What’s Blood Got To Do With It?

With His own blood—not the blood of goats and calves—He entered the Most Holy Place once for all time and secured our redemption forever. Hebrews 9:12 (NLT)

Here’s a question I bet you’d never thought I’d ask: Why do we get so alarmed when someone is bleeding a lot?

Personally, I get alarmed when someone is bleeding a little bit. Not because I’m worried about a blood borne pathogen, but because I don’t like the sight of blood—mine or someone else’s, but especially mine.

Assuming most people aren’t as squeamish as I am, I believe a majority of those not normally alarmed just by the sight of blood get alarmed when someone is losing a lot of blood because, just like Leviticus 17:11 tells us, the life of the flesh is in the blood.

What’s the takeaway here?

The loss of a lot of blood results in the loss of a lot of life, also known as death.

I never thought I would be writing about blood, but here we are. And the fact that I am writing about this has probably clued you in to the fact that blood must be more significant than we have probably ever given any thought to…unless we see it on the outside of our body or someone else’s and then it’s all I can think about.

You're right! There is a more important reason why I’m writing about blood today. It is because our faith is founded on the shedding of blood.  The innocent blood of Jesus Christ.

We know that in the Old Testament, God required a blood sacrifice be made for the atonement of the Israelites’ sins and animals were used for that sacrifice. But this was a temporary atonement and had to be made over and over again.

We know too that the Old Testament was a foreshadowing of the coming Messiah who would be a once and for all sacrifice for everyone who has sinned, which is EVERYONE.

But just why did God require a blood sacrifice?

Why would a loving God require such a barbaric act for the forgiveness of sins?

Well, I think we have to remember that, yes, our God is a loving God, but He is first a holy God. As a holy God, He can set whatever requirements He pleases. And maybe, just maybe, the shedding of blood isn’t a barbaric act at all but rather an act of benevolence by our loving, holy God.

God’s entire nature is holy and as such, He could have just left us all with absolutely no means of reconciliation once sin entered the world He created. But He didn’t.

He is such a loving God that He put the Old Testament sacrificial system in place to show us the seriousness of our sin and also that there was a better, once and for all sacrifice coming—Himself in the form of Jesus Christ.

He could have required the immediate sacrifice of the sinner instead of allowing a substitute in the sinner’s place. Worse yet, He could have chosen to not step into our sin at all and left us to be eternally separated from Him.  Because, trust me, God is eternal so He will always be. Since we are made in His image, that is our soul/spirit, we are eternal beings also.  Which means, we would spend eternity in Hell.

However, God, in His benevolence, sent Jesus to be our substitute sacrifice.

I hope we never get so used to hearing the story of Calvary that we take for granted the story of Calvary. What happened on that cross is the very foundation of our Christian faith and the hope that we have. The blood of the foreshadowed Messiah accomplished what the blood of a bull or goat never could in the Old Testament.

The shedding of His blood didn’t just make temporary propitiation (atonement) of our sins, it abolished the law that sacrifice was a part of in its entirety and it serves as the eternal, New Covenant between mankind and God.

It wasn’t just the mere pouring out of the Savior’s blood on Calvary that accomplished this. It was what happened as His blood ran out from his veins down His beaten and battered body and onto the crude cross to where you and I should have been pinned.

Hebrews 9:12 tells us, “With His own blood—not the blood of goats and calves—He entered the Most Holy Place once for all time and secured our redemption forever.” (NLT)

When they ripped open Jesus’ flesh on the cross, His shed blood ripped the curtain to the Holy of Holies, the innermost room in the tabernacle where only the high priest could enter on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

Yom Kippur only happened once a year, therefore, the high priest was only granted entrance once a year to this innermost chamber where God dwelt. The blood of the unblemished Lamb of God tore down the veil that separated us from God, and has given us access to Him every day...for all eternity.

When Jesus cried out from the cross, “It is finished,” He was proclaiming that through His blood reconciliation to God has been made for all who will accept it.

The shedding of His blood resulted in death. His death resulted in resurrection. And all of this make us what we were not at creation—a son or daughter of God.

Friend, God required a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins because that was the only way we could ever become for eternity what we weren’t at the beginning.

There’s an old hymn that tells us there’s power in the blood.

That power in the precious blood of the Lamb still exists today.

Do you know it?