The word precious should not be thrown around casually.  It refers to that which is very valuable, even priceless.  How many things in your life can be considered to be precious?  My guess is not a whole lot.  Outside of our families, very few things are priceless.

The scripture speaks of something more precious than anything we possess—the blood of Christ.

1 Peter 1:18-19 (ESV)
¹⁸  Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, ¹⁹  but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.       

There is nothing more precious than the blood of Christ.  I am not talking about the substance of our Lord’s blood.  It was not itself unique.  The human body of Jesus had the same kind of blood that you and I have running through our veins.  The preciousness of our Lord’s blood is seen in that it has the power to free us from our sins (Revelation 1:5).

Why is the blood of Jesus so powerful?  It is because it is the blood of a man who lived without blemish or spot, qualifying Him to pay the price for our sins.  Remember, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  This does not refer to spiritual death, but rather, to physical death.  Spiritual death is the consequence of sin, not the price for it.  If spiritual death was the wage of sin, everybody would pay it for themselves when they sinned because that is what sin does.  It separates from God (Isaiah 59:1-2), and that is spiritual death.  So, the price for sin is literal, physical death.  By dying on the cross, Jesus gave man the hope of regaining immortality.  Paul said that Jesus, “…abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Peter 1:10).

If the wages of sin are death, why could we not pay the price ourselves by simply dying?  Why did the Son of God have to leave heaven to die on the cross?  The reason we cannot pay the price ourselves is that we are sinners.  To die in sin is to be eternally lost (Revelation 21:8).  Jesus, however, never sinned; thus, He could die, paying the price for sin without being eternally lost.  Who else could do this other than Jesus?  It does not take us long to calculate the number because it is zero.  No one else has ever lived sinlessly.  No one else has ever been totally without blemish or spot.  This is what separates Jesus from everybody else.  It is what made His death, and, therefore, His blood, so precious.

Baptism puts us in contact with the blood of Christ.  Paul said that we are baptized into His death (Romans 6:3).  In baptism we take advantage of our Lord’s death because that is the place where we figuratively contact the blood.  This is why Jesus could say He shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28), and Peter could say that we are baptized for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  There is no contradiction between Jesus and Peter because it is in the waters of baptism that the blood of Christ washes away our sins.

The precious blood of Jesus does not stop working for us after we are baptized.  It continues to work in our lives when we sin, helping us to preserve our fellowship with God (1 John 1:7).  It is activated when we repent of the sin we commit and ask God for forgiveness (Acts 8:22).

Thank God for the blood of Jesus!  It is because of His shed blood that we do not have to be sinless to be saved.

Only in Christ do we have access to this wonderful blood.  Even though we all have our warts and weakness, spiritually speaking, we can fall asleep every night knowing that we are in fellowship with God.  Why?  Because of the precious blood of Jesus.

As you wind down for the night, think about these things.