How to Apply His Blood to Any Situation

The first time I heard a sermon about the blood of Jesus, I thought to myself, Why are we talking about blood in church?

It took a little while for me to warm up to the idea of the preacher talking about blood, animal sacrifices, and Abraham taking Isaac to an altar. I am so glad I didn’t follow the impulse to leave that service.

What I have learned about the blood of Jesus has provided me with supernatural freedom from guilt and shame. Because of my faith in the blood of Jesus, I have confidence in dealing with God and courage when I deal with the enemy.

At the end of my testimony, I shared with you two experiences that happened after I was saved. After Philip and I married, we were expecting our first child, which we lost in a miscarriage. Philip wanted to believe that God would help us, but shame hindered my faith.

The thought came into my mind that this was happening because of the abortion that had occurred years before. Even though I knew Jesus had forgiven me, clearing me of the guilt of the abortion, I was still ashamed.

The second experience happened a few years later. I had grown in the Word and had a different response to a similar situation. When our next child was born, she experienced trauma in the birth canal that caused her lung to collapse. At the time, we didn’t know what had happened. We just witnessed her skin turning blue as she struggled to breathe. Then, the nurses took her out of the room, eventually sending her to the local children’s hospital, where she stayed in ICU for over a week.

But the blood of Jesus is what made a difference in the victory we experienced in the second situation. In one situation, I yielded to shame, but in the other, I stood in faith. I want to share with you what I learned because it is a vital part of my progress.

The blood of Jesus is not supposed to only be used one time when we are born again. Instead, Jesus’ blood should be a constant part of our spiritual activity.

There is a difference between guilt and shame, and the blood of Jesus is the weapon we use against them both. This truth helped me break free from the shame I was still carrying from my past—the shame that caused me to draw back from God’s help.

The Difference Between Guilt and Shame

Guilt comes from an offense or violation, the result of whatever you did that was wrong. Guilt is the standing in which your action or transgression has placed you. A person can be found guilty of committing a violation or crime. And if, for example, you confess to something wrong you have done, you would say, “I am guilty.” In so doing, you would be describing the state in which your transgression has placed you.

But shame is the feeling or emotional pain in your conscience that is caused by your guilt or the guilt of someone else who violates you. You can feel and experience shame. But shame isn’t just felt in your emotions. Your subconscious mind also experiences a sense of shame. It is a painful feeling that reaches into your thoughts, perceptions and can even be attached to your memories.

Both guilt and shame hinder our approach to God but in two different ways. Specifically, guilt affects the way God can relate to us, while shame affects the way we relate to God. When I first gave my life to Jesus Christ, I successfully put faith in the blood of Jesus that I was free of the guilty verdict. I believed Jesus paid the price for the sins I had committed and that they were not laid to my charge.

But I stopped at that first application of the blood of Jesus and never released faith in His blood to purge my conscience. That is why shame was still actively working in my life. God could reach me, but I was having trouble connecting with God.

Shame stayed hidden in my subconscious mind. So, whenever I felt or experienced shame, I would ask myself, What did I do? Where did I sin? I went to the altar to repent a lot in those days. I was repenting for the way I felt, trying to remove the shameful feeling with the same method I had used to remove guilt.

We have a great example of the two different applications of the blood in the Bible illustrated in the sacrifices and ceremonies of the Old Testament. Under the Old Covenant, there was a difference in the way people dealt with their guilt compared to the way they dealt with being unclean, the shameful condition caused by their guilt. They had to offer a sacrifice for their guilt. But there was a different method used to deal with their unclean condition—the shame.

The Penalty Paid

First, let’s see how Jesus dealt with our guilt. Guilt requires judgment. Because God is just, He cannot pretend the act that caused our guilt never happened.

The penalty for the guilt caused by sin is death. None of us stood a chance because we were all guilty of sin. That’s why Jesus left His position in heaven and willingly came to the earth as a man. He was the only One qualified to die and pay this price.

God created the first man and placed him in the Garden of Eden with the instruction to “Be fruitful and multiply...” (Genesis 1:22). Every person born in Adam’s lineage would have his fundamental characteristics.

But before Adam reproduced, he sinned. Sin would now be passed on to every person born through his bloodline. Each man, woman, and child was born into the sin-lineage of Adam. We all deserved to die and owed our lives in payment for our sins.

God then sent Jesus as a man. The Bible calls Jesus “the last Adam.”

Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being (an individual personality); the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving Spirit [restoring the dead to life] (1 Corinthians 15:45 AMPC).

When we receive Jesus as Lord of our lives, we are reborn according to the pattern of Jesus and with His characteristics. We now have His attributes of righteousness and holiness. We come off the “spiritual assembly line” with the same qualities as Jesus Christ. We were sinners like the first Adam, but we are now righteous like the last Adam.

