Blood!

By Elizabeth Prata

Before I was saved, the blood of Christ was the worst part of Christianity to me. I thought of the sticky blood on a rough cross and I’d go, “Ick! Who wants a religion like that? Not me!”

I could not understand why the blood was so important to those weird Christians.

Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. (Romans 5:9).

Then He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to Me from the ground. (Genesis 4:10).

and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:24).

Now I understand why! Praise God he saved me and I can commune with Him and learn about Him to the extent His word allows.

But I also understand that many Christians don’t study the blood or speak of it. Some, I think, are embarrassed about the blood within their heart of hearts. Others may not talk about it because they don’t understand its critical importance to the faith, likely because their own pastors don’t teach it. But we do need to speak of it and praise God for His Son’s shedding of blood.

We can always count on RC Sproul, in heaven now, to teach about the hard things. Here he is with a Coram Deo devotional (excerpt) about the blood:

Exodus 24:1–8 gives us the historical record of this ceremony wherein Moses sacrificed oxen and sprinkled their blood on the people and on the altar at Sinai once the Israelites had agreed to the covenant terms. Similarly, the new covenant was enacted by blood, but with the perfect blood of Christ and not the blood of animals. John Owen, commenting on these verses, looks to the actions of Moses in order to explain two benefits we receive from the death of Christ: “This distribution of blood, half on the altar, half on the people, one to make atonement, the other to purify or sanctify, taught the double efficacy of Christ’s blood in making atonement for sin for our justification and purifying of our natures in sanctification.” Sproul, The Necessity of Blood

Here are a few other resources on the blood of Christ

GotQuestions: The Blood of Christ

Horatius Bonar wrote of the blood quite often. Look up +Horatius Bonar and +blood and you’ll get quite a few results. This page is a summary of the 9th chapter of his book The Blood of the Cross.

Here is an excerpt–

“It was the blood of one whom He loved with an immeasurable love; and who was worthy of all that love, even to the uttermost. It was the blood of Him who was the brightness of Jehovah’s glory, and the express image of His person. How, then, was it possible that He could overlook any affront to the blood of one so exalted and so loved? How could He allow the foot of man to trample on it with scorn, or the eye of man to glance past it with indifference? He could not.”

Here is another by Bonar at GraceGems, Consecration by Blood

Spurgeon on The Voice of the Blood of Christ

There aren’t many songs about the blood but here is one I absolutely love. It’s called The Last Blood, and it’s by the Victory Valley Girls. Listen to the whole thing. It builds.