Additional Note On The Meaning Of The Word ‘Blood’
II. ‘BLOOD’ IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
The word αĩμα is found in all ninety-eight times in the New Testament, sometimes simply of blood without any implication of life or death or the like. Thus five times we meet the expression ‘flesh and blood’, there are four references to the woman with the issue of blood, and there is the unusual expression ‘born not of bloods’ (Jn. 1: 13). Altogether such passages account for twenty-four occurrences of the word.
Twenty-five times the word indicates violent death, this being the largest group, as we have already seen to be the case in the Old Testament. A good example is the statement of St. Paul, ‘when the blood of Stephen thy witness was shed, I also was standing by’ (Acts 22: 20). As that death was by stoning there is no emphasis on the literal outpouring of blood. The expression stands simply for violent death. So is it with the query of the martyrs in the Apocalypse, ‘How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ (Rev. 6: 10). It makes nonsense of this passage to insist that there is any emphasis on a literal shedding of blood. The people in question are those ‘that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held’ (Rev. 6: 9), quite irrespective of how they met their death. Very important in this group are the references to ‘the blood of Abel’ and the ‘blood of Zachariah’ (Lk. II: 51), for they form parallels to ‘the blood of Christ’, and both of them plainly signify death and not any offering of life.
A usage which is probably derived from this is that in which ‘blood’ signifies spiritual, rather than physical, death, as when St. Paul says to the Jews opposing him: ’Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles’ (Acts 18:6; and see Acts 20: 26).
Twelve times we come across references to the blood of animal sacrifices, all of them in Hebrews; but with one exception they tell us little about the way sacrifice was regarded, being allusions to what was actually done without any attempt to explain why it was ?>done. The only possible exception is Hebrews 9: 13 where ‘the blood of goats and bulls’ is linked with ‘the ashes of a heifer’, and since the latter undoubtedly points to death it may be held that the former does also, or at the very least that it is congruous with it.
The remaining passages all refer in one way or another to the blood of Christ, and on a number of occasions the reference seems plainly to His death, without any necessary implication of sacrifice. Thus in Romans 5: 9 we are said to be justified by his blood’ and ‘saved from the wrath through him’. This is parallel to ‘reconciled ... through the death of his Son’ and ‘saved by his life’ in the next verse, while it follows references to dying in each of the three preceding verses. It does not seem possible to resist the conclusion that ‘his blood’ here refers to the death of the Lord. It is not otherwise with ‘the blood of his cross’ (Col. I: 20), for a cross has no place in the sacrificial system, and stands only for a particularly unpleasant death. There seems no reason for interpreting Ephesians 2:13 in any other way, especially since here ‘made nigh in the blood of Christ’ seems to give much the same thought as ‘might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross’ (verse 16). Very clear is the word of the high priest to the apostles, ‘ye have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us’ (Acts 5: 28), where the reference is plainly to the death of Christ, this time with the added thought of responsibility for that death. The death is meant also in I John 5: 6, where Jesus is said to have come ‘by water and blood’; of which passage even Westcott, who holds strongly to the thought that blood signifies release of life, can say: ‘There can be no doubt that the Death upon the Cross satisfies the conception of “coming by blood.” ‘219 Probably we should include in this group also two passages in the Apocalypse, viz, those which refer to Him ‘that loosed us from our sins by his blood’ (Rev. 1:5), and to His vesture, ‘a garment sprinkled with (or dipped in) blood’ (Rev. 19: 13), though perhaps some would prefer to include them among passages referring to sacrifice.
