The Precious Blood of Christ Redeemed us, and now we Enjoy His Precious Promises!

Christ is all-inclusive and all-extensive, and to God He is everything: He is the centrality and universality of God’s economy, He’s the Father’s Beloved, He is the center of the Father’s plan, and He is the Head of the Body, the church.

Christ is supremely precious, excellent, and all-inclusive, and we as believers in Christ have been drawn to Him by His preciousness. As we spend time daily in the Lord’s word to pray and fellowship with God, we are captivated and drawn to Christ, this wonderful precious One.

Being a Christian to us is not “adhering to a church and changing the life-style to match the Bible” but an increased appreciation and enjoyment of the all-inclusive excellent Christ who is not only our Savior and Redeemer but also our life, our peace, our joy, our comfort, our Leader, our Guide, our Friend, our Counsellor, our Advocate, our Master, and our everything.

This precious Christ is the precious stone (making us precious stones), has a precious blood, gave us the precious promises, and considers our faith and the proving of our faith as being precious. In the previous article we saw how Christ is the precious stone for God’s building: He is the foundation stone, tested and tried for us to trust in and be held together by, and He is the precious cornerstone joining us together in the Body of Christ, God’s building.

What a wonderful Christ we have: He is the centrality and universality of God’s move for the building up of His eternal habitation – He is the all-inclusive living and precious stone!

Today we want to see more concerning the Lord’s preciousness, especially concerning His precious blood with which He has redeemed us from our vain manner of life to live a holy life for the church life, and concerning His precious promises through which we can become partakers of the divine nature.

Oh, may we be unveiled to see the Lord’s preciousness and appreciate Him, love Him, and consider Him as the most supremely precious and excellent One!

The Precious Blood of Christ has Redeemed us from our Vain Manner of Life

As believers in Christ we know that it was not with corruptible things – such as silver, gold, or money – that the Lord redeemed us from our vain manner of life handed down from our fathers, but with precious blood – as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot – the precious blood of Christ (see 1 Pet. 1:18-19).

The blood of Christ sprinkled us and marked us from among the common people, and it is more precious than silver and gold. Christ’s life reached the highest standard: He was perfect, pure, sinless, and righteous, and His blood is the highest price that has been paid for our redemption.

Hallelujah, the highest price has been paid for our redemption that we might be redeemed from a vain manner of life to live a holy life in the church life (1 Pet. 1:18, 15)!

The God-man Lord Jesus, God mingled with man and being expressed through man, died on the cross for us and passed through death; we can’t really comprehend this with our limited human mind, but we can appreciate and enjoy this highest price that Christ paid for our redemption.

He didn’t redeem us with money, with gold, or with silver; these are corruptible things. Christ redeemed us with His own precious blood, paying the highest price to purchase us, and the effectiveness, power, worth, function, and authority of His blood are eternal and incorruptible.

I was really touched by this following excerpt from bro. Lee on this matter,

I would encourage you to spend an hour alone with the Lord to consider the precious blood of Christ shed for you on the cross. This will give you the desire to have a holy manner of life in fear. You will want to become holy in all your manner of life and to pass the remaining time of your sojourn in fear. If we would live in this way, we need to realize that we have been redeemed, bought, purchased, with the high price of Christ’s precious blood. This realization will cause us to have a living in a holy manner of life, for we shall realize that Christ’s precious blood has redeemed us from the vain manner of life. No longer will we want to live in a way that is vain,…having no goal, aim, or purpose. (Witness Lee, Life-study of 1 Peter, p. 103)

If we would just quiet down, be silent, and consider the Lord’s precious blood in our time with Him, realizing how high this price was, we would be encouraged and even compelled to have a holy manner of life in fear in the church life, appreciating the Lord Jesus and loving Him to the uttermost.

We used to live in a vain manner of life, the same manner of life that our parents and their parents before lived, but Christ paid the highest price to redeem us from our vain manner of life and to impart His life into us so that we may live a holy life for the church life, God’s building.

