The Spiritual Blood Battle of the Cross
We who are in the faith, hidden in Christ, identify in gesture and song with the efficacy of "THE" blood. We understand Christian colloquialism around Isaiah 53:5, "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."
The blood battle of the cross, however, involved the tendons and ligaments of something more. It connected the muscle of faith to the bone of sacrifice at such a preeminent level of spiritual warfare that Calgary and the cross became a coliseum for bloodsport, with the fate of man's eternity dangling between heaven and earth.
Identifying with the blood as one who has suffered and bled requires something beyond our personal afflictions on account of our faith, which we count as joy, and our spiritual passion, intellect, emotional decree, or mental assent. It demanded this "something beyond" of the Christ himself.
The identification demands that we take HIS name and take it not in vain but wholly and humbly, accepting that only he could do blood battle for us at such a high level of warfare, balancing heaven and earth's separation with centrifugal force and then reuniting us to the Father transformatively at the cross.
The man Jesus had to wholly accept his own name as well. He is known by many names as the only begotten son of the Lord Most High, one with the Father, Lord of Lords, and King of Kings. But the man Jesus had to accept his role as Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane to walk silently into his bloody demise, fully God, fully man, divine redeemer.
In the 1988 American martial arts film Bloodsport, martial artist/actor Jean-Claude Van Damme enters a fictional "Kumite," an underground martial arts tournament in Hong Kong requiring competitors to fight to the death. He faces a ruthless tournament champion who fears defeat in the final match so much that he conceals a salt pill in his waistband before the bout.
When Van Damme's character, Dux, gains the upper hand, his nemesis, Li, blinds him by crushing the pill and throwing it into his face. Initially frustrated by his inability to see, Dux clears his mind and recalls his training to fight blindfolded, overcoming the handicap and defeating Li.
Like the movie, the blood battle of the cross was indeed bloody, dehumanizing, and starkly violent, but the crucible of the cross was the exquisite spiritual practice of the Savior to be and to do the opposite of what his circumstances cried out for and to resist the urgings of sin, evil, and wickedness in the face of his enemy.
Jesus overcame the fiery sting of his plucked beard by holding still as his attackers jeered and pulled, plucked, and pinched. He overcame the spittle on his face by not drawing away as it crept down his jaw. He endured fists, rods, and the lash of the cat of nine tails by embracing the whipping pole.
Blood-soaked from the crown of thorns atop his beaten head, his voice soared into the heavens with impunity as he prayed for those gambling over his torn garments, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
This excellence of battle, this pinnacle of tactical strategy, he did for us, not himself. There was no Kumite to win to prove his personal best. Only man's eternal fate was at stake, and the divine acceptance that we could not do it for ourselves.
Jesus struck the bloodiest blow to the kingdom of darkness during his most fragile moments when the Father turned his back on the mounting sins heaped upon him for our benefit.
The enemy he faced, which we face daily, remains radically devoted to the gravest depravity, roaring against his decisive defeat at the cross. In his gnarled heart, he was forced to accept Jesus' final words when they had been accomplished: "It is finished!"
