I apologize for this missive being late. I pray all is well in your world. We will continue our study of the book The Chemistry of the Blood by M.R. DeHaan, M.D. Let me begin today with Acts 17:24-26, this is the Apostle Paul,
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men and women life and breath and everything else. From one man (of one blood) he made every nation of mankind, that they should inhabit the whole earth…”
The one thing that relates all men and women to each other is the blood that flows in their veins. All of mankind is of one blood, and that one blood was the blood of Adam, the first man and father of the whole human race.
Since the life is in the blood, according to the scriptures, and the wages of sin is death, sin affected the blood of Adam and caused him to die. Because all of our blood, the blood of all mankind is also infected with this sin, our blood can only be cleansed by the application of sinless blood, for it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life (Leviticus 17:11).
As Adam’s sin corrupted the blood of the entire human family, so the pure sinless blood of Jesus reverses this process by making atonement for the sin of the world. Hebrews 9:22,
“In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Christ’s blood is what makes atonement for our soul. Eve’s sin does not affect us, even though Eve sinned before Adam. It was the sin of Adam which brought death upon all of mankind, because we are of Adam’s blood because we are of Adam’s seed.
Only Jesus is called the seed of the woman, because He was born of a woman and thus His blood was without the sin of Adam. Jesus could have a human body, but He was not a sinner like you and me because He was born of a woman by the Holy Spirit. There was and is only one remedy for sin: sinless blood; and only one could supply this sinless blood, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
From Genesis to Revelation we have this message of the atoning blood. The Old Testament gives us the example of the blood of the lambs and goats which were slain in the bloody atonement ritual of Israel. Without blood there could be no atonement, and until the blood was presented the holy law of God cried out for and demanded justice and death for the sinner.
When God gave Moses the tablets of the law that demanded perfection or death, he also gave to Moses on the same mountain the pattern of the Tabernacle (which was built on blood and a ritual bathed in blood). God knew when He gave the law to Israel that they could not keep it perfectly and that they must die. So, in His great mercy God gave Israel the Tabernacle and the altar and the blood so that a sinning people condemned by the law might have life through the sheltering blood.
This blood of bulls and goats and lambs could not atone for sin, but merely pointed forward to the Savior that would come at the end of the age to put away sin, once and for all, by His sacrifice.
So in the fullness of time God sent forth His Son into the world to be born of a woman, and at the end of His life He shed His precious eternal blood, once and only once for all. After that there was no more sacrifice. The blood of the sacrificial animals of the Old Testament was corruptible and decayed and was soon gone, but the blood shed on Calvary was imperishable blood. Here is Peter in 1 Peter 1:18-19,
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed ...but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
The blood of Jesus is sinless blood, and since it is sinless, it is incorruptible, for sin brings corruption, and where no sin is there is no corruption. Because it is sinless and incorruptible, every drop of blood from Jesus’ body is still in existence, just as fresh as it was as it flowed when he was on the cross. The blood of Jesus Christ does not decay. Here is Peter, quoting David in the 16th Psalm, in Acts 2;27,
“Because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.”
Even though Jesus’ body was dead and in the tomb for three days and three nights, no corruption entered it for His body contained incorruptible blood. It could not decay. Lazarus being dead for only one day more was said by his sister in the KJV to “stinketh with corruption”. Jesus’ blood did not decay because the cause of corruption, Adam’s sinful blood, was absent from Jesus’ veins.
Every drop of His blood is still in existence. Hebrews 9:23-26,
“It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
After Christ made the atonement, He arose from the tomb, and then, as the eternal High Priest, ascended into heaven to present the blood in the Holy of Holies where God dwells, and that blood is there today, pleading for us and prevailing for us.
The blood has been shed--the incorruptible, eternal, divine, sinless, overcoming, precious blood. It had power on the cross, it has power now. Throughout all eternity it will never lose its power.
Today it is still true that there is no remission of sin without the blood of Jesus Christ.
Am I making too big of a deal about Christ’s blood? We are called as ministers of a New Covenant. Jesus’ blood is the blood of this New covenant. 2 Corinthians 3:6,
“He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant- not of the letter (of the law) but of the Spirit; for the letter (of the law) kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
God said to Israel (Exodus 12:13) and to us, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you. God did not say, “When I see your goodness, your morality, your good works, your wonderful attitude, etc, etc, I will pass over you.
It is about the blood. It is all about the blood.
“When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”
Our salvation is in the blood.
Do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God.
Blessings,
Thad Brown
Opportunity House
and Harmony UMC