before he reached the Cross as they beat him and put the crown of thorns on his brow, but as they lifted the Cross and placed it upright, the blood began to flow out of and down our Saviour’s body, some running down the Cross itself, some running down to the ground beneath, and I pictured myself, kneeling at the Cross, and from heaven the judgment of God was being poured out onto the dying Jesus, God’s wrath and punishment toward my sin, and at the same time Jesus blood was dripping over me, washing me and cleansing me, what descended from heaven as the wrath of God and the punishment of God toward my sin was received by Jesus in my place and he changed it into drops of grace and mercy and forgiveness which flowed over me a sinner, and washed me and made me clean. There is no other way, there is no one else who has done for me what Christ has done, and I got up from the Cross, a new man cleansed and made anew, washed in the crimson flow, clothed not in filthy rags, but in the new robes of righteousness that he gave me.
Have you been to the Cross? The hope of mankind cannot be found anywhere else, listen to what the apostle Paul says in Romans 3:21-25, ‘But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.’
We all need to come to Jesus by faith, trusting in what he has done, all that is needed for us to receive redemption, the forgiveness of sin and the hope of eternal life.