The other day I received from a reader an interesting question about Christ’s blood, which I will paraphrase as follows:
Does a person have to hear that Jesus shed His blood for our sins along with hearing that He died for our sins, or is it enough to hear that He died for our sins?
That is a good question. The Bible verse that immediately comes to mind is Romans 3:25. My understanding is that Christ’s blood is another way of saying His death (cf. Rom. 5:9-10); in other words, those two things cannot be separated. For example, after Adam and Eve sinned, the Bible says that God made garments of animal skin, and clothed them (Gen. 3:21). This would require the death of an animal—perhaps a lamb. Yet the text does not specifically mention blood, per se. But of course this would be involved in the slaying of the animal, for the Bible says that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11), “and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness [of sin]” (Heb. 9:22). Pertaining to this, Charles Ryrie states that “it is not the life of Christ which redeems but His death (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14—blood stands for death, cf. Rom. 5:9-10).”[1] Ryrie goes on to say: “The death of Christ took away sin. The blood stands for violent death; therefore, to speak of the blood of Christ taking away sins means the death of Christ takes away sin, […] The blood, that is His death, is the basis for eternal life (John 6:53-56)”.[2] And under the heading “The appropriation of salvation”[3], Ryrie elaborates by saying:
“The very first statement in the Gospel [of John] concerning the new birth makes it dependent upon faith (John 1:12). The verse also mentions the object of faith, Christ. Thus it is throughout the Gospel—the Son as the bearer of salvation must be the object of faith (3:15-16, 18, 36; 4:29, 39; 8:24; 20:29, 31; I John 3:23; 5:1, 12). Faith involves the most thorough kind of appropriation of the person and work of Christ as the basis for the believer’s confident persuasion for salvation. The figure of eating His flesh and drinking His blood attests to that thoroughness (6:53-56). Faith in His person involves belief in His deity (John 3:13; 8:24; 9:22; 12:42; I John 2:23; 4:15), and faith in His work involves belief in the efficacy of His death to effect deliverance from sin (John 1:29; 3:14-17; 13:19). In John’s thought faith that saves is joined directly to the person and work of Jesus Christ.”[4]
Commenting on Romans 3:25, Dr. Constable affirms: “The translation ‘through faith in His blood’ (NIV) correctly represents the word order in the Greek text. Paul elsewhere urged faith in the person of Jesus Christ (Romans 3:22; Romans 3:26). Probably Paul mentioned His blood as representing His life poured out as a sacrifice of atonement instead of the person of Christ here to draw attention to what made His sacrifice atoning (cf. Romans 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:13; Colossians 1:20). This then is a metonymy [a figure of speech that Paul is using], in which the name of one thing [i.e. ‘His blood’] appears in the place of another [i.e. His atoning sacrifice, or in other words, His death on the cross for our sins, cf. 1 Cor. 15:3] associated with it.”[5]
I actually agree with Tom Stegall’s interpretation of Romans 3:25, which I think he explains quite well in the following words. Stegall writes: “Practically speaking, this means that to have ‘faith in His blood’ as stated in Romans 3:25 is another way of expressing faith in Christ’s vicarious death. If a man placed his faith in Christ’s all-sufficient death for his sins but for some strange reason never heard that Christ shed His blood while dying, such a man would still have saving faith. The Lord has seen fit to use a multiplicity of metaphors, images, and diverse terminology to depict the one truth of the Savior’s death for our sins. These terms include ‘cross,’ ‘tree,’ ‘blood,’ ‘gave,’ ‘offered,’ ‘sacrificed,’ ‘redeemed,’ ‘suffered,’ ‘slain,’ etc. Yet, despite such rich diversity of expression, there is still a unity of content, as each of these terms point to the same substitutionary, atoning death of the Savior.”[6]
In the book Simple Studies in Romans, William L. Pettingill quotes Dr. Scofield as affirming: “The sinner’s faith in Christ includes ‘faith in His blood’ (Rom. 3:25); that is, faith in Christ as ‘the Lamb of God’ voluntarily offering Himself on the sinner’s behalf in vindication of God’s holy law.”[7]
References:
[1] Charles Ryrie, Biblical Theology of the New Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1959), p. 185.
[2] Ibid., p. 338.
[3] Ibid., p. 340.
[4] Ibid., p. 340.
[5] Thomas L. Constable, Dr. Constable’s Expository Notes, 2012 Edition, StudyLight.org website (www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/dcc/romans-3.html). Commenting on the same text, D. Stuart Briscoe affirms: “When the Bible uses expressions related to ‘the blood’ it is employing readily understandable figures of speech for ‘a life being laid down.’ The price of human redemption is nothing less than the voluntary surrender by Christ [not myself] of His life on the Cross.” (Briscoe, The Communicator’s Commentary: Romans, p. 93.)
