What did Jesus accomplish when He died on the cross, and who inflicted the suffering He endured? I believe He truly bore the punishment for our sins in His innocent body. I do not believe the Father punished His Son or poured wrath upon Him. To explain that distinction, we need to consider the sacrifices God gave Israel, the Servant Isaiah described, and the New Testament’s account of Christ’s death. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acted together to provide the salvation we could never obtain for ourselves.
Our Sin Requires the Atonement God Provides
By atonement, I mean God’s provision through Christ’s sacrifice to deal with our sin, cleanse our guilt, and reconcile us to Himself. We need that provision because we have rebelled against our Creator. Sin is more than a habit we would like to improve; it violates the authority of the holy God who made us to know and obey Him. Its wages are death, and God judges evil righteously.
His mercy does not require Him to pretend that wrongdoing is harmless. If I defraud someone and later become generous, the generosity does not make the earlier fraud cease to be sin. Religious activity cannot erase my guilt either. We need forgiveness and cleansing that we cannot produce by suffering, making resolutions, or accumulating good deeds. God Himself must provide the way for sinners to approach Him.
In Leviticus 17:11, God says that life is in the blood and that He gave it upon the altar to make atonement for souls. The provision began with Him. Israel could not decide that guilt was insignificant or devise its own terms for forgiveness. God appointed a sacrificial life given in death, preparing His people to understand the costly provision fulfilled in Christ.
Leviticus 16 describes the Day of Atonement. The high priest needed an offering for his own sins before he could minister on behalf of the people. Blood was carried within the veil and sprinkled on and before the mercy seat. One goat died as a sin offering, while the priest confessed Israel’s sins over the living goat, which was sent away into the wilderness. Together these actions pictured sacrificial death, cleansing, and the removal of sin. The study on the mercy seat examines the details of that ceremony.
Passover supplied another picture. A lamb without blemish died, and its blood marked the homes where the people sheltered according to God’s command. The judgment did not fall on those protected under that provision. Paul identifies Christ as our Passover sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7). His innocence and His death are essential to the comparison. We should not reduce the lamb’s blood, or Christ’s, to an illustration that merely encourages kinder feelings.
God granted forgiveness under the old covenant through the provision He appointed, but the animal offerings were not the final basis for removing human sin or perfecting the conscience. The priest himself was sinful, and the offerings had to be repeated. Jesus needs no sacrifice for Himself. He is the sinless High Priest and the sufficient sacrifice to whom those ceremonies pointed. Paul explains in Hebrews 9-10 that the redemption they anticipated is accomplished through Christ’s own blood.
The sacrifices help me see that the cross was never an afterthought. Through those ceremonies, God was teaching His people that guilt needed a real answer and that He would provide it. He did not change His standards when Christ came. The sacrifices were temporary shadows, but their mercy came from the same God who sent His Son.
The Sinless Servant Willingly Bore Our Punishment
Isaiah 53 describes the righteous Servant suffering because of other people’s sins. He bore our griefs and sorrows, was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and endured the chastisement that brought us peace. The Lord laid our iniquity upon Him. I see substitution in these statements: the innocent One gave Himself for guilty people and accomplished their deliverance through His suffering and death.
Verse 10 also says that it pleased the Lord to bruise Him and to make His soul an offering for sin. We need to explain those words rather than pass over them. I understand Isaiah to be attributing the saving purpose and its appointed outcome to God, not identifying the Father as the One who inflicted the torture. Acts 2:23 holds God’s determined purpose together with the responsibility of the lawless men who crucified Jesus. God’s purpose was redemption through His Son’s willing offering; the violence of those men remained their wickedness.
My objection to penal substitution concerns the claim that Christ bore the Father’s punitive wrath in our place. This is not an objection to substitution itself or a denial that Jesus suffered punishment. The Westminster Larger Catechism, question 49, for example, describes Him bearing God’s wrath. The same catechism also affirms the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit. Careful advocates of that view do not teach that the Son had to make a loveless Father willing to save. We should state their position fairly even while disagreeing with it.
I reject the claim that the Father inflicted punishment upon Jesus. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. The sinless Son bore the physical punishment of crucifixion inflicted by wicked men, willingly giving His body and blood for our sins. The Father received that offering; He was not the Son’s persecutor. Isaiah’s description of God’s saving purpose does not require me to assign the soldiers’ violence or a separate outpouring of wrath to the Father.
