Why It Takes the Blood of Jesus: Understanding the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." — Leviticus 17:11

Why blood? Why couldn't God simply forgive sin with a word? Why did Jesus, whom the Hebrew-speaking believers call Yeshua, have to suffer and pour out His blood, and die on a cross? The answer runs like a scarlet thread through the whole Bible, from the first pages of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation. To understand it, we need to go back to the beginning.

Why It Takes The Blood of Jesus, Life Comes Only From God

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:1–2). Before there was order, before there was life, the Spirit of God was moving.

I once sat on top of a mountain more than 14,000 feet high. It was a harsh place, far below freezing at night and scorching in the day, swinging from one extreme to the other. Yet all around me, tiny spiders were running about. Everywhere water touched, there was life, and life in abundance. By contrast, scientists have searched the moon and Mars and have not found a single living organism. Life doesn't appear by accident. It takes the touch of the Spirit of God.

Man's life came the same way. "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). Every heartbeat since has depended on the breath God gave.

The Command in the Garden

God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden and gave him an abundance of food, including access to the tree of life. There was only one restriction:

"And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:15–17) KJV.

Adam and Eve ate from the one tree God had forbidden. Immediately "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (Genesis 3:7). Those fig leaves are a picture of every human attempt to cover sin by our own effort: good works, religion, self-improvement and excuses. They don't last. "All our righteousness are as filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). We cannot redeem ourselves.

The First Covering Required a Death

After they used fig leaves to cover themselves, God did something remarkable. "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them" (Genesis 3:21).

To make coats of skins, an animal had to die. Up to that moment, death had no place in God's creation. Now, for the first time, blood was shed on the earth, not because of the animal's sin, but to cover the sin of man. In His unending love, God Himself provided the covering that Adam and Eve could not provide for themselves.

This was the first lesson in a truth God would teach throughout Scripture: "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23), and "without shedding of blood is no remission" (Hebrews 9:22). Sin brings death, and something had to die to atone for Adam and Eve's transgression.

Why the Blood?

God explains why in Leviticus 17:11:

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood... for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."

Why it takes the blood of Jesus? Life is in the blood. Consider the human body. Blood carries oxygen, the breath we take in, to every part of the body. Any part cut off from that oxygen-rich blood soon dies. In a similar way, God's gift of life flows through the blood. The prophet Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones and heard the Lord say, "Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD" (Ezekiel 37:5–6). Only the breath of God brings life.

Because life is in the blood, only a life poured out can pay the debt of a life forfeited by sin. The penalty for sin is death, and the blood is the evidence that a life has been given.

Paradise Lost, and a Promise Made

Adam and Eve were covered, but they were not restored. "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:24).

The animal sacrifice was a temporary covering, a shadow of something greater. "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). The way to the tree of life stayed closed until God Himself would make atonement once and for all.

Even in the garden, God announced His plan. He told the serpent that the Seed of the woman "shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15). One day, a Deliverer would come.

Why It Takes the Blood of Jesus. The Land Cannot Be Cleansed Except by Blood

In Numbers 35, God gives laws about murder and the cities of refuge. In the middle of that passage, He makes a striking statement: "So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it" (Numbers 35:33).

This verse is about murder in Israel's land, but it points to a deeper principle. Blood guilt can only be answered by blood. Mankind's sin stained the whole earth, and no human being could pay the price, because every human being was a sinner. The only one who could cleanse the stain was God Himself, taking on flesh and blood.

God Came in the Flesh

This is why Jesus came. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14). "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16).

Hebrews explains why: "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14–15).

The God who clothed Adam and Eve with the skins of a sacrificed animal became the Sacrifice Himself. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). He made "peace through the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:20). At the cross, His blood was fully poured out: "One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water" (John 19:34).

After His resurrection, Jesus still bore the marks of His sacrifice. He said to doubting Thomas, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing" (John 20:27). Those wounds are an eternal testimony that the price has been paid. Unlike the animal sacrifices, which had to be repeated year after year, Christ entered "by his own blood... once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us" (Hebrews 9:12).

Why Did God Wait So Long?

