Covered in the Blood

This will be especially meaningful if you are doing or have done the study The Life Changing Power in the Blood of Christ. This is from my friend, Beth Misner. I have provided the link to her blog.


Ezekiel 16 is a tragic love story of epic proportions; here is how it starts: “On the day you were born, no one cared about you. Your umbilical cord was not cut and you were never washed, rubbed with salt, and wrapped in cloth. No one had the slightest interest in you; no one pitied you or cared for you. On the day you were born, you were unwanted, dumped in a field and left to die.

“But I came by and saw you there, helplessly kicking about in your own blood. As you lay there, I said, ‘Live!’…you grew up and became a beautiful jewel…but you were still naked…so I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declared my marriage vows. I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine. Then I bathed you and washed off your blood, and I rubbed fragrant oils into your skin.”

This love story goes on to tell how the Lord God lavished his bride with expensive jewelry, the most exquisite clothes and shoes as well as the choicest foods. “You looked like a queen, and so you were!” continues the Lord. All our hearts resonate with the theme of this story–the knight in shining armor rescued the lonely, abandoned girl, made her His queen and took her to the castle to live.

But then our senses receive a shock as the story takes a sharp turn…Israel became self-absorbed and “thought [her] fame and beauty were [her] own.” She began to turn her heart away from her husband, the Lord, and turned to idolatry. “You used the lovely things I gave you to make shrines for idols, where you played the prostitute.” God uses the strongest language to describe this betrayal and unfaithfulness to Him. “Unbelievable! How could such a thing happen?”

And then the greatest shock of all comes: “Then you took your sons and daughters—the children you had borne to me—and sacrificed them to your gods. Was your prostitution not enough? Must you also slaughter my children by sacrificing them to idols?”

God’s reaction to this horrifying turn of events is to return Israel to her former condition: “I will strip you naked in front of [your lovers] so they can stare at you…I will cover you with blood in my jealous fury.”

But our God isn’t satisfied to let the story end there. He truly LOVES this abandoned child-turned-woman. He audaciously enters into humanity, into space and time, into mortality, to be stripped naked Himself and covered in blood, exchanging places with the abandoned child who laid in the field, left to die.

And now, once again, we are His, wrapped in His cloak, bathed and washed clean of our blood, rubbed with salt and fragrant oils. We are the Bride of Christ, in a holy covenant of marriage to God Himself.

How carefully do we live our lives so that we remain faithful to this Groom? Do we even recognize the things that pull our attention and our focus away from Him and become idols in our lives? I pray that each one of you reading this will prayerfully examine your own life to see what altars you might have constructed out of the lovely things He has given you.

We experience two different responses when the depth of meaning of this love story recounted in Ezekiel 16 stirs our hearts, and I believe both responses will lead us into a time of focused prayer.

We experience remorse and a conviction about those things that have become idols in our lives, coming between and before our Great God. This remorse will lead us into prayer of deep, deep repentance as we not only confess these things to God, but also commit to changing that and tearing down those altars upon which we have been worshiping.

We also experience overwhelming gratitude and thanksgiving that he was willing to be stripped naked and covered in our blood. We experience elation and great joy that God, in His infinite patience, mercy and love, is still willing to wash our blood off us, purifying us so that we can be his bride! Our prayers of rejoicing and praise are our honorable sacrifice and worship to our God.

By Beth Misner (c) Beth Misner. Used by permission.