And just as we have borne the image [of the man] of dust, so shall we and so let us also bear the image [of the Man] of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49 AMPC).

To provide the spiritual connection for our rebirth, Jesus, the last Adam, had to undo what the first Adam did. Jesus had to regain what Adam lost by dealing with the guilt Adam caused and passed on to us.

Remember, guilt requires judgment, and Jesus had to die to pay the penalty. No other person could die and accomplish what the death of God’s sinless Son accomplished. Jesus tasted death for every person. He did this to provide us with the opportunity to receive the life and nature of God.

In the Old Testament, the death of the animal on the altar substituted for the death of the person. But this substitution only lasted a year. The people had to return the following year with another animal and go through the same process of substitution again.

Also, the people were only covering their sin because the blood of an animal wasn’t valuable enough to pay for their sin to be completely cleansed once and for all.

The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship (Hebrews 10:1 NLT).

Because the people could never completely cleanse the sin, they were never able to relate to God in the way He wanted. The guilt was always standing in their way, and the shame was embedded deep down in their conscience. They perceived themselves as unacceptable and unclean.

If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared (Hebrews 10:2 NLT).

God’s perfect Son knew this and willingly offered to change the situation. Jesus knew His Heavenly Father wanted to have a strong, personal relationship with every person. God wanted the liberty to love us as His own children. He wanted every person to have the liberty to enjoy and participate in this relationship without any presence of guilt or a sense of shame.

In Chapter 10 of Hebrews, we see the conversation Jesus had with the Father:

That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer. You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God—as is written about me in the Scriptures’” (Hebrews 10:5-7 NLT).

God loved us so much that He was willing to offer His only Son to bring us into His kingdom and make us His children. When God gave Jesus, He sacrificed His all. Jesus was His only son. But through Jesus Christ, God would be able to have many descendants. Look at this explanation in the Book of Isaiah:

But it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s good plan will prosper in his hands. When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels (Isaiah 53:10-12 NLT).

Jesus interceded for rebels, and I was one of those rebels! He received the punishment for my guilt so that I could receive His right standing with God. So, it pleases God when we live our lives without guilt because Jesus died to purchase that freedom for us.

The Blood Is Our Approach to God

What God really wanted was to have a close, loving relationship with us. This has only been available since the blood of Jesus was poured out on the cross. Before that, the ability to approach God was limited.

Let’s look at the way the Old Testament worshippers had to approach God. In seeing their limited access, we can realize and appreciate how much better our relationship is because of the blood of Jesus.

The first reference to blood in the Bible is implied. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, the glory that once covered them departed. They hid from God because they realized they were naked (Genesis 3:8-10). God used the skins of animals to cover Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21).

This meant that God had to shed the blood of animals to cover the guilt of the first man and woman. So, even though they had disobeyed God and caused the separation in their relationship with God, God, out of love, still cared for them by providing them with this covering.

The next implication of blood is seen when Adam and Eve’s sons brought offerings to the Lord.

When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the LORD Abel also brought a gift—the best of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The LORD accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected. “Why are you so angry?” the LORD asked Cain. “Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master” (Genesis 4:3-7 NLT).

God talked to Cain, instructing Cain on how to approach Him. God wanted to accept Cain’s offering, but Cain failed to approach God under the covering of blood. Cain wanted to approach God through his efforts. The problem was that Cain’s efforts could not wash away the guilt of sin, and all of Cain’s hard work could not cleanse the shame.

God told Cain and Abel the acceptable way to approach Him. In Hebrews 11:4, we see that Abel was moved by faith when he brought his sacrifice to God.

It was by faith that Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did. Abel’s offering gave evidence that he was a righteous man, and God showed his approval of his gifts. Although Abel is long dead, he still speaks to us by his example of faith (Hebrews 11:4 NLT).

God wasn’t playing favorites when He accepted Abel’s offering and refused Cain’s. Instead, Abel approached God with the blood of his lambs, as God had instructed him to do.

God was operating within the limits that mankind’s guilt had placed on the relationship between God and man. Because God is holy and mankind had fallen into sin, God could not have the interaction with people that He really wanted.

In our society, when a person is placed in prison, they have restrictions on the extent to which they can interact with their family. Prisoners have limited time and contact with the people they love. Before Jesus shed His blood, the Heavenly Father must have felt like He was visiting His children in prison. Guilt held God at a distance from the people He had created for fellowship.

God truly loved Cain and encouraged Cain to properly approach Him by bringing the blood of an animal, as Abel had done. God told Cain that he would be accepted if he did the right thing. In this way, God gave Cain the method to cover his guilt.