This morning I read about the day Jesus was beaten to a bloody pulp and nailed to a splintery cross. He had all this power available to Him. I mean, He could have called for thousands of angels and they would have come and protected Him from all the bad guys. But He didn’t. He didn’t do that because Jesus didn’t come to live a safe life. He actually came to die–that’s why He let the bad guys win.

And as His enemies were all crying out, “Crucify Him!”, they said a very interesting thing. They said, “May His blood be upon us and on our children.” (Matthew 27) And little did they know, but that is exactly what they needed. And that’s precisely why Jesus let the bad guys win. This is what the cross is all about. Because the way that God would take sin-ravaged and sin-imprisoned souls and make them free, is He would buy them back with His life and wash them in the blood of His Son. A strange thing happens when a person’s soul is washed in the blood of the only righteous God-man. All the guilt is purged away, and the dirty is scrubbed clean. Blackest grime becomes white as snow. The guilty becomes blameless. The broken, now healed and whole.

And this is why the Jesus-followers can’t  help but sing.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.  

(I don’t usually like Jesus-y youtubes. They just come across weird to me. But, I do love these words. I bank my life on them.)