“The life is in the blood”

“The life is in the blood.” These words made sense to me when I became a Christian, but they made more sense to me after my wife and I suffered a miscarriage. Our fledgling hopes and dreams plunged into paralyzing grief and sorrow in a moment; the life was in the blood.

Throughout the Bible, blood outside of the body represents the loss of life, of death. When Cain kills his brother Abel, the LORD confronts him: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). The one who avenges a murder is an “avenger of blood” (Numbers 35:19). “Blood pollutes the land” (Numbers 35:33) because God is life and God is clean; bloodshed is death and death is unclean. When there is an unjust killing or when someone is responsible for their own death, they are “guilty of bloodshed” (Leviticus 17:4) and “blood shall be upon their heads” (Joshua 2:19). Menstruation was an occasion for grief, a season of uncleanliness, because blood outside the body represents death: the non-addition of life (Leviticus 15:19). Blood in the body is life; blood outside the body is death. “The life is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). God is life. Not-God is death.

Blood is a teacher. It instructs us about the severity of sin. It shows us, instead of merely telling us, that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). God is a righteous employer who never withholds payment; He’s a good judge who refuses to withhold the necessary sentencing. Harsh? No. Just? Yes.

This is the “good” in Good Friday: When Jesus took on “flesh and blood” (Hebrews 2:14) he became killable. The blood of Jesus “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24), because it cries not “injustice” but “justice is served.” His blood is not magic; it is not a talisman we sprinkle on our lawns to ward off weeds or evil spirits; His bloodshed signifies His death, the payment once-and-never-again for the penalty of sin.

This is offensive to the modern person for two reasons: First, it applies (and enforces) an absolute moral standard. Morals are not the product of sociology, but of the mind of God Most High. And second, it teaches us that we cannot deliver ourselves from the debt we’ve accrued. No amount of service or virtue can make up for, or atone for, our small and large acts of rebellion against God. There is no “making it up to God,” no earning, and no entitlement. The wages of sin is not doing supplementary good deeds. The wages of sin is death. “There is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood” (Hebrews 9:22); no forgiveness without the wage of death being paid. When you deserve death, all is lost or all is grace. Expensive, bloody, substitutionary grace.

Good Friday is good because it saves us from our sin. But Good Friday is also good for society, for cultures at large. It is no surprise that Christian traditions that have abandoned the doctrine of substitutionary atonement tend to drift liberal on ethics. The loss of an absolute moral standard, the violation of which is punishable by death, leads to relativism. And vice versa—it is no surprise that a culture that turns its nose up to concepts of sin and sacredness dismisses the severity of the cross as atonement, though it may appreciate it as a picture of romantic love.

A community of people who take seriously the blood of Jesus will be required to weigh heavily their moral limits, flaws, and failures. They’ll be a grateful people, who love because He first loved us by shedding His blood, taking our wages. They’ll be a hopeful people, because they’ll receive their identities with security, knowing Jesus hasn’t just made a deposit but has paid in full for their place in the Father’s house. They’ll be a gracious people, able to turn the other cheek, because they know that vengeance belongs to the LORD. They’ll be an active people, because love of Jesus is contagious, and the same Spirit that led the Son of God into radical service now leads the sons and daughters of God to act on behalf of their communities.

“The life is in the blood” and, more specifically, our lives are now alive in the blood of Christ. For “he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him (Hebrews 9:26-28). Happy Good Friday! Repent and believe the good news.