Blood sacrifice

Something that is difficult to accept or see or grasp or understand in general is the blood sacrifice aspect of the one, true religion.

People all over the world, from before recorded history, have sacrificed animals (and humans). You see it in the Homeric epics even.

It was instituted by God from the beginning. When an innocent, unspotted, animal is sacrificed it propitiates the sins of the person doing the sacrifice (or priest) and hence the people the priest is representing before God.

Blood is the material of the innocence. It also represents the life that has been taken, or sacrificed. If no blood is spilled no sacrifice has taken place.

This ritual was instituted to be a type or symbol of the sacrifice of Christ. The Israelites were given detailed rituals of animal sacrifice, but it was so that they would see the sacrifice of the Messiah in it all that would happen, for them, in the future, and their faith in this future happening was the same as our faith in the already-happened event of God on the cross which is in the past for us.

Of course the world got hold of the idea and turned it to demonic ends, eventually instituting such things as child sacrifice. Short of that just worshiping the animal that they sacrifice, or using sacrifice to appease powers of nature or 'gods' (the creature rather than the Creator).

Jesus being put to death on the cross is the ultimate sacrifice, though. He is not merely a human being (let alone an ox, or lamb, or goat) being put to death, but he is God himself. And he is 100% totally innocent - from birth. No original sin, and no sin while alive in the flesh. He fulfilled the law to a 't.' So when he was put to death, sacrificed on the cross, it was enough 'payment' for the sins of the entire world times infinity. No other animal or human or any other kind of sacrifice was necessary after Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.

This causes Christians to be part of something we think of a ancient or pagan. Blood sacrifice. Yet this is what the plan of God - the plan of redemption - hinges on: blood sacrifice. Penal substitution.

When we emulate Jesus - as believers - we sacrifice ourselves too, but we sacrifice ourselves in the form of suffering. Which is to say, to use Work language, intentional suffering. We sacrifice our fake suffering by not indulging it. Loving your enemy is intentional suffering, for instance.

The animal is a substitute for man in the ritual of animal sacrifice. God accepts the animal's life for the life of sinful man (because the penalty for sin is death). But the sacrifice of a mere animal can't wipe away man's sin completely. Only the death of God on our behalf can do that. And you partake in the benefit of that death by simply having faith in God who came in the flesh. Simply recognizing his authority as Sovereign of the Kingdom of God. Believing in him and his work on the cross. This makes you "in Christ." To be "in Christ" means you are no longer "in Adam." To be "in Adam" is to be in bondage to sin and death and the devil. To be "in Christ" (which effectually and practically means you have the Holy Spirit in you - which is the Spirit of Christ - connecting you to Christ like a vine to a branch) is to be free of sin and death and the devil. Your new state manifests completely when your flesh body dies and you are resurrected, like Christ, to glory.

But the main point of this post is: that is what Jesus was on the cross dying for. He was being an ultimate blood sacrifice. A once and for all blood sacrifice; and one that is infinitely effectual to free all who believe...

(Modern day liberal Christians - and similar types - refuse to see Jesus' death as any kind of blood sacrifice, but choose to see Jesus merely as a teacher or to see his dying on the cross merely as an example of selflessness that we are to emulate, etc., etc., but if you know all the Bible and you value all the Bible as the word of God then you know what Jesus was doing on the cross and why he had to be on the cross and the meaning of it all.)

It's like this: you are facing ultimate judgment before God. God says you are a sinner and that deserves eternal punishment. So you say: "But a blood sacrifice has taken my place and paid for my sins." God says: "An ox?" You say: "No, a lamb." God says: "A lamb won't do it." So you say: "But not just any lamb; the Lamb of God; the Lamb slaughtered from the foundation of the world. Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God, who took on flesh and died on the cross, a blood sacrifice, for ME, to wipe my sin clean with his blood and make me holy to be able to stand before You justified and no longer condemned to death for my sin." And God says: "That Lamb will do it." And you move to the right. An heir of God. A prophet, priest, and king in the Kingdom of God, having all God has. But it required that you have faith in the Saviour and that you are "in Christ."