A Peculiar Weapon: The Blood of the Lamb
When a Christian considers spiritual warfare, he will be quick to tell you that his warfare is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers in heavenly places (Eph 6:12). If you were to ask what his weapons of warfare consist of, he may present a list from Ephesians 6:10–20. An astute Christian might inform you that the only offensive weapon in the Christian arsenal is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
If we inquire further about the Word of God, we might ask what exactly this weapon accomplishes and how do we use it? An even more adroit Christian might suggest that it is truth in a war against lies and deceit promulgated by Satan, our adversary. He might show you Matthew 4 or Luke 4 where Jesus fought the devil by quoting the Scriptures. However, only when we inquire about the victory in spiritual warfare, do we reach full understanding. Victory in Jesus reveals one weapon that always leads us in triumph (2 Cor 2:14). Recondite spiritual warfare is made resplendent when we turn to the weapon that won the great war between God and Satan…the blood of the Lamb.
“And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death (Rev 12:11),” is the statement of the most peculiar weapon of all. It is the not-so-secret weapon within the weapon of the Word of God. We might call it, “blood testimony.” Here is the peculiar weapon that gives the Christian victory when it is employed by faith. Faith speaks of blood, and without the speaking of Christ’s blood there is no Gospel.
Christians acknowledge the true existence of a personal spirit, the devil, who wars against us. He is the accuser of the brethren (Rev 12:10). He promises to excuse us of sin, even in the same breath by which he tempts us to disobey the Law of God (Rom 2:15), which he then uses to produce and maintain a guilty conscience. He blinds the mind of the unbelievers so they cannot see the Gospel (2 Cor 4:4), but he humiliates the Christian with claims of arrogance and hypocrisy. Satan is ever-working both sides of his argument against man. He is either tempting us to pride, or he is destroying us with accusations of failure. Both of these arguments are set in abeyance by the mention of Christ’s blood.
The apostle Paul taught us to always take the posture of “chief of sinners,” a title he employed for himself (1 Tim 1:16). The truth about our sinfulness should be half of our humility. The other half of Christian humility is the unmerited forgiveness of sins granted to us (Eph 1:7). Humanity in the eyes of the Christian, using the Bible as her source, is one of total depravity. Man is completely ruined (Gen 6:5; Jer 17:9; Rom 3:10–12, 23; 6:23; Eph 2:1–3, 11–12; 1 Thess 1:10).
This truth foils Satan’s strategy of self-esteem and self-help. As long as someone is on the treadmill of performance salvation (ie. works righteousness; easy believism; free will decisionalism; purgatory; legalism), Satan can accuse or excuse him in terms of self-achievement. Only with the blood of the Lamb do we move the subject to Christ’s perfect performance. The Christian can boast of his failed performance, in regard to the Law, without despair (Heb 9:14). When Satan accuses us, we can agree with him. Believers may say, “God had mercy on me, because Christ offered Himself as my substitute on the Cross, what can I boast in beside Him?”
With truth and lies mingled together, Satan immobilizes Christians from engaging in our commissioned warfare. It is not sufficient to trust in Christ’s victory (Jn 16:33), and then not engage in the battle against evil. We cannot receive all of the spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Eph 1:3; 2:6), and then imagine that we are no longer upon the earth. We remain in the war zone with a reconnaissance mission (Acts 1:8; Rom 10:17; 1 Cor 2:2). The Bible instructs us about the peculiar warfare and the peculiar weaponry. It is Satan’s task to confuse us, for he is the author of confusion. We must be clear, regarding who and what we are fighting against.
It is the blood of the Lamb that gives us victory on every front. We must consider a number of battlefields and how the blood secures our victory.
First, we must acknowledge, it was the blood of the Lamb of God (Jn 1:29), Jesus Christ, that secured His own victory. There at the Cross, our Savior, defeated sin, Satan, and death. His blood disarmed these enemies by removing their stronghold of power. He alone is victorious, but God always leads us in triumph in Him (2 Cor 2:14; Rev 17:14). We have victory in Jesus, by His blood.
Sin stops with death, and Christ died for the ungodly (Rom 5:6, 8). Death has been swallowed up in His resurrection life (Jn 11; 1 Cor 15). He is alive forevermore (Rev 1:18), and death has lost its sting (1 Cor 15:55). Satan had the power of death and destruction (Heb 2:14), holding dominion over the earth and its subjects (Rom 6:14). Satan cannot destroy, nor issue death according to his own will. The death of Christ defeated death itself. Satan can only deceive. He is the great pretender (Is 14; Ezek 28). He is an imitator. He is like the man who owns a BMW and also a mountain of debt.
Second, we see from Leviticus 16, the imagery of a substitute sacrifice. Christ died in our stead (Rom 5:8). He bore our sins (1 Pet 2:24). His blood was shed for us and for our salvation. Who can bring a charge against God’s elect, if this is true? No one can, and this is the devil’s work to bring accusation, as with Job (Job 1:10).
If Satan tries to prosecute a case against the child of God, she has an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 Jn 2:1). He paid the penalty for our sins. He endured the punishing wrath of God rightly intended for us (Rom 3:25; Heb 2:17; 1 Jn 2:2; 4:10). He made purification for sins, made the claim, “it is finished,” and then sat down at the right hand of majesty in heaven (Heb 1:3). He loves us (Rom 5:5, 8; Eph 1:4–5; 2 Cor 5:5), and he gave Himself for us (Eph 5:25). Who can separate us from His love (Rom 8:35–39), if His blood avails for us? There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1).
