How would you react if someone were to grab you and toss you into a bathtub full of blood? Warm, rich, red human blood? How would you feel if you had to brush your teeth in human blood? Or wash your face in it?
These images are rather nauseating, aren't they? Why do we have such an aversion to the sight of blood, to handling blood? What is it about blood that "grosses us out," as my teenagers would say?
It may be that God has spent a few thousand years "programming" us to be averse to blood. In Genesis 9:3, we read,
"... but flesh with the life thereof which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat."
In Leviticus 7:26-27, God tells the Hebrews,
"Moreover, ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings. Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people."
In Deuteronomy 12:23, He tells them again,
"Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thou may not eat the life with the flesh. Thou shalt not eat it; thou shalt pour it upon the earth as water. Thou shall not eat it; that it may go well with thee and with thy children after thee, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord."
The point here is that throughout the entire Old Testament, God is continually admonishing His people, commanding them not to eat or drink blood, telling them over and over again that blood is life, that human blood must not be shed, that humans are absolutely forbidden to eat or drink any manner of blood from any source whatsoever.
God has carefully programmed His people over the generations, so that the very idea of dabbling in blood makes us queasy. Why do you suppose He did this? Could it have been the necessity for Christ's bloody sacrifice that set the stage for all of God's commands regarding blood? Did God want to set up in us a certain attitude and mind-set about blood so that when Christ's blood was shed on the cross, we would have at least a vague idea about how precious it was? Did He plan for us to feel a certain awe towards blood, especially human blood, so that when we realized that we have been "washed in the blood of the Lamb" we would know what a terrible, wonderful miracle it was?
Then suddenly, in John 6, Jesus lets the people know that the rules have changed. He says:
"Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him."
By Jesus' day, there wasn't a soul in Israel who didn't have a very strong aversion to blood. So imagine how Christ's apostles must have felt when He said to them, "Here, drink my blood."
His blood hadn't been shed yet; the apostles didn't know what He knew about His future. "This is my blood of the new covenant," He tells them, "which has been shed for the remission of sins." But it hasn't been shed yet, at least not in the experience of the apostles.
Eating or drinking blood was a direct violation of a very longstanding rule, and the apostles had to be rather taken aback by the command that they drink it now.
How would you feel if you had been there? If you had been commanded to drink human blood? Wouldn't we consider such a demand - well, satanic? But it was our Lord who insisted that those who love Him drink His blood and eat His flesh, in order to signify their acceptance of the New Covenant, the blood of His sacrifice. And that, my friends, is all we have to do to be saved.
"Washed in the blood of the Lamb." We recognize, because we've been raised in a culture that knows all about it, that being washed in the blood of the lamb does not mean that we have to be submerged in real red sheep's blood. We know it is symbolic of that sacrifice by which Christ introduced the New Covenant of love and life. But how could the apostles have known that?
Imagine being tossed into a bathtup full of rich, red blood. Imagine having your face washed in warm, soapy blood. Kind of off-putting, isn't it? But our bodies and our faces are insignificant parts of us compared to our souls, and it is our souls that must be washed in blood, our precious souls, that part of us which we hold in higher esteem than just about anything else on the face of the earth.
We wouldn't wash our dirty socks in human blood, for goodness' sake! How can we bring ourselves to allow any part of our person - and especially our souls - to be washed in blood?
What's more, how can we believe in the good intentions of a God who demanded a blood sacrifice - and not just any old blood, but the blood of His only-begotten Son.. in fact, His OWN blood, since the Father and the Son are One. How can we wrap our minds around all of this?
The fact is, beloved, that we cannot. There is no way on earth or in heaven, for that matter, that we are ever going to understand how it is that the divine and human blood of Christ is sufficient payment for all the sins committed by all the humans that ever have and ever will live on the planet.
Let's back up a minute here, and consider the fact that we are created in His image. That means we reflect His powers and capabilities. Now reflections are never as powerful as that which they reflect, but God ensured that we do have more power than the average reflection has! For example, our blood has saving power. That's why we donate a pint a month to the Red Cross, right?
If we can see how our blood has saving power, then we can see how Christ's blood can have saving power. But that's not the hard part. The hard part is understanding how the mere eight quarts or so of blood in the human body of our Lord can possibly cover all the sins of all the people that ever were and ever will be.
Well, we don't have to understand how it works to understand that it works, any more than we have to understand how electricity works in order to understand that it does. All we have to understand is that Christ said that His blood was shed for the remission of sins. He didn't say for sixteen sins or just for old Joe's sins. He said it was shed for many... and as far as I'm concerned, I'm one of the many. Are you?
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