During this Lenten season, our midweek sermons will focus on blood. The sight of blood can unnerve us. We shudder at its sight, and it can make us feel faint or queasy. Today, many of us are deathly afraid of blood, which we know can carry horrifying diseases.
But our distaste for blood doesn’t just stop there. It disturbs some of us that Scripture mentions blood so many times and in so many places. After all, don’t we think that we’re more sophisticated than those people long ago, those who were living when the Scriptures made all those references to blood?
And so we can think that the blood theology of the Old and New Testaments is just a relic of the ancient world. Some of us even think we should discard such a bloody theology in the same way that we’ve discarded using leeches and maggots in medicine.
And so a series of sermons focusing on blood may seem macabre and out of place for some of us. But no matter what we may think or feel, no life can exist, either physically or spiritually, without blood. And so it’s no accident that God ties our life and our salvation to blood–both in the Old Covenant and the New.
In our bodies, no cell is more than a hair’s width from a blood capillary. That keeps body toxins and poisons from rising to dangerous levels. Our blood, flush with red-blood cells, traveling slowly inside our narrow capillaries, also release their cargoes of fresh oxygen, keeping us alive. Blood cells cleanse our bodies from the inside out.
Knowing that, doesn’t it make sense that Scripture says, “The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7)? And that is what we need: cleansing. We need cleansing if we are to stand before God. For our sin pollutes us, making us unfit to stand in God’s presence. Try as we might, we can never clean ourselves up, not fully, not as well as we should. It is only the blood of Christ that purifies us, enabling us to enter God’s holy presence.
The blood of Jesus Christ gives us a clean conscience. His blood takes on all the sin that poisons our lives, just as human blood cells remove the toxins that would poison our bodies. Indeed, the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ cleanses us from the sins we have committed. But it even does more than that–His blood even cleanses us from the sins that have been committed against us!
Here’s why. To hold onto sin is to let it pollute us. And this pollution of sin is lethal. This is true both for the sins you have committed and the sins that have been committed against you that you refuse to forgive.
Why is that so? First, God forgives you of your sins. Then, as one who delights and lives in such forgiveness, the Holy Spirit can move you to forgive others. That’s how it works. Without the forgiveness of sins, victims will simply victimize others. That’s why the blood of Jesus Christ is the only true cure for your sin. Nothing else can wipe those stains away from your conscience. Nothing else can give you eternal peace.
God provides the cleansing. The Book of Hebrews describes how the Old Covenant foreshadowed and pointed to the cleansing that Jesus’ blood would bring. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the Most Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could go into this inner sanctum. And he only did that once a year. Unlawful entry carried the penalty of death.
Jewish legend has it that a rope was tied around the ankle of the high priest when he went into the Most Holy Place. That was in case he died while performing his priestly duties. Then, the other priests could recover his body without violating the holy space.
So, wearing his sacred vestments, the high priest entered behind the curtain into the Most Holy Place. But he did not enter alone, for with him was the blood that he offered, both for his own sins and the sins of the people. Year after year, the high priest repeated this ritual. Hebrews tells us that this was done for the purifying of the flesh.
The blood, the high priest, and the tabernacle all pointed to Jesus Christ and the New Covenant He would put in place. For Christ came as the High Priest of the good things to come, that which was in the future when the Old Testament was written.
Jesus came with the greater and more-perfect tabernacle, the one not made with human hands (that is, not of this creation). He entered the real Most Holy place, of which the tabernacle and the Temple were just copies. Jesus entered, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood.
And because Jesus is both God and man, He needed to enter only once. For His own blood, the blood of God, was good, once for all. His blood secured our eternal redemption. Jesus is the Highest Priest who offered His own body and blood on the cross for our salvation. The sacrifice that He made on the cross was done, once time and for all people. He doesn’t need to repeat it every year. In fact, it cannot be repeated.
That is why when we come to Church, we do not gather to offer God a sacrifice. That would be the equivalent of saying that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was incomplete or not good enough. Instead, we gather as God’s people to receive what He gives us. From Him, we receive the fruits of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us when He gave Himself into death.
When we gather on Sunday in the Divine Service, Jesus gives us His body to eat, and He gives us the cup of the New Covenant in His blood to drink. In His body, He carried our sins to the cross. Now, He gives His body to eat to bring His forgiveness to us today, in real time. He gives us His blood to drink. The blood that cleanses us from all sin is given us to drink in Christ’s New Covenant that gives us His life and salvation.
We no longer need the blood of goats and bulls. That was in the Old Covenant. Those sacrifices served their purpose: to point forward to the Messiah who would take care of our sin problem, once for all. In the New Covenant, we receive the blood of Christ, who offered Himself without spot or blemish to God. His blood is the blood that cleanses our consciences from dead works to serve the living God.
To Him be glory and power now and even into the ages of ages. For He loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us kings and priests to His God and Father. Amen.
