Our journey to gain an understanding of the blood does not begin at the cross but in the Garden of Eden. When God created man, He had this beautiful plan to fellowship and spend eternity with him. However, man sinned when they disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. When man sinned, there was separation between man and a just, loving and merciful God. Man becomes mortal and sin brings death into his life. Since God is just, sin had to be punished. But God is also loving so, they had to be another way to reconcile sinful man with a just, merciful and loving God.
Hebrews 9:22 says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins”.
After the fall man tried to cover his nakedness using fig leaves; and there lies the problem. Before the fall man did not need clothes, they would walk around naked and not feel ashamed of their nakedness. I believe they were covered in God’s glory before the fall but once they sinned the glory of God was lifted leading to their nakedness. God’s glory and righteousness were their covering.
The problem was not fig leaves as a poor choice for garments but a sin problem that can only be solved by blood (Hebrews 9:22). Your education, social standing, wealth, makeup and even cosmetic surgery cannot get rid of sin, only the blood of a sacrifice. Every attempt of man to cover his nakedness before God always fails, so God made coverings for them using animal skin. Genesis 3:21 “And the LORD God made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them”
For Him to make clothing from animal skin it means an animal had to die. The problem seems solved after the death of an animal but another problem shows up in that it is temporal, the blood of animals and bulls is insufficient to take away sin.
Hebrews 10:4 says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins”.
We need a more permanent solution. The permanent solution again lies with God. Revelation 13:8 talks about the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world. So, until the right time, man had to offer substitutionary sacrifices to God before the Lamb of God was slain at the cross.
The Passover Lamb
The Old Testament is a shadow of things to come, the cross is the reality of these things. Hidden behind various sacrifices was the lamb of God who was to be slain. 1 Corinthians 5: 7, says “Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover lamb was sacrificed for us”.
If he is our Passover lamb then what took place in the book of Exodus 12: 1-13, 21, and 46 must be very significant.
Just before the children of Israel left their captivity in Egypt God instructed them to slaughter a Passover lamb and sprinkle its blood on their doorposts. The blood was to act as protection against the angel of death. If you look at the instructions of the Passover lamb you will find some similarities with Jesus on the cross.
- For instance, it was one lamb for the family during the Passover, one lamb for the nation during the day of atonement but at the cross, it was one lamb for the whole world.
- Just like the Israelites had to stay with the lamb in their houses before the sacrifice, Jesus came from heaven and tabernacled with us before the cross.
- Lambs for the Passover meal were sourced from Bethlehem. Surprisingly, Jesus was from Bethlehem. He could not be redeemed as the roaring lion of Judah but as a lamb of God.
- The Passover lamb was to be consumed whole, no breaking of the bones. At the cross, Jesus did not have his legs broken for He was already dead.
- Young lambs were selected from the flock for the sacrifice, and Jesus died in his prime.
- The Passover lamb was burnt whole, and Jesus at the cross was consumed by God’s righteous wrath as he took the cup of suffering.
Hidden in the shadows of the sacrifice of the Passover was the perfect lamb of God who would be sacrificed on the cross. The Israelites had to physically apply the blood on their doorposts to be protected. Knowing Jesus shed his blood is not enough, you have to receive him by faith.
The Power in the Blood
The blood of Jesus never lost its power even though it was shed 2,000 years ago. This is because while it was physically shed 2000 years ago on earth it was received on an altar in heaven in the realm of eternity. This means the blood still speaks with as much power as the day it was shed. The power in the blood lies in whose blood was it.
Leviticus 17:11 Says “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar, it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life”
Jesus was not born with the Adamic sin flowing through his blood. During his birth the Angel told Mary in Luke 1:35, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So, the Holy one to be born will be called the Son of God”. Hebrews 10:4-5 says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world he said, “sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me”.
For the sacrifice to be acceptable before God it had to be blameless and spotless.
Leviticus 22:19, “You shall offer of your own free will a male without blemish from the cattle, sheep or goats. “
Peter testifies to this fact in 1 Peter 1:18-19, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
Before the cruxification the pharisees and even Pilate did not know they were unknowingly inspecting the lamb of God for blemish and sin.
Pilate makes this conclusion in Luke 23:13-15,” Then Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests, the rulers, and the people, to them, “You have brought this Man to me, as one who misleads the people. And indeed, having examined Him in your presence, I have found no fault in this Man concerning those things of which you accuse Him; neither did Herod, for I sent you back to him; and indeed, nothing deserving of death has been done by Him.”
If there was someone who knew what it meant for Jesus to die in his place it was Barabbas, he was the one supposed to be on that cross as he was an insurgent and murderer. Barabbas means son of the father. The Jews were put in a position where they had to choose between two sons of the father, one true and the other a criminal.
