When I See the Blood

“And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:13)

Some argue that since God is eternal, seeing the end from the beginning, then He has always seen the blood of the LORD Jesus shed for the elect and therefore the elect were always justified before Him. While this may seem logical to many, yet what God reveals to us in His Word is what He purposed and decreed before the foundation of the world, was conditioned on the LORD Jesus coming and satisfying His law and justice to justify those He decreed to justify. In Hebrews 10:7 it is written, “Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.” Therefore, the Scripture says of God, “When I see the blood, I WILL pass over you” and not: having seen the blood, I have already passed over you. His justice required a just satisfaction and accomplishment of what He purposed, Hebrews 9:16.

It is also important to point out that the blood which God spoke of here was NOT the blood of the typical Passover lamb. Yes, symbolically, it had to be shed but the Scripture is clear that those sacrificial lambs looked forward to the One True Lamb, the LORD Jesus Christ. They could not and did not put away sin, Hebrews 10:4. Those Old Testament lambs were but an atonement (covering), by which God was forbearing of the sin of His people [Romans 3:25] until Christ, THE LAMB OF GOD, did come and PUT AWAY their sin, Heb. 1:3. God was merciful and gracious to the Old Testament saints and provided provisional forgiveness in His forbearance based on the certainty and promise of the LORD Jesus coming, living and dying to put away their sin once for all at the cross, Hebrews 9:15. Therefore, God declared even then: “When I see the blood (the death of the LORD Jesus), I will pass over you”, not imputing their sin to them having purposed that Christ, God’s True Passover should be slain, 1 Cor. 5:7.

The sinner who sees the blood of Christ (His death and what He accomplished) does so because the Spirit of God gives him eyes to see. Such will and do respond to the Spirit’s call and Christ’s command to ‘LOOK and LIVE.’ However, such will readily confess that salvation is not in their looking but in God having seen the bloodshed unto death of His Son. Our seeing is but the gift of Him having seen the blood and being satisfied in the doing and dying of His Blessed Son!