Blood and Christians

Blood (Hebrew: dam; Greek: haiʹma) in the Bible, is said to be where the soul is, because blood is so intimately involved in life processes. As blood is sacred to God—blood is sacred to the Christian.

Sacred
God’s Word says: “For the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I myself have put it upon the altar for you to make atonement for your souls, because it is the blood that makes atonement by the soul in it.” (Le 17:11) For like reason, but making the connection even more direct, the Bible says: “The soul of every sort of flesh is its blood.” (Le 17:14) God’s Word treats both life and blood as sacred.

Because of God’s view of the value of life, the blood of a murdered person is said to defile the earth. When Cain murdered his brother, God said: “Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” (Ge 4:10) Even a person hating his brother, and so wishing him dead, or slandering him or bearing false witness against him, and so endangering his life, would bring guilt upon himself in connection with the blood of his fellowman (1Jo 3:15). Thus, with God is the source of life (Ps 36:9). Man cannot give back a life that he takes. “All the souls—to me they belong,” says Jehovah (Eze 18:4). Therefore, to take a life is to take God's property. Every living thing has a purpose and a place in God’s creation.

Eat flesh, not blood
After the Flood, Noah and his sons, the progenitors of all persons alive today, were commanded to show respect for life, the blood, of fellowmen (Ge 9:1, 5, 6). God allowed them to eat animal flesh, but were strictly commanded not to eat blood. (Ge 9:1, 3, 4) They had to acknowledge that the life of any animal killed for food belonged to God, thus by pouring its blood out as water on the ground (De 12:15, 16). God set out a regulation that applied, not merely to Noah and his immediate family, but to all mankind from that time on, because all those living since the Flood are descendants of Noah’s family.

Concerning the permanence of this prohibition, Joseph Benson noted: “It ought to be observed, that this prohibition of eating blood, given to Noah and all his posterity, and repeated to the Israelites, in a most solemn manner, under the Mosaic dispensation, has never been revoked, but, on the contrary, has been confirmed under the New Testament, Acts xv.; and thereby made of perpetual obligation.”—Benson’s Notes, 1839, Vol. I, p. 43

Blood of Christ
The lifesaving application of Christ’s blood was prefigured in the Hebrew scriptures. There was only one use of blood that God ever approved, namely, for sacrifice. He directed that those under the Mosaic Law offer animal sacrifices to make atonement for sin (Le 17:10, 11). This arrangement foreshadowed the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, whose blood was shed for our sins (Heb 10:5, 10). The legal power that blood has in God’s sight, and as accepted by him, was strictly for atonement purposes (Le 9:9; Heb 9:22; 1Co 1:18).

Under the Christian arrangement, the sanctity of blood was strongly emphasized. No longer was animal blood to be offered, for those animal offerings were only a shadow of the reality, Jesus Christ (Col 2:17; Heb 10:1-4, 8-10). Just as the high priest in Israel used to take a token portion of the blood into the Most Holy of the earthly sanctuary (Le 16:14), Jesus Christ as the real High Priest entered into heaven itself with the value of his perfect human life as represented by blood. His physical blood was poured out on the ground (Joh 19:34), never forfeited by sin, but retained for sin atonement (Heb 7:26; 8:3; 9:11, 12). For these reasons the blood of Christ cries out for better things than the blood of righteous Abel did. Only the blood of the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God can call for mercy, while the blood of Abel as well as the blood of martyred followers of Christ cries out for vengeance (Heb 12:24; Re 6:9-11).

Christian arrangement
The first-century Christian congregation under the direction of the holy spirit, ruled on the matter of blood. Their decree states: “For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you, except these necessary things, to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you!” (Ac 15:22, 28, 29) The prohibition included flesh with the blood in it (“things strangled”).

This decree rests, ultimately, on God’s command not to eat blood, as given to Noah and his sons and, therefore, to all mankind. In this regard, the following is found in The Chronology of Antient Kingdoms Amended, by Sir Isaac Newton (Dublin, 1728, p. 184): “This law [of abstaining from blood] was ancienter than the days of Moses, being given to Noah and his sons, long before the days of Abraham: and therefore when the Apostles and Elders in the Council at Jerusalem declared that the Gentiles were not obliged to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, they excepted this law of abstaining from blood, and things strangled, as being an earlier law of God, imposed not on the sons of Abraham only, but on all nations, while they lived together in Shinar under the dominion of Noah: and of the same kind is the law of abstaining from meats offered to Idols or false Gods, and from fornication.”—Italics his.

Observed since apostolic times. The Jerusalem council sent its decision to the Christian congregations to be observed. (Ac 16:4) About seven years after the Jerusalem council issued the decree, Christians continued to comply with the “decision that they should keep themselves from what is sacrificed to idols as well as from blood and what is strangled and from fornication.” (Ac 21:25) And more than a hundred years later, in 177 C.E., in Lyons (now in France), when religious enemies falsely accused Christians of eating children, a woman named Biblis said: “How would such men eat children, when they are not allowed to eat the blood even of irrational animals?”—The Ecclesiastical History, by Eusebius, V, I, 26.

Early Christians abstained from eating any sort of blood. In this regard Tertullian (c. 155-a. 220 C.E.) pointed out in his work Apology (IX, 13, 14): “Let your error blush before the Christians, for we do not include even animals’ blood in our natural diet. We abstain on that account from things strangled or that die of themselves, that we may not in any way be polluted by blood, even if it is buried in the meat. Finally, when you are testing Christians, you offer them sausages full of blood; you are thoroughly well aware, of course, that among them it is forbidden; but you want to make them transgress.” Minucius Felix, a Roman lawyer who lived until about 250 C.E., made the same point, writing: “For us it is not permissible either to see or to hear of human slaughter; we have such a shrinking from human blood that at our meals we avoid the blood of animals used for food.”—Octavius, XXX, 6.

From the time that the new covenant was inaugurated over the blood of Jesus Christ, Christians have recognized the life-giving value of this blood through Jehovah’s arrangement and through Jesus as the great High Priest who “entered, no, not with the blood of goats and of young bulls, but with his own blood, once for all time into the holy place and obtained an everlasting deliverance for us.” Through faith in the blood of Christ, Christians have had their consciences cleansed from dead works so that they may render sacred service to the living God. They are concerned about their physical health, but they are primarily and far more seriously concerned with their spiritual health and their standing before the Creator. They want to maintain their integrity to the living God, not denying the sacrifice of Jesus, not counting it as of no value, and not trampling it underfoot. For they are seeking, not the life that is transitory, but everlasting life (Heb 9:12, 14, 15; 10:28, 29).