Third, the blood of Christ secured forgiveness of all of our sins, granting us atonement with God (Mt 26:28; Eph 1:7; Heb 9:22). We have peace with God (Rom 5:1), and we have access to His personal presence through the one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). He ever lives to make intercession for us (Heb 7:25).
The blood of Christ has brought us near to God (Eph 2:13), renting the veil of separation, and breaking down the wall of division caused by sin (Eph 2:11–22). Those who dwell in the house of God fear no evil, for He is with us, and if God is with us, who can be against us (Rom 8:31)? No one, not even Satan, can separate from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:35–39). This is the message of blood atonement. We are in union with Christ (Rom 6), who is in union with God the Father (Jn 14:10–11), and we can never lose their favor. This is the blood of a new and everlasting covenant between the Father and the Son (Mt 26:28; Heb 13:20), and we are in Him (1 Cor 1:30; Eph 1:7).
Fourth, the blood of the Lamb disarms the enemy for us in our fight of faith. We overcome the world and the prince of this world by faith (1 Jn 5:4). We bear witness, our testimony of faith in Christ, as warfare (Acts 1:8). The Word of truth destroys every stronghold of lies (Jn 8:32). The course of this world is confusion, and the enticement to turn onto the wide way of destruction is every road sign except one (Mt 7:13).
This is the one way sign, who is Jesus Christ (Jn 14:6). The way of the Cross is narrow and few find it as the door of their salvation. We must come to the Cross, as the only door through the wall of sin that separates us from a holy God. At this door (Jn 10:9), we are sprinkled with His blood (1 Pet 1:2), as we pass through into the way of life. The blood of the Lamb never leaves us, and it never fails us on our journey of life in Christ.
Satan accuses us of sin. We claim the blood of the Lamb, as the agent of forgiveness and cleansing. Nothing but the blood of Jesus is acceptable for our claim to alien righteousness. Satan brings to remembrance our foul past, and we claim the blood of the Lamb to cleanse our guilty conscience (Heb 9:14). The blood of the Lamb has secured and imputed our righteousness, that is, our permanent access and right standing with God.
Satan tempts us to drift away from God through sin, but the Spirit of God ever brings Christ into our view, and we fix our eyes on the Lamb who was slain from before the foundation of the world for us (Heb 12:2; Rev 5:6, 12). His covenant promises are guaranteed with His own precious blood. We remember we were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). We live our lives in active repentance and renewed faith.
The blood of Another, meaning the death of One who loved us and laid down His life for us (Jn 10:11, 15; Eph 5:25), causes us to long for purity and holiness. Satan wishes to defile us. The blood of the Lamb is still there upon us. Blood stains are forever. It is His eternal mark upon His people. The Spirit places the seal of God upon us, which is Christ’s insignia stamped in His blood. We resist the devil with the testimony of Christ’s blood (Jas 4:7).
The blood of Christ speaks. It speaks better than the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24). Abel ‘s blood cried out as a victim for vengeance; but Christ’s blood is the weapon of the Conqueror. He fought with His own blood, and we fight with His blood. We preach Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor 2:2), and demons tremble at the truth (Mt 8:29; Mk 5:7; Lk 8:28).
Satan preaches Christ, too. He is a deceiver in proclaiming another Jesus. “Christ is a good man,” is the message of Lucifer’s witnesses when they knock on your door. “Christ is Lucifer’s brother,” is the message of Belial’s boys on their bicycles. “Christ was a prophet,” is the deficient message of the wicked one’s apostles. But we proclaim Him (Col 1:28), who died to save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21). We declare the Lamb slain in the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23; Rev 5:6, 12), an eternal decree established before Creation. We herald a Gospel of blood. This is the true Gospel, destroying every argument against our salvation in Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, according to the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone.
If the precious and peculiar weapon is ours, then why do Christians know so little of the meaning of this blood testimony? Triumph is ours wherever and whenever we speak of the blood of the Lamb slain. Here is the cause of so much despair and depression among Christians, today. Men of God preach psychology and philosophy and politics, with comic illustrations from post-modern pulpits. What is humorous about blood? Nothing. It is a solemn testimony that someone has died.
Blood can only mean two things: life in the body and death outside of it. When the blood of the Lamb was brought to the mercy seat in the tabernacle, the message of death was evident. When the high priest returned from the holiest place, having sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat of God’s presence on the Ark of the Covenant, the people saw a man who had entered the presence of God and returned with a message of life. He was alive, and he was able to pronounce the forgiveness of sins to the people who had a substitute sacrifice. There is life in Christ’s blood.
In summary, we have spoken of spiritual war. We have identified the defeated enemy, Satan, the adversary of God and His people. We have seen His defeat at the Cross, by the blood of the Lamb who was slain. We have understood the continuance of his deceptive warfare. We engage the father of lies with the truth of Christ’s victorious blood.
This is our testimony of His blood, and we will proclaim it until death do us part. For this is the peculiar weapon of our warfare against principalities and powers, and with it, we overcome everything…all the time. Satan was and is defeated by Christ’s blood. Sin is defeated, bringing condemnation to no one with the sprinkled blood of the Lamb upon her. Death has no victory over those with Christ’s blood on them. We have looked to our Healer, lifted up from the earth and pinned to a tree, and we are healed by His stripes, from which flows the weapon of God’s choice…a declaration of victory we embrace by the faith He has given to us who believe (Gal 3:22).
David E. Norczyk
Spokane Valley, Washington
January 22, 2021
