“Give blood, save lives” said an advertisement released by a
pharmaceutical company in the city. There is great demand for blood to save lives
around the globe. Researchers have been toiling for decades to make an
artificial substitute, but found it impossible to make. There is no substitute
for blood. Blood alone can save another. As per available reports, every two
seconds, someone needs blood for survival. Each pint (500 millilitres) of whole
blood donated by one person helps three people to survive.
The blood is the basis of physical life, which is
pre-eminently in the blood. This maxim is recognised by the writer to the Hebrews.
He said, “without shedding of blood there is no remission. “The life of the
flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). In the Old Testament times, the life
of the sacrifice was taken, and the blood offered to God, as a substitute for
the offerer for the cleansing of his sins. Thus, God being merciful made a way
to save man from the jaws of eternal death by accepting a vicarious sacrifice.
What is a vicarious sacrifice? It is one offered by the
sinner to suffer the punishment in his place. God accepted the sacrificial death
of a substitute and delivered the transgressor from the punishment, provided
the sacrifice was perfect, spotless, and acceptable and the transgressor
repented of his sin.
When Adam’s son Abel offered a perfect lamb as a sacrifice
for his sin, his guilt fell upon the sacrificial lamb instead of on himself.
God accepted Abel’s sacrifice. It was the blood sacrifice of a perfect lamb
which was a picture of the sacrificial death of Christ in future. So, in
essence, Abel accepted Christ’s blood for the remission of his sins thousands
of years before Jesus came down to the earth and offered Himself on the cross.
God gave us this example thousands of years before Jesus
came to earth as ‘the Lamb of God’. The lambs slain on the altar in the Old Testament
times was a representation of Christ, slain as a sin offering for you and me.
But Cain offered a grain sacrifice and received no forgiveness from God. The
Bible makes it very clear that “without the shedding of blood there is no
remission of sin” (Heb. 9:22). God accepts nothing but a blood sacrifice for
the life is in the blood.
Jesus Christ made a covenant with His blood shed for the forgiveness of the sins of humankind. For all have sinned in His sight; you and I and everyone else on this vast universe. God has in His kindness set forth Jesus Christ as propitiation through faith in His blood, for the forgiveness of sins. If you believe in this, and turn to God in true repentance, you will surely receive the remission of your sins. Have you received forgiveness of your sins?
- by Kumar N.
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