This word blood appears hundreds of times throughout the Bible, and it has been a stumbling block to many people. They cannot understand the significance of the shedding of the blood on Jewish altars in the Old Testament. Neither is it clear or logical to them why the blood of Jesus Christ should have such significance in the New Testament.
The answer to both these questions is found in Leviticus 17:11. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”
Anthropologists tell us that 90% of the world’s population has believed in and practiced some form of blood sacrifice. It seems to be innate in the heart of man to believe that somehow blood atones for his sins against his god or gods. In Athens, the cultural seat of the ancient world, human sacrifice was practiced. In Thrace, Saxon, Persia, Egypt and nearly all of the ancients, human sacrifice was made to appease their gods. Among the Aztecs of ancient Mexico, 20,000 persons were sacrificed every year to satisfy their gods. As late as 1907, the United States had to send troops to New Mexico to stop human sacrifice. The practices of these ancients and moderns alike are cruel and pagan and repulsive to us. However, they indicate that long ago, man must have been taught that blood atoned for sin.
Medical science did not find the true significance of the value of blood until recent years. Just prior to World War II, the method of preserving blood plasma was discovered. Great blood banks were established all over the country. During the war thousands of lives were saved because of blood banks of plasma. Had plasma been available to us in World War I, many of our American doughboys buried in Flanders Field would have returned with their buddies.
Blood has the unique ability to fight an infection or disease from within. One cubic millimeter of blood contains five million red corpuscles and five thousand white. These corpuscles carry nourishment to the body’s cells and carry waste products away. As long as the blood circulates to the cells, the individual is said to be alive. When the blood stops its flow, the individual is said to be dead. Although science has known these facts for only a few decades, God revealed in Scripture 3,500 years ago that the very life of the flesh is in the blood.
In December 1799, a physician was called to the bedside of George Washington. Our first president, retired at this time, was suffering from either a touch of the flu or a touch of pneumonia. It was a common practice in those days for the doctors to withdraw a quantity of blood from their patients in the belief that poison had gotten into the blood. Mr. Washington’s doctor removed a quantity of blood from him and soon found his patient’s condition to have grown worse. He repeated his remedy, again removing a quantity of blood.
As a result, Mr. Washington soon died of what is considered a rather ordinary illness. Had the physician realized that blood was the life of the flesh, he would not have weakened his patient beyond the hope of recovery. In all likelihood, Mr. Washington would have lived longer if medical science had known then what it knows now about blood.
Take the blood from the body and you have a corpse. That is exactly what the Bible teaches, though it has taken science hundreds of years to discover it.
Long ago, God placed man and woman in a perpetual paradise. He told our first parents that they could eat of all the trees of the garden except one. God did not create man as a piece of mechanism so that He could push a button and man would do His bidding. God created people as free moral agents, with the ability to choose right and wrong—to choose whether they would love and obey God or rebel against God.
Therefore, God said, “In the day that you eat of this particular tree, you will die” (Cf. Genesis 2:17). Man and woman, being tempted by the devil, ate of the tree. God’s Word had to be kept! God was not a liar. He had said, “In the day that you eat, you will die.” Therefore, the moment they ate, they died spiritually. They were separated from God. Since that day, humanity has been separated from God.
Adam had acted as federal head of the human race. “As in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22), the Bible says. You say, “But why should I suffer for the sins of Adam?” We elect a president of the United States. He is the federal head of the United States Government. When the president acts, it is the American people acting through him.
So it was with Adam. When Adam deliberately rebelled against God and disobeyed the Word of God, he acted as the head of the human race. Therefore, the Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The Bible also says the result, or wages, of this sin in every heart is spiritual death (see Romans 6:23), which means separation from God forever. God requires death as a result of sin.
God promised Adam and Eve that someday a Redeemer would come and die as a substitute for them. All they had to do was to believe in the promise of God. As a token of their believing in that promise, the Old Testament Christians brought animal sacrifices to God.
God provided the sacrificial system of the Old Testament in token payment for what Christ was to do in the future. Just as a $5 bill is simply a note that guarantees that the government will make the payment good, so the Old Testament offerings were made in faith that Christ would make the payment good. The Bible teaches that the blood of bulls and goats does not and never has saved from sin. But the blood of bulls and goats foreshadowed the slaying of the Lamb of God upon the cross of Calvary.
God very clearly teaches that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin (see Hebrews 9:22). God requires death. Death means that blood must be shed. Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He did not come simply to be born. He came as a great teacher, and though He was the greatest teacher the world has ever known, that was not His principal duty, either. He did not come to establish a new set of ethics. His primary purpose was to die; to shed His blood as a substitute in your place and my place. When He died on that cross, He shed His blood. By faith I trust that death and the shedding of that blood, and God reckons that faith as righteousness and justifies me as though I had never sinned.
The Scriptures remind us constantly that there is no atonement apart from blood. He said in our text, “For it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11).
Jesus, when He clarified His relationship to people, said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). This, then, is the secret of spiritual life—to take by faith the blood of Christ to cleanse away the disease of sin.
Christ is the “universal donor.” His blood has no limitations, for we read, “The blood of Jesus Christ [God’s] Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
It is not simply moral rearmament that we must have. We must individually and collectively accept the spiritual blood transfusion that only Christ can give. We must accept Christ’s death as our substitute. There is no other way of salvation. Anyone who looks for another solution will not find it. The Bible says that anyone who climbs up any other way is a thief and robber (see John 10:1).
If the blood of our finest youth shed in wartime can buy national salvation for the nation, could it not mean that Christ’s blood will buy spiritual salvation and give you the spiritual, moral rearmament that you so desperately need?
Before you can get victory over sin, before your lashing conscience can be quieted, before you can be rid of your guilt complex, before you can have a new birth, before you can start life afresh, by faith you must receive this great fact of the death of Jesus Christ. If you are ever to get to Heaven, you must personally, by faith, receive Christ as Savior.
At this moment, you can say an everlasting “Yes” to Jesus Christ. He can solve your problems, lift your burdens, quiet your heart and soul, and today you can know the peace that passes all understanding by letting Christ come into your heart. By faith His blood will cleanse you from every sin, and someday you will stand pure before Almighty God. ©1951 BGEA
Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version.
Are You Washed in the Blood?
The Bible’s teaching is clear and consistent: Cleansing from sin comes only by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can have a new life, a new beginning, if you will turn from your sin and put your faith in Christ. And you can do that right now. First, confess your sin to God and turn away from it. Second, receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, putting your faith in Him alone to save you. He promises to live in you and to transform your life.
START BY SIMPLY TALKING TO GOD.
You can pray a prayer like this:
“Dear God, I know that I am a sinner. I’m sorry for my sin. I want to turn from my sin. Please forgive me. I believe Jesus Christ is Your Son; I believe He died on the cross for my sin and You raised Him to life. I want Him to come into my heart and take control of my life. I want to trust Jesus as my Savior and follow Him as my Lord from this day forward. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
DO IT RIGHT NOW.
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Photo: Russ Busby / ©1980 BGEA