Jesus’ innocence was not suspended while He bore sin. Isaiah says He had done no violence and had no deceit in His mouth. The eternal Son became fully man without ceasing to be God, and He lived without sin. A guilty man could not supply the spotless sacrifice we needed. Jesus remained the holy Son throughout His suffering, giving a life that He did not owe for any wrongdoing of His own.
In Gethsemane, He prayed that the cup might pass from Him and submitted Himself to the Father’s will. The cup concerns the suffering He was appointed to endure. Although Scripture elsewhere uses cup imagery for divine judgment, the image does not automatically mean that the Father was about to pour wrath upon the Son. Jesus also told James and John that they would drink His cup (Mark 10:38-39). They would share suffering for His sake, not accomplish an atonement or bear God’s wrath for the world’s sins.
His anguish in the garden was real. We should not treat the torture and shame He faced as insignificant, as though real human suffering could not account for His agony. He had already told His disciples that He would be mocked, scourged, and killed. His submission was the obedience of the Son willingly giving Himself for sinners, with full knowledge of what that obedience would cost.
After His betrayal and condemnation, men mocked and scourged Him and nailed Him to the cross. From the cross He cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” He was using the opening words of Psalm 22, the lament of the righteous sufferer. That psalm describes public mockery, pierced hands and feet, and garments divided by those surrounding him. Its language fits the rejection and physical suffering Jesus endured. His cry should never be made into a theatrical gesture with no real anguish behind it.
We must also hear the rest of the psalm. In verse 24, God has not despised the sufferer’s affliction or hidden His face; He heard when the sufferer cried. I therefore do not read Christ’s use of its opening as a declaration that the Father abandoned Him. Jesus had also told His disciples that although they would leave Him alone, the Father was with Him (John 16:32). The Son’s real anguish did not end the Father’s love for Him or their unity.
Jesus shed His blood and died. Peter says that He bore our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). This was an actual death, suffered in our place, through which God provides forgiveness. Jesus was not merely demonstrating endurance or sympathy. He gave the innocent life that purchased our redemption.
Paul uses another strong expression in Galatians 3:13: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. He connects that statement with the law’s description of someone hung on a tree. Jesus entered that publicly condemned and shameful death to redeem people under the law’s curse. I understand Paul to be describing what Christ endured for us, rather than saying the Father cursed His sinless Son. Through His death, the blessing promised to Abraham reaches those who believe.
Likewise, when 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, it does not mean Jesus became morally evil. I understand Paul to be describing the sinless One appointed as the sacrifice for our sins. He bore them so that we could receive righteousness in Him. The same chapter says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. The cross was God’s united work to save sinners, not a breach within the Trinity.
Christ’s Blood Answers Sin and Brings Us Near
Christ’s blood is not a poetic substitute for the reality of His death. He gave His life in a bodily sacrifice. Scripture connects forgiveness, redemption, and cleansing with that shed blood, and Hebrews 9:22 says that without the shedding of blood there is no remission, or forgiveness. We cannot remove the death from the gospel and retain what Christ accomplished.
Paul says Christ offered Himself without blemish to God through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14). The Father sent the Son, the Son freely offered Himself, and the Spirit was active in that offering. This is what I mean by the united work of the Triune God: the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our salvation began in God’s love and was accomplished through His provision.
Romans sets that provision against the reality of God’s wrath toward ungodliness. His wrath is His righteous opposition to evil, not an uncontrolled outburst. Romans 3:21-26 then explains that believers are justified freely by grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus. To be justified is to be declared righteous before God, rather than left under condemnation for our guilt.
Paul calls Christ a propitiation by His blood, through faith. I understand propitiation here as the atoning provision God gives through which sin is dealt with and His judgment is turned away from the believer. God had passed over earlier sins in His patience; the cross demonstrated His righteousness in forgiving the person who believes in Jesus. His pardon rests on the sacrifice He appointed and accepted. This does not require the additional claim that He transferred His wrath onto His Son.
God’s justice is therefore upheld in the forgiveness He gives. He does not call evil good or pretend the sinner never needed cleansing. He provides the sinless sacrifice through which guilt is removed and reconciliation becomes possible. Jesus gave His life as a ransom, the price of our release (Mark 10:45). Forgiveness is freely received by the sinner, but it cost the Savior His blood and death.
