Blood = Death

About a year ago I was teaching Sunday School on the Heidelberg Catechism's Lord's day 15 & 16. The subject is the suffering and death of Christ, the doctrine of the atonement. We had a missionary and his wife that our church supports visiting on the Sunday on which we looked at question/answer 40, "Why did Christ have to go all the way to death? Because God's justice and truth demand it: only the death of God's Son could pay for our sin." Our printing of the catechism gave four Scriptures as support: Genesis 2:17; Romans 8:3-4; Philippians 2:8; and Hebrews 2:9.

I had been focusing on the passage from Romans, but I also added one of my own, Hebrews 9:22, "And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." In explaining how this verse fit with our discussion I said that "blood" here stands for death. It is a figure of speech. I am no expert on this, but I think you could see it as synecdoche, the part, blood, standing for the whole, death. But I believe I explained it as a metonymy, the cause, the shedding of blood, standing for the effect, death. Our two guests did not like my teaching at all. It seems they took it as me down playing the blood. Somehow missing my reference to Hebrews 9:22 the wife of the missionary made reference to the same passage, more or less stating, "How could you say that, doesn't the Bible say, 'without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness'." I tried to explain that yes, it does, but when the Bible talks about us being forgiven by the blood of Christ it means by virtue of His death in our place we have forgiveness. I am pretty sure they left convinced that I was a liberal trying to write the blood of Christ out of the Bible.

If forgiveness is available through the shedding of blood without reference to death, could Christ have just bled from the scourging to procure our forgiveness? Could He have hung from the cross dripping blood from the nail wounds for an hour or so only to call on those angels to rescue Him and still purchased our redemption? No! It was with reference to His imminent death that He cried out, "It is finished." Which view now seems to come short of the Scriptural teaching on the atonement?

Bruce Demarest in his book The Cross and Salvation cites Hebrews 9:22 and says, "This being so, it was equally necessary that Christ should die a vicarious death for sins to be remitted" (188). I'll provide a couple of other quote from the same book as further evidence. "Under the Old Covenant Moses made burnt and fellowship offerings to the Lord and sprinkled the blood of animals on the altar, thereby temporarily propitiating God's anger and expiating sins. But Jesus implied that His death made an atonement for sins that was perfect and permanent" (174). Talking about the pattern of sacrifice in the Old Covenant he says, "The animal then was slain, signifying death as the requisite punishment for sin. The priest sprinkled the blood of the victim on the altar, the blood representing the life of the victim" (169).

Wayne Grudem says in his Systematic Theology, "The blood of Christ is the clear outward evidence that His life blood was poured out when he died a sacrificial death to pay for our redemption--'the blood of Christ' means his death in its saving aspects. . . . Scripture speaks so much about the blood of Christ because its shedding was very clear evidence that His life was given in judicial execution. Scripture's emphasis on the blood of Christ also shows the clear connection between Christ's death and the many sacrifices in the Old Testament that involved the pouring out of the life blood of the sacrificial animal. These sacrifices all pointed to and prefigured the death of Christ" (579).

Last of all for my defense which will hopefully vindicate me from the accusations of liberalism and deprecating the blood of Christ I present Hebrews 9:15-22. The context demonstrates that even here in verse 22 the emphasis and the point is all about the death of Christ.

"For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. For where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of the one who made it. For a covenant is valid only when men are dead, for it is never in force while the one who made it lives. Therefore even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the Law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, 'This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you.' And in the same way he sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with blood. And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness."