I have seen many questions by non-Christians, asking about the blood sacrifice of Jesus and why did God require it. In a post on another thread 'radar' asked these questions and I feel he is really seeking an answer to questions relating to some of the most important things we as Christians hold dear and hang onto in our walk with God.
radar asked, "#1.. Does or does NOT your god have the discretion to forgive without requiring torture and blood sacrifice? #2. If this IS his choice, why does a supposedly loving and merciful god REQUIRE it. and if NOT, then who or what is the authority to which he must answer.
Let's take the last part of question #2 first. "if NOT, then who or what is the authority to which he must answer." In the Judeo/Christian faiths concerning God, (not Jesus, but God), there is no other authority. God is God, the beginning and the end. God is eternal, faithful, foreknowing, good, merciful, loving, jealous, immutable, impartial, incomprehensible, He is infinite, just, longsuffering, wrathful, truthful, wise, omnipotent, omipresent, omniscient, He is righteous, self-sufficient, transcendent, SELF-EXISTENT, and so many things I could go on and on with.
Now as for blood sacrifice. Let me give some info here as to why and also give a better understanding of the significance of the blood of Jesus and why God required it.
Now as we know the Jewish people do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God, so what I write from here on out unless I specify otherwise is what we as Christians believe. But I will say that Jews have always believed also in blood sacrifice and that goes back to the days of Abraham and beyond.
Let us establish this fact, and that is BLOOD IS LIFE, LIFE IS IN THE BLOOD. It courses through the veins of man and beast, without blood we die. That is a known fact. But for the sake of time and reading, I won't get into a human and animal biology lesson. LOL
Going back before the time of Jesus, we find over in the Old Testament of the Bible that after sin entered into the world, God required the blood sacrifice of animals for the atonement of sins.
Leviticus 17:11, For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Leviticus 4:3-5 If the priest that is anointed do sin...then let him bring for his sin, which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the LORD for a sin offering....he shall... lay his hand upon the bullock's head, and kill the bullock before the LORD. And the priest that is anointed shall take of the bullock's blood, and bring it to the tabernacle of the congregation.
What has to be realized is that the blood of the animals still couldn't do the trick to make things right. The Israelites were still unfaithful to God as evidenced by their awhoring after other gods. So, a better sacrifice was needed and God set forth or made a plan for man.
Hebrews 10:4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
God promised His people, the Jewish people, a new covenant about 600 years before the coming of Christ. We will see that this covenant would also require blood.
Jeremiah 31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Jeremiah 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
OK now, in the Bible, we have the Old Testament (or Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament. Both were ushered in by blood. The Old Testament came by the blood of animals. The New Testament by the blood of Jesus Christ.
All of the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament were only a picture of the ultimate sacrifice. When Jesus Christ went to the cross almost 2,000 years ago, He was the ULTIMATE sacrifice.
You see the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, completely abolished the system of animal sacrifice forever. The animal sacrifices of the Old Testament were only a picture, a figure, of the true sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Their blood was only a figure of the blood of Jesus that would be shed thousands of years later on a cross outside the city of Jeruselem. If we go into the New Testament we read in Hebrews the animal sacrifices were...
Hebrews 9:9 ...a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience...
9:11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;
9:12 Neither by the blood of goats and calves, "but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us."
9:13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:
9:14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
The blood of animals had to be shed over and over but the blood of Jesus was shed only one time. God no longer requires a blood sacrifice, Jesus took care of that once and for all. But yes He did require it. And I know you are asking WHY? Again, blood is life and there is life in blood. But, the blood Jesus shed pays for our sins so we don't go to hell, and personally I have made arrangements to MISS HELL!!!
But we have to understand that the blood of Christ bought us and justifies us before a Holy God. The blood sacrifice redeems us, it forges an everlasting covenant between the believer and God, it sanctifies us, it cleanses us from all sin, it washes away our sins, and it causes us to overcome this old wicked world. Christ became the ultimate sacrifice for us and is now at the right hand of the Father as our Intersessor between us and God. This is why we preach and sing about the POWER OF THE BLOOD.