The Agony of the Cross
The horrors of the cross are beyond the scope of this sermon. What Mel Gibson portrays in the ‘Passion of the Christ’ is just a glimpse of the pain and suffering that our Savior went through. However, it is imperative to know what took place otherwise the cross loses its meaning taking the place of ornaments and jewelry with the wearer lacking understanding of what it cost to have that penchant on their neck.
The Persians developed the cross but Romans perfected it to cause maximum pain to the victims. In fact, the word “excruciating” pain comes from Latin word “excruciare” meaning “as painful as a crucifixion or out of the cross.
The reason you don’t find gore details in the gospels about cruxification is because the readers where well familiar with it. While Romans used cruxification to execute criminals by subjecting them to unimaginable pain they did not use it for their people. This is what a Roman statesman by the name of Cicero had to say about cruxification, “It is a crime bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is an act of wickedness; to execute him almost murder; What shall I say of crucifying him? An act so abominable it is impossible to find any word adequately to express”.
Jesus’ suffering on the day he was crucified started way earlier, in the garden of Gethsemane. Here He had to accept the cup of God’s wrath that he had to consume. I believe what he dreaded the most was not so much the physical suffering but the emotional one as He who was righteous was made sin. The day before the cruxification he spent hours being interrogated. By morning he was physically fatigued and exhausted from it.
The horrors of the cross began with the scourging. Romans used scourging to weaken the victims so that they were halfway dead but still with a little energy to carry the horizontal beam of the cross (weighed around 60kg). Scourging involved bounding the victim on a low column and using a whip made of leather straps with sharp pointed pieces of bone. Each stroke would tear off pieces of flesh from the victim’s back and legs. Many died from the ordeal or went mad after it.
Yet, for Jesus, each stroke represented the price for our healing. For Jews, the law was that a person would not receive more than 40 lashes but for our savior it is hard to know whether they treated him as a Jew or just kept going on.
After, the scourging Jesus linen garment was put on his back and this absorbed blood like a sponge, acting like some sort of bandage. He would later endure more excruciating pain as the blood-soaked lined clothe was brutally stripped off his back. Imagine stripping a bandage from a raw wound. He could not die at the point of lacerations (flogging) because the altar was the cross, the sacrifice was the lamb of God and the fire that consumed the sacrifice was God’s righteous judgement. The blood ushered in the new covenant.
Once done with the scourging a heavy horizontal beam weighing in over 60 kilograms would be placed on the victim’s back and they would carry it to Golgotha the place of the cruxification. At Golgotha, Jesus would be stripped of his blood-soaked linen cloth further sending pain and shockwaves through his body as it tore flesh from his back.
Then came the nailing. Nine-inch nails would be driven into his hands and legs further sending more pain shockwaves through his body. The thing with crucifixion is that the victim needed their hands to pull up their chest to breathe. This is painful considering the same hands are nailed to the cross. More pain would come as Jesus’ raw back, after the scourging, would grind against the hardwood of the cross.
Most victims of crucifixion die from congestive heart failure, stress-induced heart attack, acute shock from blood loss, or simply become too exhausted to pull themselves against the cross to breathe. While the events of the cross sound like a horror movie sending chills through your body there was a spiritual transaction that was taking place. Romans 3:25 says, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood, to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished”.
The Blood Still Speaks for You
At the cross He who had no sin became sin so that we might be the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:21). The pain of the cross for Jesus is that God the son became sin and God’s righteous judgement and wrath was poured on him on our behalf. This act led to separation as the Father turned his back towards the son. Jesus was in so much pain that He cried out Eloi Eloi Lema Sabachthani which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’. He did not call him father but God as the relationship was severed as he became Sin for your sake.
Finally, he cried out ‘tetelestai’ which is the Greek word for it is finished. The word also means to bring to an end, to close, to finish. In accounting it means paid in full. In the Greek language, it’s a present continuous tense meaning it is finished and continues to be finished. It is finished echoed into the realm of darkness as it says in Colossians 2:15 “Having disarmed the principalities and powers, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross”. Based on Jesus’ finished works as believers, we are not seeking victory but are coming from victory.
As a believer, if you struggle with guilt then remember that if it’s on him then it’s not on you but if it’s on you then it’s not on him (guilt for sin). Believe you are forgiven then your feelings will follow.
Hebrews 12:2 says, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross”
You were his joy; nails did not keep Jesus on the cross love did. He endured the pain of the cross for six hours, from 9 am (3rd hour) to 3 pm (9th hour) just for you.
God loves you so much that he will meet you in your mess (He will meet you where you are). But he also loves you so much not to leave you in the same mess he found you in. God is still in the business of rewriting people’s stories. The fact that you have a past just means your story has an origin but that is not how it ends. No one is too far gone from the redemptive work of the blood.
