"I Want Blood"

With a friend, I have been going through Mark Driscoll's book, Death By Love. We are through the first three chapters and I have been completely loving it. If you don't have it, I would encourage you to pick it up. He masterfully shows us how the gospel applies to numerous horrific pastoral counseling situations like rape, infidelity and physical abuse. I read chapter three today where Mark writes a letter of pastoral counseling to his friend Luke who recently found out that before his wife and he were Christians, his wife cheated on him with one of his friends. Mark asks this man how he feels and he replies, "I want blood". Mark then goes on to explain that if you are a Christian, you already got it, or will get it. He writes on pages 80 and 81:

Luke, you wanted blood and through Jesus you got it. Jesus shed his blood for your wife and her horrendous sins. He suffered in her place and paid the penalty that she should have paid. As a result, Jesus has forgiven your wife’s sins, cleansed her from the filthy stain of her sins, and redeemed her from her sinful and empty way of life. As a Christian, her sins have been covered by the blood of Jesus.

Further on:

I am sure that, as a man who appreciates justice, the temptation to make your former friend bleed in his own “Field of Blood” for what he has done is very strong. I would encourage you not to let your anger lead you into sin but rather to remember that one way or another you will get your blood from him also. Either he will come to repentance of his sin and faith in Jesus so that he can be saved through Jesus’ blood shed on the cross, or he will stand before Jesus to be condemned.

This is also very sobering:

...the Scriptures also speak of a future day of bloodshed when unrepentant sinners will be thrown like grapes into a winepress, and Jesus will stomp them underfoot so that their blood flows as high as the bit in a horse’s mouth for one hundred eighty miles (Rev. 14:19–20). Time will tell if your friend finds himself in that dreadful place under the boot of Jesus, but either way you will get your blood, brother.