But that was the price for our screw up. God made the rules, but the sacrifice was made 2000 years ago and we do not have to shed blood any longer for the remission of sin. Since this loving act was done because God loved us so much, we can now ask to be forgiven through the blood Christ shed.
Now before the question is asked about why blood sacrfice, why all of the brutality? The best way I can answer is this: I know reading through the Bible and reading all of the sacrifices of animals and then once you get into the Gospels and read of how cruel of a death Jesus had can be a bit shocking in the least.
The Bible says that, "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) and that "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3: 23) But Christians believe that Jesus gave His life to pay the price for everyone’s sin.
The Bible states, in Matthew 26:28, that just before His crucifixion, Jesus shared a cup of wine (representing His lifeblood) with His disciples and said, "This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."
The sacrificing of animals was given to the Israelites as a lesson about the cost that God would pay in the person of His Son Jesus to redeem humanity to Himself. God told Moses that blood represented life. The blood of the sacrificed, innocent animals represented the cost of redemption in the blood of God’s own Son.
Hebrews 9:22 states, "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission." Through symbols, the Israelites learned that salvation of the human race would cost the life of Christ.
According to 1 John 3:4, "Sin is the transgression of the law." God did not change His eternal law in order to rescue the human race. "For I am the Lord, I change not," the Bible states, in Malachi 3:6. But God provided a propitiation (an answer to its claims) in the person of His Son. Jesus became sin and received what every guilty sinner deserves so that the sinner might receive what the Son deserves.
The sinner was to take the life of the innocent animal himself. This horrible, bloody act impressed upon the worshiper’s mind the awfulness of sin and the cost (the death of an innocent victim — ultimately, Christ) of his restoration to a right relationship with God.
According to Leviticus 1:2-5, God’s instructions to Moses when He instituted the sanctuary services was, "Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the Lord…he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord."
The act of sacrifice was not an appeasement of an angry God. Rather, it was symbolic of the sinner’s repentance and acceptance of the ultimate sacrifice, the death of God’s Son. "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins," the Bible states in Hebrews 10:4.
Now, sin separated human beings from God in the Garden of Eden and continues to separate them from their Creator. Without Christ’s death to atone for humanity’s sins, eternal death (the ultimate result of a complete separation from God and His sustaining power) would be the fate of every person who has ever lived. Hebrews 9:28 states, "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many."
OK let's break it down and simplify: Man is separated from God because of sin. Fellowship was broken and the wages of sin is death. Man could not buy his way to righteousness through good works, deeds or rituals. The payment was death. But God provided a loophole, that a substitution could be made. This is where the sacrificial lamb became necessary. Your sins were passed onto the lamb, and the lamb took your payment for sin.
This was a foreshadow for He who was to come. For as Abraham said, "God will provide Himself the Lamb." This was seen when John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and proclaimed "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world."
If we ask Jesus to be Lord and Savior, we are, in essence, passing our sins onto Him as our personal lamb. Our payment was paid in full on the cross. Which is why Jesus said "Tetelestai" or "paid in full" (commonly translated as "it is finished").
"Tetelestai" doesn’t translate simply, we have to make a phrase out of it - "It is finished." But still some of its power is lost in the translation. In the Greek it implies that something has come to an end, it has been completed, perfected, accomplished in the full and that something has consequences that will endure on and on.
"Tetelestai" is the most powerful single word of all of Jesus ministry. It was also his last word. It was the word that turned this apparent tragedy into a scene of VICTORY that shook the earth, split rocks, changed history, raised saints from the dead and tore away the temple curtain that kept people out of the Holy of Holies.
"Tetelestai" the most powerful word in history. Even more powerful than the words of creation in Genesis chapter 1 where God spoke and the universe came into existence. This word could not simply be spoken. The son of God had to die to speak it.
So, with sin paid in full, we now have access to the throne wherein we can cry Abba, Father to the Almighty God. It is through Christ that our sins have been removed and thrown into the deepest ocean and as far as the East is from the West.
1 Cor. 15:1-4
I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you--unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
For these reasons, we as Christians believe that only God’s Son, Jesus Christ, can save a sinner and give him or her eternal life. According to Acts 4:12, "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."
Hope this helped.
