Our relationship with God, our true life, is defiled and destroyed by our sin and the death it brings to us — and sin has always been a deeply bloody business.
Long before the Law of Moses, in what we sometimes call the Patriarchal Age, sacrifice of life was required. Abel offered the firstborn of his flock to the Lord (Genesis 4:4) and was subsequently murdered by Cain. After the flood, Noah sacrificed clean animals as a burnt offering (Genesis 8:20). Abraham offered a ram as a sacrifice (Genesis 22). On the cusp of the Mosaic Age, when the Hebrews were in Egypt, all of Israel was required to kill a passover lamb for each household and put the blood on their doorposts so the destroyer would pass over their house (Exodus 12).
After God made His people a nation with a codified law, their covenant with Him had to be dedicated with blood. Calves and goats were slaughtered and their blood was sprinkled on the book itself, on all the people, and on tabernacle and the instruments of worship (Hebrews 9:18-22). The Levitical law gave specific stipulations to the nation about blood and sacrifice, noting that “it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Leviticus 17:11). At the end of his life Moses makes sure the people know God’s wishes about the sacrifices they make and how they treat blood. He tells them that “the blood is the life” (Deuteronomy 12:23). When the Aaronic priests were set apart to serve the Lord, a ram was killed and its blood was smeared and sprinkled on Aaron and his sons (Exodus 29:20-21). Remember, when Israel swore their obedience to the Lord blood was splattered on the altar and thrown on them (Exodus 24:6-8; Hebrews 9).
For the people of Israel, there was constantly a sacrifice to be offered — today, or tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. Each year the passover had to be kept. Each year the high priest went beyond the veil into the holy place and made atonement for the people. The next year, he had to do it again, then again, then again. Israel’s blood-soaked rites were a cycle that never reached their own end.
But God did not leave His people to those shadows. He gave His Son as the ultimate fulfillment. Christ was the greatest high priest and the greatest sacrifice, putting and end to the need for that never-ending slaughter. He is our passover lamb without spot or blemish that was led to the slaughter (1st Corinthians 5:7b; 1st Peter 1:19; Isaiah 53:7). He was proclaimed as “the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).
As priests under the New Covenant, we can “have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19-21). Our great high priest “has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since He did this once for all when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27).
Christ’s blood is for the forgiveness of our sins. We can have freedom. Shortly before His death, He told His apostles that the fruit of the vine was the “blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” and that the unleavened bread was His body (Matthew 26). The Hebrew Christians had to be reminded that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these” (Hebrews 9:22-23). Paul wrote about “redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood” (Romans 3:24-25).
In the first sermon, Peter tells the Jews “repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). The Jews were no strangers to ceremonial immersion. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3-4). Christ’s death on the cross was where His blood was poured out (Matthew 26; John 19:34). In John’s vision, the multitude of saints he sees “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14b). Earlier, John had written that “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1st John 1:7).
Christ shed His blood for us, made a new covenant, and entered as our great high priest “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Hebrews 9:24) so that we can be washed clean from our sins.
— Stefan Richardson