Our Problem with the Blood

When we sang songs about the blood of Jesus a few weeks ago (“There Is a Fountain Filled with the Blood” and “Thank You, Jesus, for the Blood”), I wondered if all that talk of blood might make some folks uncomfortable.

I’ve grown up singing about the blood of Jesus, all the way back to the children’s song “Deep and Wide” (which doesn’t specifically identify the contents of the fountain as blood, but we all figured it out).

Some are not just squeamish but positively offended by all this talk of blood. Some liberal denominations have deleted references to the blood from their creeds, confessions, and hymns.

Why such a preoccupation with blood in Christian and Jewish thought?

Our theology speaks of blood because our sin is so deeply offensive to a holy God. The sacrifices He ordained for Israel were a graphic illustration of what was required to separate the sinner from his sin. The Holy One, who loves the sinner, couldn’t simply overlook the sinner’s wrongdoings. The sinner’s rebellion had created a debt that must be paid, and the life of the animal was given in payment for that debt.

Once we get to Jesus, we see that all those centuries of sacrifices – those hundreds of thousands of animals slaughtered in Jewish ceremony – were one long rehearsal designed to help God’s people see what He was giving us in Christ: the “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

But this leads us to a more basic question: why must there be such a violent solution to the problem of our sin?

If God loves us, why can’t He just forgive us?

When we question the need for such a radical solution to the problem of our sin, we betray ourselves: We wonder if God might be overreacting. That is because we want a God who hates what we hate and tolerates what we tolerate.

We know that there are some kinds of wrongdoing that demand ferocious justice: human trafficking, the abortion industry, the abuse of children, rape, war crimes, and the like. These are the things that make our blood boil, and we would applaud God’s holy wrath poured out on those wrongdoers.

But we all have another list, a secret catalog of the misdeeds that we are prone to overlook both in ourselves and in others. And when we see God’s wrath poured out on those seemingly minor offenses, we wonder why God can’t align Himself with our moral sensibilities.

In other words, we want a God who is made in our image. And we do not have that option.

This is the God of the Bible: The Holy One loves us sinners, but our rebellion has created an insurmountable debt that stands between the sinner and the holy God. In His perfect justice, He could have walked away and left us to our destruction. Instead, He gave us His own Son, who gave Himself up to cruel tormentors to spill His blood, paying the debt for all who put their trust in Him. Jesus had to die to reconcile us to a holy God, and like the death of the sacrificial animal, His death had to be violent.

Without Jesus’ brutal death, we would be without God and without hope.

So, yes, blood is an essential component in our faith.

So essential, in fact, that we don’t just tolerate the presence of blood in our theology, we actually celebrate the bloody death of the Lamb every time we take Communion, to remember His broken body and spilled blood.

Thank you, Father, for giving us your Son.

And thank you, Jesus, for the blood.

Persevere, Paul Pyle Pastor of Discipleship