Romans 5:10 describes people who were God’s enemies being reconciled through the death of His Son. That reconciliation gives believers a new standing before God. We are welcomed through Christ instead of trying to secure an audience through our achievements or repeated sacrifices. His blood cleanses the conscience, so we can serve the living God with confidence even when our feelings remain unsettled. Peace with God rests on His provision, rather than on our ability to produce a reassuring feeling.
At the Last Supper, Jesus identified the cup with His blood of the new covenant, shed for the remission of sins. Jeremiah 31:31-34 had promised covenant forgiveness, with God remembering sin no more and writing His law on the heart. Jesus connected His coming death with that promise. The forgiveness He gives brings us near to God and is accompanied by new life and the presence of His Spirit. Obedience grows from that life; it does not purchase admission into the covenant.
His One Sacrifice and Living Priesthood Are Enough
The resurrection belongs to the good news of this finished sacrifice. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose bodily on the third day. The One who paid for sin is alive, victorious over death and able to give life to His people. The study on the resurrection of Jesus considers the evidence and significance of that bodily victory.
Paul repeatedly contrasts the old covenant’s recurring sacrifices with Christ’s one sufficient offering in Hebrews. Jesus entered the heavenly holy place with His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). His saving work through His voluntarily shed blood and death was complete before His burial and bodily resurrection. His entrance into heaven does not supply an unfinished part of the payment for sin.
He offered Himself once to bear sins, and His sacrifice perfects forever those who are being sanctified, those set apart for God and being made holy (Hebrews 9:28; 10:14). The priests of the old covenant kept standing to offer sacrifices. Jesus sat down at God’s right hand because His sacrifice was sufficient. No additional offering can improve it or provide a cleansing His blood failed to accomplish.
His living priesthood continues. Hebrews 7:25 says that He always lives to make intercession for those who come to God through Him. Intercession means that He represents His people before the Father. He does so on the basis of the offering already made, rather than finding a new sacrifice whenever a believer sins. His continuing ministry brings the lasting benefits of His completed redemption to His people.
If an accusation against me is true, denying it will not answer my guilt. Satan accuses, conscience exposes what I have done, and God’s law cannot be satisfied by my excuses. If I have lied, a defensive explanation does not turn the lie into truth. I need to confess the sin and come through Jesus Christ, the righteous Advocate who speaks for His people (1 John 1:9; 2:1-2). His blood is sufficient to cleanse us; we are not searching for another payment.
Communion remembers and proclaims His body and blood; it does not put Him to death again or supply another atonement. Baptism identifies the believer with Christ, while the atonement on which salvation rests has already been accomplished. These ordinances direct us to a completed work received through faith. The complete study on Communion explains the Lord’s Supper in that setting.
We can therefore rest in Christ without becoming careless. No believer keeps himself saved by adding personal suffering, merit, or religious performance to the price already paid. His intercession does not mean the cross has to be repeated, and His completed sacrifice does not mean He has ceased to care for His people. Our confidence rests in the Savior who died, rose, and lives to intercede for us as we await His return.
Christ Died for the World and Saves Everyone Who Believes
First John 2:2 says Jesus is the propitiation for our sins and for the whole world. First Timothy 2:4-6 speaks of God’s desire for people to be saved and of Christ giving Himself as a ransom for all. I understand those statements as a real provision for every person, not merely a hypothetical sufficiency that leaves us uncertain whether Christ made provision for the person hearing the gospel.
That does not teach that everyone is automatically saved. People can resist God’s grace and reject His Son. The forgiveness God provides is received through repentance toward Him and faith in Jesus Christ. Those who refuse the Son remain under condemnation, though the Savior they reject truly gave Himself for them. We should retain both the breadth of His provision and the necessity of receiving Him.
When I tell someone to trust Christ, I can honestly say that He died for that person’s sins. I do not need to qualify the invitation by suggesting that perhaps he was excluded from the atonement. Whoever believes in Jesus receives eternal life. The complete study on salvation traces the relationship between guilt, repentance, faith, forgiveness, and new birth.
A person who genuinely believes is justified, forgiven, and born again. God makes him a new creation, and the Holy Spirit indwells and seals him. A Christian label by itself does not establish that new birth, but every genuine believer is secure in Christ. Our obedience does not earn salvation or keep us accepted. It should be evidence of the life the Savior has given us.