You may ask why God waited thousands of years before coming to shed His blood. Scripture says, "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law" (Galatians 4:4–5).

Through the centuries, God sent prophets to foretell every detail of the coming Messiah: His birth (Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2), His suffering (Isaiah 53), and even His pierced hands and feet (Psalm 22:16). When He came, the evidence would be unmistakable. After His resurrection, Jesus "shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3). Beginning "at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27).

Even Abraham's greatest test pointed to the cross. When Isaac asked where the lamb for the offering was, Abraham answered, "My son, God will provide himself a lamb" (Genesis 22:8). Two thousand years later, God provided His own Son.

From the Outward Covenant to the Inward Covenant

God's first covenant with Abraham was sealed with blood through circumcision: "And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations" (Genesis 17:11–12).

It was a painful, bloody sign. Why would God choose such a mark? Throughout the Old Testament, God dealt with man largely through outward signs. Atonement came through the death of an animal, an outward sacrifice. Circumcision was a cutting of the outward flesh, and every descendant of Abraham had to carry that sign of the covenant of inheritance. The law itself was written on tablets of stone, because the hearts of men were hearts of stone.

But God always intended something deeper. Even under the old covenant, Moses declared, "The LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live" (Deuteronomy 30:6). Through the prophets, God promised a new covenant: "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33). "A new heart also will I give you... and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 36:26).

That new covenant was sealed with the blood of Jesus. At the Last Supper, He took the cup and said, "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke 22:20). What the outward covenant could never do, the blood of Christ does. It melts the hardest heart and, through the drawing of the Holy Spirit, brings people to their knees in humility and repentance.

The Circumcision of the Heart

Under the new covenant, circumcision is no longer a mark on the body but a work in the heart. "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit" (Romans 2:28–29). In Christ, we are "circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh" (Colossians 2:11).

This inward circumcision is a cutting away of the things we hold dear that keep us far from God. It hurts to let go of the things of this world. But Jesus promised that no one who leaves anything for His sake and the Gospel's will go unrewarded: "he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time... and in the world to come eternal life" (Mark 10:29–30).

It is the blood of Jesus that sanctifies us, setting us apart from sin for a new life, raised in the likeness of Christ. "Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate" (Hebrews 13:12). He also cleanses His church "with the washing of water by the word" (Ephesians 5:26). As we read God's Word, the Holy Spirit shows us the sin in our lives so we can repent and cut it away from our hearts.

This is a lifelong process. It doesn't make us more saved, because salvation is a gift received by faith through the blood of Jesus. But it frees us to "walk in the Spirit" and not "fulfil the lust of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16), until "the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30).

The Way to the Tree of Life Is Open Again

What was lost in Eden is restored through the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross. The flaming sword that once guarded the tree of life has been answered by the cross. Jesus promises, "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7). And in the final chapter of the Bible, we read, "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city" (Revelation 22:14).

The story that began with a garden, a fall and the first shed blood ends with a city, a restored tree of life and a multitude who "have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Revelation 7:14).

That is why it takes the blood. Nothing else could pay the price, and nothing less could bring us home.

A Call to Surrender

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved" (John 3:16–17).

Jesus goes on to say that light has come into the world, but many love darkness rather than light. "But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God" (John 3:21).

Fig leaves of your own making will never cover your sin. Good works, religion, church membership and attendance, and other nice works will never cover your sin or give you a place in Heaven. God has already provided the covering through the blood of His Son. If you have never surrendered your life to Jesus, come to the light today. Receive His forgiveness and become a true child of God, washed by His blood.

If you want to surrender to Jesus today and become a true child of God who is Heaven bound when your time on earth is over, then pray the salvation prayer now out loud and mean it from your heart. Pray the Salvation Prayer here.

If you prayed that prayer for the first time, we would love to hear from you. Email us at newlife@lovefaithandmiracles.com

About the Author

Mark Carter is a simple follower of the God of Abraham, redeemed by the blood of the only begotten Son, Yeshua. He was born into an Appalachian coal miner's family and lived and worked as a coal miner himself. He says that everything he writes in his Bible studies has been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit.