The red circle with the letters “ww” scrawled beside it took me off guard.
My favorite English professor usually used editing marks I was familiar with, but I didn’t recognize this one.
When I went to her office to ask, she said succinctly, “Wrong word, Miss Dixon!”
“How will I know the right word?” I wanted to know.
“By reading,” she replied.
Vivid, exact language is the mark of an engaging writer. Walt Wangerin Jr., in his excellent book for writers called Beate Not the Poore Desk, says the mark of a true writer is someone who “enjoys words, sentences… the craft of writing.” It is a person who loves finding a better word.
The Book of Hebrews has something to say about a better word: “But you have come… to Jesus, the Mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”
How can blood speak?
I recently helped care for someone who had an injury, and when blood seeped through the bandages, it told me something. Modern technologies like DNA testing, blood typing, and lab tests all speak truths about who we are, what we’ve been doing, and even what pathogens are making us sick.
Abel’s blood had something to say right from the beginning pages of Genesis. He’d been murdered by his brother, Cain. God asked Cain, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground. And now, you are cursed.”
Abel’s blood cried for vengeance and justice to be done. Jesus later told the Pharisees, “On you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah…”
That blood is a death sentence for us all. If justice is to be done and God will take vengeance on every person guilty of sin, then we are all deserving of death. Blood on our hands makes blood on our heads. We are cursed.
However, there is blood that speaks a better word!
Jesus’s blood speaks nearness, purity, and ransom.
Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
His blood speaks a word in the ear of the guard at the door, so to speak. We can enter because of the password given by His blood.
“How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our consciences from dead works to serve the Living God,” the writer to the Hebrews said. Jesus’s blood purifies us for service to Him, just like a dirty dish that has been thoroughly cleaned and made new.
Peter, in his letter, told the church, “Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers not with perishable things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”
He has brought us near, cleaned us up, and ransomed us from futility to give us a purpose and a hope. Because His blood speaks, we can know Him. We are no longer under the curse!
It truly is a better word, and it can be found by reading His Word and drinking in the new covenant of His blood, accepting His life in place of the death we so justly deserve.
