What’s your reaction when you hear about some cult that’s been discovered killing chickens in the backyard and smearing the blood around? Pretty sickening, isn’t it?
And yet, think about what God commanded ancient Israel to do. They sacrificed not just birds, but bulls and sheep and goats, day after day, and on some special occasions animals by the tens of thousands. Did you ever stop to think that those people might have found all that blood and gore repulsive?
Consider Jesus of Nazareth — a holy, devout man; a prophet. He was a teacher who taught to look beyond the rituals of the law, to the deeper meanings. He said, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6:53-56 RSV).
Isn’t this grotesque, even if it is figurative? In fact, many of Jesus’ followers found this so revolting that they left. Think about how you would react to someone saying things like this.
Why, we may well ask, would the Son of God choose such language? It’s almost as though he carefully selected the most offensive way to put his thoughts. And going further to the deeper question, why would the Creator put such emphasis on blood?
Perhaps we are so familiar with the language of sacrifice in the Bible that there isn’t any impact any more. And we’ve probably never witnessed an actual animal sacrifice, so we don’t have any first-hand knowledge to help bring it home to us. Try to get a mental picture of the courtyard of the temple: blood everywhere, the smell, the flies. It’s not a pretty picture.
Why? Why did God decree this unappealing system?
Now shift your thought to a scene more horrifying still–a man hanging from a post by nails driven through his hands and feet. Why?
Because it’s what sin deserves. All those other sacrifices were just a small foretaste of this final sacrifice, once for all.
Why should it be that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins? Because sin deserves DEATH. How else could God drive home that point? Sacrifice is supposed to be unpleasant. It is supposed to horrify us. In particular, it is supposed to make us aware of how awful our own sin is. And how overwhelmingly gracious our God is to forgive it.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One