In order to be saved, we must be released/pardoned/forgiven/let go of or cleansed of our sins, for sins have not been and never can be “paid for”; they are forever and irrevocably under the indignation/anger, and condemnation of God and will drag anyone and everyone down to destruction who remains in them.
Happily, however, the innocent blood of Jesus is available for free, gratuitously, without cost to us, precisely for the erasure and cleansing of our sins and debts, thus making peace…if only we “drink” his blood (John 6:47-66), taking his payment into our selves—our heart or core of existence—by faith, thereby invoking God’s Wholesome Spirit to enter and bring divine, uncreated life (John 7:37-39), the very antidote of the death which “passed through upon all human beings“ from Adam (Rom. 5:12). This remedy is kindly available from God for all sinners without distinction or exception, but it is inoperative apart from trust. Our proclaimed pardon by God remains unactualized and ineffective for us unless and until we start to believe this Message, this vivifying Explanation.
The Explanation of God’s Kingdom itself (i.e., the Proclamation of the Resurrection-avenged Crucifixion of Jesus) possesses—has been invested with!—the power of God for our salvation, for part and parcel of that Message is the proof and testimony associated inextricably with it in the story of God’s action as Savior in Jesus, His Only-born, chosen Messiah, and exalted Master of the universe.
We human beings are not consistently capable of freely, wholeheartedly, graciously forgiving our debtors unless and until we ourselves recognize, understand, and believe, and thus render operative and actual our own pardon from God. Only then are we capable of sustained forgiveness of others, because only then does God bestow the power of His own Spirit—the Divine nature and wholesome contents of favor and truth—into our hearts. This pledge, guarantee, and downpayment of our full future inheritance within God’s Kingdom gives us an expectancy of such a magnitude of wealth and blessings in Christ that our present losses—and in this connection, also those things we pardon, forgive, release, relinquish, or let go to others of what they owe us on account of their injuries and sins against us—shrink to near insignificance by comparison.
This is why the Holy Spirit is such an indispensable consoler or counselor for us. It reminds us of all that the Father has given the Son—as that boon is coming also through him to us who stay in the Son by trust.
However, where room is made for chronic unforgiveness, space is prepared for evil spirits to take up residence; in other words, place is given to the Adversary (διαβολ-, Eph. 4:26-27, cf. Rom. 12:19-21). So when God’s favor/grace is withheld or not extended to fellow humans when they sin, injure, and incur debt or obligation too burdensome to repay, then the seedbed is laid for fury, rage, and wrath to build up. Legions of demons commence their march toward sites of gathering wrath to stir up a havoc-wreaking vortex. They can smell the battle from afar as tempers heat and flare up. Demons appear to be messengers (“angels”) of wrath/anger/indignation in God’s terrestrial economy. [4/11/02]
Be it noted that the “blood of Jesus Christ,” as the instrument or means of our forgiveness, is no less a metaphor or figure or symbol per se than is the fruit of the vine. Both the blood of the vein and the blood of the vine are stand ins for life; they equally represent the Spirit of life from God in repayment (in fact in superabundant overpayment) to Messiah Jesus as his just award for laying down his earthly bodily existence for our sakes.
Therefore it should pose no more of a stumbling block to Christians that communion wine/juice does not actually become blood than it should have to Jews when Jesus declared they must drink his blood to have life in themselves. For vein blood and vine blood have, in themselves, an identical ontic status: fleshly, earthly (as to source/origin), whereas both, as signs or symbols, represent the promised Gift of the New Covenant: the literal vivifying Spirit of sonship from heaven!
No single earthly fluid, whether wine, water, oil, or blood itself, could fully represent every property, power, and function of the Wholesome Spirit, the core essence of God’s Kingdom, the ‘fullness‘ of love, graciousness, truth, joy, refreshment, cleanness, nourishment, energy, power, light, strength, life, consciousness, heat, cure, healing, relief, lubrication, payment, etc.
The above fluids are all alike shadows of the real—the singular Spirit of life, alone. The shadows have not entirely outlived their usefulness, of course. The water of baptism/ immersion, the wine-and-bread of communion/ participation in the Lord’s Supper, and the olive oil of healing/ anointing are still retained under the New Covenant in Messiah’s divinely-avenged blood. [4/11/02]
The Premial Atonement 