The Precious Blood of Christ, the Price for Which We Were Bought

Beloved:
Realize that you were ransomed from your futile conduct,
handed on by your ancestors,
not with perishable things like silver or gold
but with the precious Blood of Christ
as of a spotless unblemished Lamb.
He was known before the foundation of the world
but revealed in the final time for you,
who through him believe in God
who raised him from the dead and gave him glory,
so that your faith and hope are in God.
– 1 Peter 1:18-21

We’ve heard the message before: “You were bought at a price!”

But what does this mean to us? How does this affect our lives? It is an incredible faith exercise to reflect upon what exactly that price was. One of the main reasons gold and silver have been valued through the ages is their constancy/durability. How many things in life change our perspective so deeply that we would see them as perishable? Bananas are perishable, not gold or silver.

Such is the Blood of Christ.

In Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (happy birthday yesterday, GK!), he touches on this theme in a way that has stuck with me for years: we ought to reflect on the constant things in life, because they speak to God’s imperishable love. Atheists, he notes, take the rigid laws of nature, the rising and setting of the sun, as proof that these realities are, in fact, dull and unquestionable. The universe does not behave any other way because it could not behave in any other way, so the laws of thermodynamics and gravity, for example, are not proof of some greater design, but simply normal.

However, I would bet that even among non-believers, most people would be more likely to acknowledge the staggering improbability of it all. Life, the universe, all of it. Instead of a fatalist boredom, to these the vastness of creation inspires an admittedly uninspiring thought: we were just really, really lucky. With trillions of stars, planets, and combinations of the periodic table throughout all existence, there was bound to be a fortunate set of conditions such as ours. We were the 00 on the enormous roulette wheel of the universe, so we might as well cash in.

As believers, our job is to actively believe otherwise. We all have our experiences of the living God in our lives that refute any kind of inevitability or impersonal cosmic fluke of creation as the source of Goodness. Haven’t you? Where does the goodness in your life come from? Do you attribute it to the Living Water? We must protect and proclaim these experiences of Christ’s Blood covering us, keeping them lit as we do the candle above the tabernacle.

There is something more inside.

Take time contemplate the vastness of the universe in the upcoming weeks. Read The Divine Comedy or The Tempest. Listen to Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Watch Planet Earth or Cosmos (and pray for Neil Degrasse Tyson’s ultimate conversion, I know it’s gonna happen!). Go for a walk and the count the homes you pass. God knows them all inside and out. He knows every soul fully. In a city of 8.5 million, that ought to have an effect on you. Bask in the hugeness of creation, and know that Christ was known before any of it was known. He was “known before the foundation” and revealed to us. The Creator burst into our reality, took on our form for Love’s sake, and imprinted Himself on every one of our hearts.

Such is the Blood of Christ.