[6] Thomas L. Stegall, The Gospel of the Christ (Milwaukee: Grace Gospel Press, 2009), p. 312, emphasis his.
[7] William L. Pettingill, Simple Studies in Romans (Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia School of the Bible, 1915), p. 40. Commenting on Romans 3:25, Frederic Godet furthermore explains: “We therefore find the notion of propitiation [i.e. "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," Jn. 1:29; cf. Rev. 13:8b] qualified by two parallel and mutually completing clauses: the first, by faith, indicating the subjective condition; and the second, by His blood, setting forth the historical and objective condition of the efficacy of the means. Propitiation does not take place except through faith on the part of the saved, and through blood on the part of the Saviour. […] The apostolic utterance may consequently be paraphrased thus: ‘Jesus Christ, whom God settled beforehand as the means of propitiation on the condition of faith, through the shedding of His blood.’” (Godet, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans [New York: Funk & Wagnalls Publishers, 1883], p. 153, italics his, brackets added.)
4 comments:
Hey Jonathan, this is well thought out response and I love the direction that this has taken. It's a question that I've had myself, though more on the lines of "what does a person have to believe at minimum about Christ?" Do we have to know about his blood? What about the cross? Nails? Nails plus ropes? How many times was he beaten? Beard plucked? What about how many days was he in the grave? Sunset to sunrise? Just the book of John? James? Galatians? Revelation? Old Testament? What do I need to know?! Do I need to read through the whole bible? What about the thief on the cross? What about the people who died before Jesus was around? Go to church AND Sunday school? What about sin in my life?
So when I talk to others about what God did for them through Jesus, I typically talk in terms of love, something like this:
A man has no greater love than this: that he lay down his life for his friend. God however demonstrated what kind of love he has for us in that while we were still sinners, still his enemies, he died for us and in our place. He drew us all to him on the cross, and we are being drawn by this incredible act of love. He didn't stay dead though demonstrating that he is in fact God and not just some random man. So, when we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord/God and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we are saved. Because God so loved the world that he gave His only son that whoever believes in him will not die but have eternal life. We love him (Jesus/God), but this is because he loved us first. He started it. This drawing from God, through the love of the cross, is like sheep hearing the voice of their shepherd. He knows us, and we follow him, and he gives us eternal life, as a gift, not from works but by his grace through faith. As a result, we will never perish, and no one can ever pluck us out of his hand. We will live, forever, in this and even greater love for all of eternity.
This is the simple path I use when I talk to other, but again, there's so much loaded into this. Jesus is the Messiah, from the Jewish prophecies about the coming savior, old covenants, new covenants, righteousness, justification, new birth, sacrificial atonement, etc. etc.
We can get so heady about this, and really get bogged down in the theological underpinnings that, while very important, an overly heavy focus on this, in my opinion, can many times take away from the real issue here, and may distract from what is really going on. It isn't about getting to heaven or having eternal life. Eternal bliss, fruit on trees and streets of gold and never-ending worship sessions.
It is about Knowing Jesus. Intimately. A God that knows us and we know him. Not some far off cosmic deity but a loving Father that knows His kids. We are in Christ, and he is in us. Branches and trees and fruit. A family. Belonging like adopted orphans given a full seat at the table. Immanuel, God with us. Tabernacling with us. We are the new Temple. Christ/The Spirit of God now dwells, tabernacles, lives, KNOWS us. There's so much of the theological world right now that are arguing about Jesus and God and works and faith and this faction vs. that faction. I'm afraid we can easily miss the forest for the trees, just spend 30 minutes on YouTube.
God is Love.
So, to me, it isn't about minimums, or what is the least of amount of info you have to believe in order to be saved. Or maximums for that matter, which denomination and which system of theology you follow. It's about truly wanting to Know God. Seeking him with all your heart like it says in Jeremiah. Not as a "work" in order to "get something". But from a pure place of wanting to truly Know this God that loves us so very much. He's a living God after all and knows us better than we will ever know ourselves. There's so much relationship involved in this. You think about what he says to the false teachers at the end who "did it all for the Lord". Depart from me I never knew you. No relationship, all religion.
We don't follow a dead religion or some systematic set of rules, principles, and ideas that need to be learned followed and obeyed in order to achieve maximum awesomeness. It's about basking in the Love of God and getting to know him more and more every day. Mercy for our constant screwedupedness. Grace because He is that Good. Love that is everlasting. Strength to become more like him day after day. In love, towards him, and towards others. His word is powerful and active. All scripture is given by His inspiration and is profitable. His word will never fail or pass away. But this word isn't just found on a page but in our very hearts.