There is an interesting passage where the blood cannot be interpreted as a reference to sacrifice, namely that referring to the drinking of Christ’s blood (Jn. 6: 53ff.), for there is no place in the Hebrew sacrificial system for drinking blood. To understand this passage as signifying a participation in the life of Christ is to assume the point at issue, for it certainly does not prove it. Indeed, the indications arc the other way, for the mention of blood and flesh in separation points to death rather than life,220 and, moreover, we cannot overlook the fact that drinking the blood is coupled with eating the flesh. There is no reason for thinking that the two expressions give essentially dissimilar ideas, and it is very difficult to understand the latter expression of participation in the life. And if we do we have destroyed the case for thinking that the life is in the blood; it would then be also in the flesh. Plainly the passage points to the death of Christ.221 Perhaps we should also notice I Corinthians 10: 16; II: 27 here, for although neither of them speaks explicitly of drinking the blood, they are passages of the same type. All things considered, it would seem that the passages noticed in this paragraph are satisfactorily interpreted only if the blood of Christ be taken as pointing us to His death.
A further group refers to the blood of Christ as the price of our redemption (Acts 20:28; Eph. I: 7, etc.). This group seems to point to the blood as meaning death, but no stress is laid upon the passages which comprise it, because it would be possible to interpret them of the offering of life, if that could be substantiated from elsewhere.
The remaining passages seem to point to sacrificial blood. Six times there is reference to covenant blood, which calls for no comment to show the sacrificial reference: thus God is said to have set forth Christ as ἱλαστήριον ... ἐν τᾡ αὐτοὕ αϊμματι (Rom. 3: 25), where the word ἱλαστήριον points us to the sacrifices.222 In Hebrews 9 the whole context with its mention of the blood of sacrificial victims shows that verses 12, 14 carry a reference to the sacrificial system when they speak of the blood of Christ, and the same is true of 10: 19. The unusual phrase, ‘blood of sprinkling’ (Heb. 12: 24), points to a sacrificial action, and the context shows that in Hebrews 13 : 12 the sin offering is in mind. The sprinkling of the blood in IPeter 1: 2 is a sacrificial action, while the blood ‘as of a lamb without blemish and without spot’ (1 Pet. 1: 19) is clearly sacrificial blood. The same is probably true of ‘the blood of the Lamb’ (Rev. 7:14; 12:11). Finally, the thought of cleansing associated with the blood in I John 1: 7 seems to be an allusion to sacrifice.
When we were dealing with sacrifice in the Old Testament we saw reason for thinking that the infliction of death rather than the release of life was the dominant thought, and these passages, which view the death of Christ as a sacrifice, do not disturb that conclusion. There is nothing in the context of any of them to show that the writer was thinking of the offering of life when he spoke of Christ’s death in sacrificial terms. Contrariwise, each one of them yields a natural interpretation when we think of the blood as signifying death.
One or two of the sacrificial passages strengthen our impression that the blood means death. Thus in Hebrews 9: 14f. we read: ‘How much more shall the blood of Christ ... cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause he is the mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place ...’ It is hard to envisage a reason for interpreting ‘the blood’ here in a sense other than that given by the words which follow: ‘a death having taken place’.
If anything the connection between blood and death is even plainer in Hebrews 12: 24 where we read of coming ‘to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than (that of) Abel’. Whether we include the words in parentheses or not, the contrast is between the blood of Abel and the blood of Jesus.223 There can be no doubt that the blood of Abel is a metaphorical way of referring to the death of that patriarch, and it is unnatural accordingly to interpret the blood of Jesus as signifying anything other than His death. Yet the reference to sprinkling shows that the thought of sacrifice is in the writer’s mind, so that for him the blood of sacrifice seems to have pointed to death.
Again, we read in Hebrews 13: 11f.: ‘For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered without the gate.’ Here the comparison is made between the sin offering and the blood of Jesus, but the point that is singled out for notice in the Levitical sacrifice is not the presentation of the blood (though that, too, is important to this writer as we see from his previous references to it), but the burning of the carcass outside the camp. This part of the sacrifice can point only to the death of the animal, and certainly not to any presentation of life. Once more we see that the sacrificial allusion indicates the death of Jesus.
