Why Does God Like Blood So Much? It’s a Turn-off (Lent 18-2018)

If people have a sensitive queasy-factor, parts of the Bible can be a tough read. All the blood makes their stomachs turn. Most of us don’t like blood a whole lot. We’re glad we have it pumping through a working heart to operate a functioning brain and entire pulmonary and vascular system. We get a cut and start bleeding and our first response is to stop the bleeding. Many of us don’t like to see blood at all, even when it’s going into a tube for a blood test.

Why, then, does so much of the Bible talk about blood? It’s a turn-off. It’s gross.

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It’s even scary. So much so, that most children’s Bibles really don’t give the graphic descriptions that their parents’ Bibles have. Even movies involving the Crucifixion, prior to Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” downplayed the bloodiness of the event…even though Hollywood doesn’t care that much about lots of bloodshed if depicting it in non-Crucifixion ways. Indeed, it revels in it as a box-office draw so long as no one mentions sin.

But that’s why blood is important. As early as the days of Cain and Abel, the blood of Abel, his life cried out (Genesis 4:10) and God connects blood to life. Genesis 9:4 “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 “And surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man. 6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.”

If we correctly and fully understand the Image of God and how important our Image-bearing is, then atrocities like the mass murder at Stoneman Douglas become even more heart-wrenching. Every single fatality was a person with a soul and lifeblood and bearing the Image of God.

Food for thought:

In the days of the Old Testament with all the bloody sacrifices, in what way was it driven home that sin leads to death? In what way was there a reminder of the importance of life?
In the Life of Pi which we’ve been using for Lent 2018, the father demands his boys watch as the tiger Richard Parker grabs a live goat, kills it, and drags it off to devour it. The mother didn’t want them to see it. The father insisted that there was an important lesson there.
By sanitizing our lives free from blood, are we deluding ourselves into believing that sin isn’t really a problem, it isn’t costly, or a matter of life and death? Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If sin’s consequences came with an annual reminder by having to kill an animal, would we think sin was all that fun, pleasurable, glamorous, or humorous? Would we be as inclined to make truth relative?
How did Jesus’ perfect sacrifice do away with the sacrificial system? Hebrews 9:14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

Join me tomorrow for “Why Is Suffering God’s Will?”

For Lent 2018, we’ll explore the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We’ll ask and answer the question “Why?” as we discover the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Join me for the 40 days of Lent which began February 14, 2018 by liking Seminary Gal on Facebook or having these devotionals sent to your email box which you can do via the sign-up on my Home page. Thank you for blessing me with this opportunity to study together the Word of God.

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Acknowledging that former years’ devotional series remain popular:

Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.