I hope I don’t gross anyone out with the blood and guts blog…. but this has been on my mind quite a bit lately. Blood. A requirement for sin. This has always seemed very foreign to me and kind of bizarre. I grew up reading the Old Testament but always wondered why? Why blood?
The Old Testament God required blood – a payment of blood for sin. I have just finished reading Leviticus and Numbers and it is full of killing animals, waving around breasts of dead animals, throwing blood on the side of the altar, and all sorts of otherwise unsightly bloody activities!
The wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23. I guess that is the easiest answer for why all this blood? But the sacrificial system still seems very odd and foreign to me, as I never had to experience it. Lately I have been thinking about the culture in which I live here in South Africa. Blood is still required by the ancestors (for those who follow ancestral worship) to break curses, pay for wrong-doings, appease them in their anger, etc. You often hear of goats and sheep being slaughtered to appease the blood-thirsty ancestors.
This is a culture where sacrifices still happen. Innocent blood is still required to pay for your sins and shortcomings. How much more amazing the gift of the blood of Jesus must seem to those who escape ancestral worship! No more blood is required! Jesus’ blood has truly paid it all. No more slitting of goats throats. No more draining the lifeblood of animals. Jesus let his lifeblood drain for you and for me. We are free. Experiencing that gift through the eyes of my beautiful Christian Zulu friends who have left ancestral worship for Jesus, has been such an eye-opening and inspiring experience!