Peter connects Christ’s bearing of our sins with our living for righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). Gratitude for redemption should affect how I use my body, treat others, and carry out my responsibilities. Other believers were bought by the same blood, so I have no reason to treat them with contempt. The lost also need the Savior who gave Himself for them, and His provision should move us to patient, truthful witness.
His mercy also governs how we respond to wrongdoing. Forgiving another person does not mean calling evil harmless or neglecting justice. Nor can I claim gratitude for my own forgiveness while refusing to admit a wrong I have done. Repentance includes telling the truth and making restitution where possible. We can seek what is right and extend grace while remembering how much mercy we ourselves have received.
If you have not received Christ, God has made a real provision for your sin. You cannot replace it with good intentions, religious effort, or a promise to improve yourself. Turn to the Savior who willingly bore our punishment in His innocent body, shed His blood, and rose from the grave. Everyone who repents and believes in Him receives the forgiveness and life He offers.
My Final Thoughts
I reject the claim that the Father punished or abandoned His Son, while affirming that Jesus willingly bore the punishment for our sins in His body. The Father provided and accepted the sacrifice, the Son gave Himself, and the eternal Spirit was active in His offering. Christ’s blood accomplished our redemption, and the risen Savior now lives as our High Priest. We have no sacrifice to add or merit to claim. We can rest in His completed work and call every person to receive the mercy He has truly provided.
When Scripture says that life is in the blood, it connects something we can see with a truth we need to understand about God. A creature bleeds to death when its blood is lost, but its life was never ours to treat however we pleased. God gave that life, and He has the right to tell us how to regard it. From the first murder to the sacrifices at the tabernacle, the Bible teaches us to recognize His authority over life.
That teaching also prepares us to understand why the New Testament speaks so plainly about the blood of Jesus. He redeemed sinners by giving His own life in death. I want to follow the passages that explain this, because we can mishandle the subject in either direction: by treating blood as a mysterious power of its own, or by speaking so vaguely about Christ’s sacrifice that His actual suffering and death disappear from our explanation.
Blood Belongs to God Because Life Belongs to Him
Before Scripture records a command about eating blood, it records bloodshed. Cain killed his brother Abel, and God confronted him with the blood crying out from the ground (Genesis 4:10). Abel could no longer answer his murderer, but Cain had not silenced the One who would hold him accountable. God knew whose life had been taken and who had taken it.
Hebrews 12:24 later compares Abel’s blood with the blood of Jesus, which speaks better things. Abel’s murder called for justice against the guilty; Christ willingly gave His life so that guilty people could receive forgiveness. Both passages concern an actual death. The comparison loses its force if we turn either man’s blood into nothing more than a religious image.
After the Flood, God permitted Noah and his family to eat meat, but He placed a restriction on that permission:
"But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood."
Genesis 9:4, NKJV
This command came before the law given through Moses and before Israel existed as a nation. God addressed the family from whom the nations would descend. They could receive animals as food, but they could not treat the animal’s blood as ordinary food along with its flesh. The permission to eat meat did not make human beings the owners of life.
Genesis 9 then addresses the shedding of human blood. Human beings bear God’s image, and God requires an accounting for their lives. The passage establishes the seriousness of murder and the judicial responsibility to punish it; it does not authorize private vengeance or excuse the killing of an innocent person. Cain’s crime and God’s words to Noah both confront the assumption that we may dispose of another person’s life simply because we have the strength to do it.
By the time we reach Israel’s sacrifices, then, blood already carries an established significance. God is the giver of life, and He holds people accountable for how they treat it. The altar will teach more about atonement, but it will not replace that earlier instruction.
Passover, Covenant, and the Blood on the Altar
In Exodus 12, Israel was still enslaved in Egypt when God announced judgment on the firstborn. He instructed each household to kill an unblemished lamb and put its blood on the doorposts and lintel. He promised to pass over the homes marked by that blood. Israel’s protection rested on God’s provision and promise, not on a claim that every person inside an Israelite home had behaved better than every Egyptian.
The blood on the doorway was not a charm. A lamb had actually died, and God had told the household how to respond to the danger He announced. Trusting Him meant following His instructions. The New Testament brings that provision into clearer focus when John identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God (John 1:29), Paul calls Him our Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), and Peter describes His precious blood as that of a lamb without blemish or spot (1 Peter 1:18–19). Revelation likewise presents the Lamb who was slain and redeemed people by His blood.
