THE BLOOD OF JESUS -How Has It Saved Mankind? -The Special Power In The Blood

There have been some hot, noisy, vexing questions among some non-Christians as to how the blood of Jesus has saved mankind!

In fact, one Bible text that has been in the centre of this stormy controversy is Revelation 5:9 -'And they (saints in heaven) sang a new song: 'you (Jesus) are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slain, and with your blood purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation'.

The dispute, as can be seen from the quotation above, is threefold: one, whether the blood of Jesus can be said to have come from some sacrificial slaying; two, whether it has actually saved mankind; and three, whether every person in the world is a beneficiary.

As to the first moot point, critics don't believe that Jesus was slain as 'sacrificial lamb' which was customarily slaughtered by the throat, as was done in the Old Testament for sin offering in which the priest was 'to lay his hand on its head and slaughter it before the Lord' (Leviticus 4:4). It is argued that this lack of throat-slashing does not make the blood of Jesus become a sacrificial offering.

There is indeed much invalidity in this argument, for two reasons. Firstly, in the Old Testament scriptures, God never asked for any human sacrifice about which He laid down any rule that any victim being sacrificed must be slaughtered by the throat like an animal, without which the person's death merits no spiritual recognition.

Secondly, various prophecies about Christ's death, for instance, those of Isaiah made in 681 BC, never revealed that Christ would be slaughtered by the throat. They figuratively talked about nailing and bleeding and death! Isaiah prophesied: 'But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities' (Isaiah 53:5). The word: 'pierced' suggests nailing and its resultant bleeding, thus implying that Christ offered Himself for slaying and bleeding!

Next is the question: whether the blood of Jesus brought salvation by 'purchasing men for God'. To the critics, the question of salvation is just odd because the drops of blood that oozed from the wounds inflicted on the body of Christ couldn't have drained Him of so much strength as to make Him die, like the Old Testament slaughtered animals which bled to death in order to save the offerers from God's punishment.

On the other hand, the sceptics contend that since self-sacrifice means shedding of blood until death comes, 'Christ's bleeding was so scanty as not to be able to send him to death to appease God to save mankind'. From the nature of their argumentations, the critics, I suppose, have some problems with logicalisation -their tendency to mis-assume the volume of blood that spilled out of Jesus' body; and also their inability to discern the spiritual significance of the blood that trickled down the body of Jesus.

In regard to the volume of blood Christ lost from his several wounds on the body, three lady-friends of the past few centuries, agreed to fast and pray for detailed revelations. These Catholic charismatics, namely: St Elizabeth, a one-time queen of Hungary, St. Matilda and St. Bridget had revealing details of the Crucifixion saga, which were once published on 'Oration sheets'.

Responsively, Jesus revealed: 'I received 20 wounds on the head; pricks of thorn on the head 110; mortal thorns on the forehead 3; wounds on the body inflicted by 608 soldiers who flogged me up to Calvary crucifixion were 1000, and the drops of blood which I lost were 28,340'.

This is roughly estimated to be about 14 beer bottles of blood (or 14pints) or about two gallons of blood, -something to induce some slow, painful death! It is therefore wrong for the critics to conclude that without profuse bleeding from throat-slashing, Jesus was not liable to be killed by 'the scanty' loss of blood from His several wounds.

But the irony is that even though He profusely bled all over, Christ did not die by bleeding to death, as R.B. Thieme Jr. orthodoxly and acceptably argues in his book (The Slave Market of Sin, page 33). It was Christ himself who dismissed His spirit into the hands of his Father and thus breathed his last (Luke 23:46), at exactly six o'clock in the evening, in order to fulfil his own Word: 'no man takes it (my life) from me but I lay it down of myself' (John 10: 18).

The spiritual significance of the lost blood is that the volume that came out of Christ's body was enough to appease the Father to forgive the Adamic sins which every person carries at his birth, and which repulse God from coming to him. Before Christ's shedding of blood, the Devil had taken the opportunity to freely manipulate mankind to do his will and commit more and more sins. So Satan, like a controlling slave owner, had put 'sin-born', sinful men into the slave-market of sins, and these were waiting to be redeemed by someone who could move the Father to save them. This is exactly what Christ did and continues to do.

How the blood of Jesus has saved men is that, by shedding it, He has fulfilled God's own law of redemption, namely 'it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul' (Leviticus 17:11b). 'Atonement' simply means being 'ONE' with God. Suggestively, it is 'AT-ONE-MENT'. Another divine law whose fulfilment brings this 'ONE-MENT' is: 'and without shedding of blood, there is no remission' (i.e. no forgiveness) (Hebrew 9:22). In the Old Testament, God became appeased (satisfied or propitiated) when offered with the blood of animals on the altar; and thus appeased, He forgave some particular sinful offerers. These appeasement rituals nonetheless, were the foreshadows of the shedding of Christ's blood, which when it was later spilt on Good Friday, appeased God to forgive the Adamic sins of those men who believed in Him (Christ) or who 'spiritually lay their hands on Christ's blood'.

Thus, God became propitiated and reconciled to men, and was in AT-ONE-MENT situation with sinful men. In the circumstance, men kidnapped by sin (into the slave-market) became predisposed to be set free from the bondage and manipulations of Satan so to become royal children of God, only on condition of exercising faith in the blood of Jesus or simply having faith in Jesus. It is in this vein that the angels proclaim in the first paragraph above that 'you (Jesus) were slain, and with your blood purchased men for God'. That is, His blood is a ransom to move the Father to set sinners free from their Adamic sins which were and are repugnant to (Him) God.

And this answers the third bone of contention -whether all mankind have become beneficiaries of the shed-blood of Jesus! Emphatically, it is yes. Every person is a potential beneficiary. By the blood of Jesus, the opportunity has already been created for every person to reach it and exploit it so to be set free or be saved, by believing Jesus, loving him, and doing his teachings! For, whether we consider Jesus as the Son of God or prophet or healer, his words: 'no one comes to the Father except through me', uniquely means a lot to those who want to be saved by His blood.

The blood of Jesus has its practical dimensions for those who continually invoke it in their prayers. Certainly, it works more than 'sika-duro' (juju mascot). As a charismatic healer in the US, Richard Bright says, 'The blood of Jesus heals, protects people from evil attacks in dreams and prospers people's work. If a person invokes it 30 times a day; everything of his will surely resurrect, as the certainty of the Resurrection of Christ'.

It is most unfortunate therefore that the blood of Jesus is negatively invoked by some Christians to curse or destroy, by saying: 'Jesu mogya nka nanim; Jesu mogya nka matanfo ani, na won ani mfura mfura' (Let the blood of Christ splash on his face, let the blood of Jesus get into the eyes of my enemies so they will get blind). That's too bad! The blood of Jesus is only meant to save, but not to destroy!

 By Apostle Kwamena Ahinful