Does forgiveness require blood?
Background messages:
Audio: Sacrifice
Article: Contradiction of the cross and The revelation of the cross
In the context of the teaching on sacrifice, we are often asked: “Doesn’t the bible say that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins?”
Well that’s not exactly what it says. Lets look at Heb 9:22 HCSB
“According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
First point to notice: “According to the law”
Many things that were introduced by the law only finds their full and final meaning in Christ. The book of Hebrews is focussed on helping people who were totally invested in the message of the law, to see beyond the shadows and types of the law and realize its true meaning.
As such the sacrificial systems was only a type: God spoke to us in sacrificial language because that is what we could understand, but he brought that conversation to a final conclusion in the perfect sacrifice. For a God who, ‘does not require sacrifices and offerings’, the perfect sacrifice is the one that forever invalidates our sacrificial systems. He is the perfect sacrifice, because He is the first real sacrifice: a self-sacrifice, a self-giving of love. He is the perfect sacrifice because He subverts our perverted understanding of sacrifice.
If this law system worked, Jesus’ coming would have been unnecessary. Jesus, therefore, did not come to simply affirm the message of the law, but to turn it upside down … to reveal the substance behind the shadows. He fulfills the law not by meeting its every requirement, but by bringing its shadows to an end.
The second point to notice is: “… ALMOST everything is purified by the blood”. That little word ‘almost’ becomes very problematic if one thinks that forgiveness is not possible without blood. That is also why the whole verse is often not quoted, so that the phrases ‘according to the law’ and ‘almost everything’ can be avoided.
The background to this verse is the Levitical sacrificial system. The amazing thing about this Levitical requirements for atoning sacrifices are that they did not always require blood! (Lev 4:1-6:7)
If a person was too poor to afford the usual sacrifice, then a grain offering was accepted. God was not going to allow blood to stand between His desire to forgive and a person in need of forgiveness!
So then, even under the law, blood was not always required as a pre-requisite for forgiveness.
In the very chapter in which the perfect sacrifice of Jesus is discussed (Heb 10) we are again reminded that sacrifice and offerings was not required by God! His blood was what we required, not what God required.
And now His blood speaks of better things than the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24) The blood of all innocent victims, since Abel, called for vengeance, called for retributive justice. Unfortunately we have often reduced the message of the blood of Christ to speak the same message as Abel’s blood when we referred to it as the blood God required to enable Him to forgive sins. No! His blood has a better message – His blood calls for forgiveness not vengeance!
This is why His blood purifies our conscience – it communicates God absolute, unreserved forgiveness even while we were at enmity against Him.
Beautiful message Andre!
For sooooo long I held onto the “angry God” doctrine, where Jesus literally had to jump in front of the bullet that God shot at mankind. But what freedom to be finally rid of that – to live and run free in the vast expands of His love and approval!!
Hi,
Forgive me for I am but male by design and orientation, 82 years old and a non-English speaker.
Yes indeed, ALMOST all things! Under their law covenant there were a very few transgressions that automatically invoked an executional death without any possible forgiveness. That’s the ‘ALMOST’!
Adultery by a wife and that of a man with the wife of another were two of these, while men could have multiple wives and concubines to father many children, enhance the genetic pool for tribal health in the prevention of inbreeding, and to enable Israel to attain to the ‘Sand of the Sea Shores’ and ‘Stars of Heaven’ prophetic numbers sooner and healthier than achievable monogamously.
It was Israel’s collective adultery that proved her undoing and execution in Jesus – see or read the whole chapter Ezekiel 16 followed by Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 27:1-29:1 for background.
The death of Jesus the sheep thus saved God’s firstborn son Israel (Exodus 4:22) and Seed of Abraham (Isaiah 41:8) from total annihilation, which would render all of God’s promises to Abraham and Israel’s fathers void and God a liar.
There’s a lot more but not here. But here is something to think about: In the pre-enactment and analogy of Abraham’s offering his Only Begotten Son Isaac and the substituting lamb/sheep that saved him, who remained dead: the sheep or Isaac? Where was the sheep raised? In Abraham’s family? Then why is the sheep Jesus said to have come from God’s heavenly family? Was the sheep that saved Isaac Isaac? Then why is the sheep that saved Gods-only-begotten-son said to be God’s-only-begotten-son? Hebrews 10:5-10 is a good place to go to.
Who was given a New Testament/Covenant? See Jeremiah 31:31 and read it a number of times without trying to cheat yourselves.
Dieter G