Blood also accompanied the establishment of God’s covenant with Israel. In Exodus 24, Moses read the Book of the Covenant to the people and sprinkled the blood of sacrificed animals. The covenant bound them to the God who had delivered them, and its inauguration involved death. Hebrews 9 returns to that event when explaining Christ’s greater sacrifice. Later, Zechariah 9:11 connects the release of prisoners with the blood of God’s covenant, in the same chapter that announces the coming King. When Jesus spoke of the new covenant in His blood, He was fulfilling promises already woven through Israel’s Scriptures.
Leviticus explains why God appointed blood for the altar:
"For the life of the flesh is in the blood…"
Leviticus 17:11, NKJV
The verse goes on to say that God gave the blood upon the altar to make atonement for their souls. Atonement is God’s provision for dealing with sin so that sinners may approach Him. The emphasis is on what He gave and commanded. Israel did not discover a spiritual substance that could force an unwilling God to forgive them.
The Hebrew word nephesh, translated as soul in this setting, can refer to life, a living being, or a person, according to context. Here the life of the flesh is identified with its blood, and God provides sacrificial life on behalf of the person needing atonement. This is not a statement that human souls possess immortality in themselves, nor is it a lesson in which blood becomes an independent spiritual force. It explains God’s arrangement for sacrifice.
The command about blood also governed ordinary meals. Moses says in Deuteronomy 12:23 that “the blood is the life.” When an animal was slaughtered for food, its blood was to be poured on the ground like water rather than eaten. Israel could neither consume it at the table nor use it superstitiously to obtain spiritual power. God had specified its use at His altar; His people were to respect His instructions in their homes as well.
At the altar, the different offerings show how carefully Israel was to follow what God commanded. In Leviticus 1, the priests sprinkled the burnt offering’s blood around the altar. Leviticus 4 describes the handling of blood in sin offerings, including its application to the altar’s horns and the pouring out of what remained at its base. Leviticus 5–6 also requires restitution where an offender had defrauded someone or wrongfully withheld what belonged to him. Bringing an offering was no excuse to keep the proceeds of his wrongdoing.
On the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16, the high priest carried sacrificial blood into the Most Holy Place and sprinkled it at the mercy seat, the cover of the ark where God had appointed him to come. He could not enter whenever he pleased or devise his own terms of approach. One goat was killed and its blood brought within the veil; the other remained alive, had Israel’s iniquities confessed over it, and was sent away into an uninhabited land. The slain goat and the goat sent away belonged to the same appointed observance, but they performed different parts. We should not confuse the removal portrayed by the living goat with the shedding of sacrificial blood.
These sacrifices had to be repeated. They taught Israel about sin, death, cleansing, and God’s willingness to receive sinners through the provision He appointed. They could not finally remove human guilt by the death of an animal. As Paul explains in Hebrews 9–10, the restricted access and recurring offerings pointed beyond that arrangement to Christ, who would provide the sufficient sacrifice and cleanse the conscience.
Isaiah 53 then directs our attention to the Servant who would bear sins. He is wounded for transgressions, bruised for iniquities, led like a lamb to slaughter, and described as pouring out His soul unto death. The life He gives is His own. Jesus fulfills this through the bodily suffering inflicted on Him by wicked men and through His willing death for sinners. The Father did not strike or bruise His Son. Father and Son were united in providing salvation, while the people who abused and killed Jesus remained responsible for their wickedness.
The Apostles Still Treated Blood as Sacred
With Christ’s sacrifice accomplished, the apostles had to address how Gentile believers should live. In Acts 15, some were demanding circumcision and obedience to the law of Moses as requirements for salvation. The apostles rejected that demand. Gentiles were saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as Jewish believers were, and the church had no authority to place them under a burden God was not imposing.
Nevertheless, the letter sent to the Gentile churches instructed them to abstain from things polluted by idols, sexual immorality, things strangled, and blood. Meat from a strangled animal retained its blood, so those last two instructions belong together. I do not read the prohibition of blood as merely a temporary courtesy toward Jewish dinner guests. God had forbidden its consumption in His instruction to Noah long before Moses, and Acts 15 continues that prohibition among the nations.