Lord Jesus, thank You for redeeming us with Your precious blood from our vain manner of life handed down from our parents. Lord, we treasure Your precious blood, the highest price paid for our redemption. We desire to have a holy manner of life in fear in the church life, living under the realization and in the appreciation of Your precious blood. We no longer want to live in a way that is vain, empty, having no goal or purpose. Lord Jesus, we want to live a holy life for the building up of the church, Your Body, Your habitation.

Enjoying the Precious and Exceedingly Great Promises Granted to us by Christ

God’s divine power has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and virtue, through which He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world by lust (see 2 Pet. 1:3-4; cf. Isa. 42:6; Heb. 8:8-12).

Our God and Savior Jesus Christ has granted to us the precious and exceedingly great promises so that we may enjoy them and partake of them, that through these we may become partakers of the divine nature.

God’s promises are in His word; the best way to enjoy God’s promises is to pray-read the word of God. The more we pray-read the word of God, the more we enjoy the divine nature and the more we grow in life unto maturity; this maturity is our entrance into the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh, how we all need to grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ by praying over God’s word so that His promises would become ours and we would partake of the divine nature! God’s precious promises mainly relate to our spiritual life, so that we may have a rich inner life that expresses the divine life for others to see Christ living in us.

Some of the promises of the Lord are:

• I will be with you until the end of time (Matt. 28:20).
• If we eat the Lord, we will live because of Him (John 6:57).
• If we drink the Lord, out of us will flow rivers of living water (John 7:37-38).
• We have the eternal life from Christ, and because of this we will never perish, nor can anyone snatch us out of the Lord’s hands (John 10:28).
• Because Christ lives, we also live – we today live and forever we will live because Christ lives (John 14:19-20).
• Christ is the vine, and we are the branches; if we abide in Him, He abides in us and we bear much fruit which remains for the Father’s glory (John 15:5).
• He promised us the Spirit of reality who will guide us into all things.

The Bible is full of God’s promises to us, His people, and we need to be diligent to read the word of God and pray over it so that we may partake of the divine nature. By calling on the Lord’s precious name, we drink of Him as the cup of salvation, enjoying Him as the reality of all the precious and exceedingly great promises for the goal of God’s building (see Acts 4:10-12; Psa. 116:12-13).

When we call, Oh Lord Jesus! we drink liquid salvation (the cup of salvation) and we enjoy the Lord’s precious promises. When we pray-read the word of God, we partake of and enjoy the divine nature so that we may grow and develop in life unto the maturity of life to enjoy a rich entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 1:4-11).

On the one hand, we need to escape the corruption which is in the world by lust, and on the other hand, we need to partake of the divine nature; we escape to partake, and we partake of the divine nature to escape the corruption in the world.

Our Christian life is a cycle of escaping to partake and of partaking to escape, and we do this by calling on the name of the Lord and pray-reading His word both individually and with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

The result of our escaping the corruption in the world by lusts and our partaking of the divine nature is that we grow in life unto maturity and the Body of Christ is built up.

Lord Jesus, thank You for granting us the precious and exceedingly great promises in Your word that by these we may partake of the divine nature and escape the corruption which is in the world by lust. Lord, keep us calling on Your name to drink of the cup of salvation and pray-reading the word to enjoy and partake of the precious promises! Oh Lord, we want to partake of and enjoy the divine nature by pray-reading Your precious promises in Your word so that we may grow in life unto maturity and build up the Body of Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother Albert Lim’s sharing in the message for this week, and Life-study of 1 Peter, msg. 12 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Crucial Points of the Major Items of the Lord’s Recovery Today (ITERO 2015 fall), week 3 / msg 3, The Supreme Preciousness of the All-inclusive Christ.
• All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
  # Lord, I believe Thy precious blood, / Which, at the mercy-seat of God, / Forever doth for sinners plead, / For me, e’en for my soul, was shed. (Hymns #295)
  # Thy precious blood has made us clean, / That we accepted be; / Regenerated by Thy life, / We now are one with Thee. (Hymns #116)
  # Given us, given us, God has given us / Precious faith, power divine, greatest promises. / We believed, we received, now we have all three; / By these we may grow unto maturity. (Hymns #1211)