The Christian faith rests squarely and un-alterably on the fact that blood must be shed in order for God’s anger toward sinful humans to be appeased. To be clear, the question is not “Is a blood sacrifice required for sin?” We know the Bible states that the answer is unequivocally yes. The question is “Why blood?” Before the universe existed, “Why did God plan to have blood as the solution for mankind’s condemned condition?” Why didn’t He come up with some other type of solution?
Leviticus 17:11 – “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.”
The only solution is a blood sacrifice (Hebrews 9:22). Here’s why.
When Adam and Eve sinned the judgment was that their life would be taken from them. Once they sinned they were instantly dead. Yes, it would take years before they physically died, but spiritually they were instantly cut off from a right relationship with God. They died the moment they sinned. This is an important to meditate on. Sin took our life! For the wages of sin, the Bible says, is death (Romans 6:23). Sin is so awful and so defiant toward a holy God that the only and just action that He could take was to give the guilty sinner death! So what is the remedy? How can a person deserving of death ever get life? The only possible solution is that someone would need to give their life in the place of the guilty sinner. Someone would need to pay the judgment of death on behalf of the condemned sinner. But who would qualify? A sinner cannot pay with his life for the sin of another sinner; he must receive the death penalty for his own sin. The only person who would qualify to give His life on behalf of sinners was the perfect Son of God, Jesus. This now brings us to our question; “Why blood?” Could not Jesus have died simply by lethal injection, hanging, the electric chair, a shooting squad, or even stoning? Here is why I believe that God chose for Jesus to die the way He did. Blood is not only the symbol of life, it is life; it is what keeps a person alive. Blood is messy. Blood is respected and feared. Blood is not something that people take lightly. God wanted us to understand the severity and graveness of our sin and the cost of what it would take to redeem us (buy us back) from our sinful state. He wanted us to know that sin’s nature is so depraved that the only way to bring us back to a place of life was for Christ to suffer the most bloody, the most excruciating, the most graphic death we could think of so that we never lose sight of the wonder of the cross. Blood was in the mind of God as the perfect way to display the supreme cost and infinite value of our salvation!