This does not restore animal sacrifices or make dietary obedience the basis of justification. A person is not forgiven by keeping blood out of his meals, and he does not have to adopt Israel’s entire ceremonial law to become a Christian. But salvation by grace does not give us permission to dismiss an apostolic command. We can distinguish the means by which God saves us from the obedience He rightly requires of those He saves.
The same apostles who instructed believers to abstain from blood repeatedly taught that Christ redeemed them through His blood. Acts 20:28 says that God purchased the church with His own blood. The Son who became truly human is also truly God; His death was the giving of His own innocent life for His people.
In Romans 3:25, Paul uses hilasterion, a word also used for the mercy seat, in describing God’s provision through Christ and faith in His blood. The theological term propitiation describes God’s merciful provision for dealing with sin. It should not be used to force into the passage a transfer of the Father’s wrath onto Jesus. Romans 5:9 says that believers are justified by Christ’s blood and will be saved from coming wrath through Him. God receives the sinner through the Son’s sacrifice and delivers him from judgment.
Paul develops the results in several letters. Ephesians 1:7 connects redemption through Christ’s blood with the forgiveness of sins, and Ephesians 2:13 says that those once far away have been brought near by His blood. Colossians 1:14 likewise speaks of redemption through His blood and forgiveness; verse 20 describes peace made through the blood of His cross. The blood belongs to the crucified Savior, and these blessings come through what He accomplished in dying for us.
John is equally direct. The blood of Jesus cleanses believers from all sin (1 John 1:7), and Revelation 1:5 describes Him as washing us from our sins in His own blood. In Revelation 5:9, the Lamb is praised because He was slain and redeemed people to God by His blood. The multitude in Revelation 7:14 have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Their cleansing comes from Him, not from a record of personal innocence.
When Revelation 12:11 describes believers overcoming the accuser by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, it also says that they did not love their lives to the death. Their confidence rests in Christ even when faithfulness costs them their lives. The verse does not give us an aggressive formula for controlling circumstances by repeating words about blood. It describes people whose Redeemer has answered their guilt and whose loyalty to Him survives the threat of death.
Christ’s Blood and His Finished Sacrifice
Hebrews explains why this sacrifice accomplishes what the earlier offerings could not. The eternal Son became fully human without ceasing to be God, lived without sin, and offered Himself for sinners. An animal’s death could point toward redemption, but no animal could provide the sinless human life needed in our place. Jesus could, and His sacrifice is sufficient for the whole world.
Paul’s explanation in Hebrews 9 follows the earlier worship closely. The high priest entered the inner sanctuary with blood, but Christ entered once for all through His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of animals had its appointed use in outward cleansing; Christ offered Himself without spot to God and cleanses the conscience so that we may serve the living God. Forgiveness brings us into a relationship in which we can approach and serve Him, rather than remaining under the guilt we could never remove ourselves.
Hebrews 9:18–22 then returns to the inauguration of the covenant through Moses and the cleansing associated with the tabernacle. Within that explanation comes the statement that without the shedding of blood there is no remission, or forgiveness, of sins. Paul is explaining the sacrificial provision that reaches its fulfillment in Christ. Sin is not something God casually overlooks, and we cannot repair our guilt by making a few improvements to our conduct. God provided the sacrifice we needed.
Jesus bore the bodily punishment inflicted by those who arrested, scourged, and crucified Him, and He willingly gave His life for our sins. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Nor did the Son become sinful in His nature or cease to be God. We should be able to explain the horror of the cross without setting the Father against the Son who came to do His will.
Hebrews 10 contrasts the repeated offerings with Christ’s once-for-all offering of His body. His sacrifice does not need to be renewed, and another death is not required when another sinner comes to Him. Believers have confidence to enter God’s presence through His blood because He has accomplished what the old sacrifices anticipated. Our confidence would be badly misplaced if it rested on our ability to add something that His offering lacked.
That welcome makes the warnings in Hebrews all the more serious. Hebrews 10:29 condemns treating the blood of the covenant as common. Hebrews 12:24 speaks of the blood that speaks better things than Abel’s, and Hebrews 13:12 says Jesus sanctified the people with His own blood when He suffered outside the gate. The final chapter calls it the blood of the everlasting covenant (13:20). The book that explains our access to God also confronts contempt for the sacrifice by which He provided it.
