No Forgiveness without Blood | The Resurrection Series

One of the harshest truths that we’ll ever come across is the political arrangement of heaven and how it affects us as believers.

Most of us (including myself) don’t quite understand the governance of Heaven and the way God does things in His legal system. Since these things are complex even to seasoned believers of the faith, you can’t really expect much when it comes to those who are new to Christianity, or those who don’t believe at all.

What’s the Purpose of the Sacrifice?

Questions are asked—why did God have to sacrifice His son in order that we might be saved? Why couldn’t God just forgive us if He wanted? This question, while falling under The Resurrection Series, also touches on The Inquiring Christian.

Q: Why did God have to sacrifice His son?

First, there is an order that was mandated in the garden, and we see this play out in Genesis 2 and 3 when God told Adam if he eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he will surely die. The consequence for disobedience—and continuous evil—is death.

The judgment of God demands death for our sins. Paul tells us in his epistle to the Romans,

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all people, because all sinned—

To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. ¹⁴Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

Romans 5:12-14

Sin and death entered the world through Adam, and because of sin, we all die. Paul tells us that sin was in the world even before there was a law, and even though sin could not be charged against humans when there was no law, death prevailed. Death prevailed even over those who ‘didn’t sin’. So, what gives?

The Punishment for Sin

Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death, meaning that through sin, we will inherit death. It is guaranteed. We weren’t designed to do evil, and we weren’t designed to stand in opposition to God. But even so, God cannot dwell in evil, and as we are created in His image, to be in God’s image and to sin is to be in eternal juxtaposition with God’s holiness.

Something has to die—and since humankind was the one in error, it meant humans would have to be the one to face this judgment. Yet—God is also merciful, and in compassion, He acknowledges that His love and mercy towards us dictates that we cannot handle such magnitude of judgment.

How are we to fully ‘pay’ for sin, if we, once dead, would remain dead? And how are we to even pay for sins that some of us didn’t commit or didn’t know we commit? Paul continues:

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! ¹⁶Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. ¹⁷For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

¹⁸Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. ¹⁹For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

²⁰The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, ²¹so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 5:15-21

The Necessity of Bloodshed

The Book of Hebrews makes it clear that there is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood. It says that in the case of a will, we must prove the death of the one who made it. No once can collect an inheritance outlined in a will while the person who wrote this will is still alive.

In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, ¹⁷because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. ¹⁸This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. ¹⁹When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. ²⁰He said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” ²¹In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. ²²In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Hebrews 9:16-22

In the earliest days of the Hebrews, a covenant was established between God and the Israelites, and part of it was the atonement of sin. The law required that everything unclean needed to be purified with blood, and thus, without the shedding of this blood there would be no forgiveness.

Death is the ultimate payment for sin—the spilling of blood washes away the stain of evil riddled in our DNA—something that we ourselves cannot simply get rid of without dying. As we breathe in air to oxygenate the blood, we must know that carried inside of our bloodstream is the corrupted nature of Adam—each and everyone of us bears this mark. The mark of death is embedded into us because of sin.

Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Hebrews 9:22

Yet, it is the spilling of blood that frees our spirit from being bound to this corrupt body—paying for the corruption of previous generations and even ourselves, we must die. It seems morbid—and it is. However, God knows this—and He also knows that even our blood cannot cover such a price.

So, He then presented Himself as the sacrifice, taking on flesh, and then, taking on the corruption of all mankind, so that His blood can ultimately blot away the sin that was embedded within us.

It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. ²⁵Nor did He enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. ²⁶Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But He has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. ²⁷Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, ²⁸so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.

Hebrews 9:23-28

Adoption to the Sonship

God had predestined us for adoption into His sonship through Christ. In Christ, we are redeemed, and through His blood, we receive the forgiveness of our sins.

For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love ⁵He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will— ⁶to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the One He loves. ⁷In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, ⁹He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, ¹⁰to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

Ephesians 1:4-10

And He did this—why? For the simple reason that He loves us. Understanding the government of heaven, the sacrifice, and the atonement for sins may be difficult for some to grasp, and many even reject it because it doesn’t make sense in their eyes. Yet, one cannot deny that without this sacrifice we would be forced to bear the punishment of sin ourselves—a punishment far too great to comprehend.

And yet, God sent His Word in flesh to bear this form of punishment, the judgment of God, the wrath of God that we may, one day, see God’s face and fellowship with Him in eternity. Perhaps it might be too simple a thing to comprehend. Yet, even when we didn’t ask to be forgiven, God’s mercy pushed through on our behalf.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Next Post…

Do you know what true love looks like? Feels like?

The Bible says that there is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for his friends and while that may be easy to comprehend from a human stand point, what does God’s love actually look like?

A mother would give up her life to save her child. But God gave up much more than His life … and to fully appreciate it, we need to dive into the mind of God (through His Word, of course) to fully understand what He did pay to ensure our salvation. In the next post, we dive into what God’s love looks like.