Thus it seems tolerably certain that in both the Old and New Testaments the blood signifies essentially the death. It is freely admitted that there are some passages in which it is possible to interpret the blood as signifying life, but even these yield a better sense (and one which is consistent with the wider biblical usage) if understood to mean ‘life given up in death’. In particular, there seems no reason for disputing the dictum of J. Behm: “Blood of Christ” is like “cross”, only another, clearer expression for the >death of Christ in its salvation meaning’.224
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD ‘BLOOD’
A. M. Stibbs, in his monograph The Meaning of the Word ‘Blood’ in Scripture,225 gathers passages supporting the view that ‘blood’ means ‘life released’ rather than ‘death inflicted’ from the writings of Nathaniel Micklem, C. H. Dodd, O. C. Quick, F. C. N. Hicks, P. T. Forsyth, B. F. Westcott, and W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam. The list could easily be extended. The idea is specially prominent in H. Clay Trumbull’s The Blood Covenant,226 where statements abound like ‘not merely that the blood is essential to life, but that, in a peculiar sense, it is life’.227 Something very like this appears as early as H. Bushnell, who says: ‘Not that the life thus offered, the life made sacred and mysterious by such associations gathered to it, carries effect by ceasing to live, that is, by death symbolized in the sprinkling of it. No, it gets its effect as being life, the sacred, mystic, new-creating touch of life.‘228 ‘It is not death, but life, that is in it.‘229
He has similar statements in Forgiveness and Law,230 but he does not make this view central to his understanding of the atonement.
Advocates of such views scarcely face the fact that, while the blood of Christ is said in the New Testament to bring about a variety of effects, none is specifically connected with life. As A. M. Farrer puts it: ‘In the New Testament the Blood of Christ is a ransom-price, a means of purging, the element to ratify a solemn covenant; but the explanation offered for all these ideas - the communication of life - is never stated, but has to be read in.‘231 The point is important. The idea is never expressed in the New Testament. It must be read into the New Testament by those who have previously decided that this is what ‘blood’ must mean. When it is added that the sources exterior to the New Testament which are relied on do not yield all the support its advocates claim to the ‘life’ idea it will be seen that the whole idea is dubious to say the least.
Many reputable scholars strongly oppose the view. Thus James Moffatt can say: ‘Semitic scholars warn us against finding in these words (Lv. 1711) either the popular idea of the substitution of the victim for the sinner, or even the theory that the essential thing in sacrifice is the offering of a life to God’.232
James Denney is very forthright in his opposition and speaks of ‘the strange caprice which fascinated Westcott’ in distinguishing in the blood of Christ ‘(i) His death, and (ii) His life; or (i) His blood shed, and (ii) His blood offered; or (i) His life laid down, and (ii) His life liberated and made available for men ... I venture to say that a more groundless fancy never haunted and troubled the interpretation of any part of Scripture than that which is introduced by this distinction into the Epistle to the Hebrews and the First Epistle of John ... there is no meaning in saying that by His death His life, as something other than His death, is “liberated” and “made available” for men. On the contrary, what makes His risen life significant and a saving power for sinners is neither more nor less than this that His death is in it.‘233
J. Armitage Robinson’s comment is, ’To the Jewish mind “blood” was not merely - nor even chiefly - the life-current flowing in the veins of the living: it was especially the life poured out in death; and yet more particularly in its religious aspect it was the symbol of sacrificial death.‘234 Similarly Frederic Platt refuses to endorse Westcott’s distinction between ‘a life given’ and ‘a life liberated and made available for men’,235 while G. F. Moore deprecates the idea that ‘the offering of a life to God is the essential thing in sacrifice’, pointing out that ‘No such theory appears in later Jewish thought’.236 More recently F.J. Taylor has written: ‘It is hardly likely that blood could signify life released ... for early Hebrew thought had no adequate conception of a spiritual survival after death’,237 though C. R. North in the same volume accepts the view that the blood signifies the life.238 J. Behm equates the death of Christ with ‘the Blood’.239 So C. Ryder Smith on Hebrews 10:19 says: ‘As elsewhere in the New Testament, the Christian emphasis under
the great symbol is not on life, but on death.’240