Peter calls Christ’s blood precious in contrast to corruptible silver and gold (1 Peter 1:18–19). Money might purchase release from some human obligations, but it cannot purchase our release from sin. Our Redeemer gave His own sinless life. His blood has saving significance because it is His blood, shed in His willing sacrifice; it has no power detached from the Person who gave it.
John 19:34 records blood and water coming from Jesus’ side when a soldier pierced Him after His death. John emphasizes that his testimony is that of an eyewitness. The Son of God had taken on real flesh and blood and had truly died. His saving work was complete before He rose bodily from the dead; He did not need further suffering after the cross to finish paying for sin. His resurrection vindicated Him and declared His victory over death. We proclaim the living Savior who actually gave His life for us.
John 6, Communion, and the Response of Faith
Because Jesus spoke about drinking His blood in John 6, some readers wonder how His words can agree with the prohibition of consuming blood. We need to follow the discussion He was having. After He fed the five thousand, the crowd sought Him for more bread. He directed them to the life He gives and explained that those who come to Him and believe in Him receive everlasting life.
In the discourse recorded at Capernaum, His words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood offended hearers, and many disciples turned away. Yet He was not telling them to practice cannibalism or violate God’s command about blood. His earlier calls to come and believe explain the personal reception He required. The life He would give through His death had to be received by faith in Him.
I can understand what bread is and still go hungry if I refuse to eat. In the same way, discussing Christ’s sacrifice, admiring His teaching, or agreeing that He was a good man does not amount to trusting Him as Savior. Jesus calls the sinner to depend on Him for life. Eating and drinking express that dependence and reception; they do not turn His hearers into literal consumers of His body.
On the night He was betrayed, Jesus gave His disciples bread and a cup during the Passover meal and commanded them to remember Him. Matthew 26:28 records His explanation that His blood of the new covenant is shed for many for the remission of sins. Luke 22:20 also identifies the cup with the new covenant in His blood. The sacrifice anticipated in Israel’s worship was now about to be offered by the One who had come to fulfill it.
The church obeys that command in the Lord’s Supper. Through the bread and cup, we remember the body Christ gave and the blood He shed. They do not become physical flesh and blood, and the meal does not repeat His sacrifice. Paul calls the cup the communion, or fellowship, of Christ’s blood in 1 Corinthians 10:16. Believers share in fellowship around the Savior whose one offering has redeemed them.
That fellowship calls for more than going through a familiar routine. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul requires believers to examine themselves and warns against careless participation. We should consider our conduct before the Lord whose death we are proclaiming. We also look forward: the church proclaims His death until He comes (1 Corinthians 11:25–26). The meal directs our remembrance to His finished work and our expectation to His return.
The apostles could therefore command believers to abstain from blood as food while also teaching them to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. There is no conflict between those instructions. In communion, Christians remember and proclaim the death of the Savior they have received by faith. They are not drinking literal blood or offering Christ again.
Neither participating in that meal nor obeying a dietary command can bring about the new birth. God genuinely calls every person to repent and believe in Jesus, and people can resist and reject His call. Those who receive Christ by faith are forgiven and justified, born again as new creations, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and sealed for the day of redemption. Their security rests in Christ’s finished work, not in an ability to keep themselves saved.
That assurance never grants permission for lawlessness. If I claim Christ’s redemption while treating His commands with contempt, I need to face what my conduct says about that claim. Genuine new birth produces evidence of new life; it does not make a person sinless, and obedience neither earns nor maintains salvation. We obey the Savior who has redeemed us, and we confess our sins rather than defending them.
This also gives us a plain way to explain the gospel to someone who does not know Him. The sinless Son gave His body and shed His blood for sinners, truly died, and rose bodily. Forgiveness is offered to everyone who repents and believes in Him. Calling Jesus only an example of love leaves out the sacrifice by which He saves; treating His blood as a charm directs attention away from the Savior. Faith receives Christ Himself and the life He gives.
My Final Thoughts
God’s commands concerning blood teach us to respect the life He gives and to take sin seriously. The sacrifices also teach us that He provided a way for sinners to approach Him, and Christ has fulfilled what those offerings anticipated. His innocent life was given for us, His sacrifice is sufficient, and His work does not need our contribution to make it complete. I can acknowledge the full weight of my guilt without despairing, because the Savior who shed His blood offers real forgiveness. When we gather at His table, we have reason to examine our conduct, thank Him for His mercy, and await His return with confidence in what He has finished.