So to anyone reading this asking the question what is the minimum I need to believe in order to get eternal life, you're asking the wrong question.
Thanks Todd, I appreciate that. I wanted to answer the question about Christ's blood from the standpoint of "What is the gospel?" (see 1 Corinthians 15). In other words, I wanted to start with what is clear in order to answer what is maybe more unclear: the question about Christ's blood. Because like you said, I think it's easy to start adding in a list of doctrines or doctrinal truths that maybe are not explicitly stated in the gospel, and we justify it by saying or reasoning that these other things are true and even necessary for our salvation. For example, Jesus fulfilling the Messianic prophecies, Jesus being born of a virgin, etc., etc. (add in any Christological or soteriological truth found in the Bible that's not explicitly mentioned in "the gospel" per se). But the question I was implicitly asking in response was, "Yes, but are they part of the specific content of the gospel?" So that was my thought process when I wrote the article; that's the perspective that I took on it.
Or to put it another way, it's the "Analogy of Faith" principle of Bible interpretation, which J. Hampton Keathley III explains by saying: "This principle says that unclear passages should be understood in light of clear ones, not the other way around." So for example, or to further elaborate on this, I will copy and paste what I wrote to the individual who asked me the question about Christ's blood. I shared this thought with him:
Okay, I would say the issue in the gospel is more WHY He died, i.e. "for our sins" (1 Cor. 15:3; cf. Isa. 53:5), not so much HOW He died. Elsewhere Paul refers to his gospel as the message of "Christ crucified" (1 Cor. 1:23), but even then he doesn't mention the blood per se. Of course, it's all implied when Paul says "that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3), those primarily being the Old Testament Scriptures. So I would start with Paul's declaration of the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, and let that shed light on the other Bible passages such as Exodus 12, for example. In other words, the Old Testament picture must be understood in light of Paul's explicit statement of the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15 (and not vise versa). Tyndale in his Prologue to Leviticus in his translation of the Pentateuch has said that we must start with Christ and then the Old Testament types and symbols will make sense. So in other words, in order to "accurately handle the Word of truth" (2 Tim 2:15), i.e. in order to correctly interpret the Bible (and specifically the Gospel), we must start with the clear passages in the New Testament (and there is general consensus that 1 Corinthians 15 is the clearest statement that we have on the Gospel), and interpret the less clear passages in light of the clearest one. So for example, you brought up Exodus 12, but that's the Old Testament shadow or picture. We need to start with the New Testament reality, i.e. we need to begin with the Gospel: the Gospel of Christ. Someone has well said, "The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed. The New Testament is the Old Testament revealed." So let's start with Paul's declaration of the Gospel in the New Testament, and I believe that will clear things up. I hope this helps.
Here is the statement by William Tyndale that I was referring to in my previous comment above. This statement by Tyndale is excerpted from his Prologue to Leviticus in his translation of the Pentateuch. Tyndale says:
“And moreover though sacrifices and ceremonies can be no ground or foundation to build upon: that is, though we can prove nothing with them: yet when we have once found out Christ and His mysteries, then we may borrow figures, that is to say allegories, similitudes or examples to open Christ and the secrets of God hid in Christ even unto the living, and to declare them more lively and sensibly with them than with all the words of the world. For similitudes have more virtue and power with them than bare words, and lead a man’s wits further into the pith and marrow [the essence and substance] and spiritual understanding of the thing, than all the words that can be imagined. And though also that all the ceremonies and sacrifices have as it were a starlight of Christ, yet some there be that have as it were the light of the broad day a little before the sun rising, and express Him, and the circumstances and virtue of His death so plainly as if we should play His passion on a scaffold or in a stage play openly before the eyes of the people. As the scapegoat, the brazen serpent, the ox burnt outside the camp, the Passover lamb, &c. Insomuch that I am fully persuaded and cannot but believe that God had shewed Moses the secrets of Christ and the very manner of His death beforehand, and commanded him to order them for the confirmation of our faiths which are now in the clear daylight. And I believe also that the prophets which followed Moses to confirm his prophecies and to maintain his doctrine unto Christ’s coming, were moved by such things to search further of Christ’s secrets. And though God would not have the secrets of Christ generally known, save unto a few familiar friends which in the infancy He made of man’s wit to help the other babes: yet as they had a general promise that one of the seed of Abraham should come and bless them, even so they had a general faith that God would by the same man save them, though they knew not by what means as the very apostles when it was often told them yet they could never comprehend it, till it was fulfilled indeed.”
Source: https://dpul.princeton.edu/wa/catalog/0r9677704
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