“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 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— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith.

2.  God’s response to unrighteousness here is not the same as it was in the time of Noah:

“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

God wants to be reconciled to his creation – not destroy it. He wants to declare peace – even as the offended party.

Two words describe that peace – expiation and propitiation. They are different and both necessary.

Expiation is the legal settlement in a successful suit. We have many patent suits in East Texas because of our “rocket dockets” that move the case quickly through the courts. The conclusion of every successful suit is a settlement and then the case is over unless it is appealed. The suit is settled but you could not say the relationship is resolved. In fact, sometimes the bitterness and mistrust continues for years in spite of the settlement. God does not desire simple expiation – the settlement of a suit against his creation. He does not desire to simply win. He wants to go a step further…and that is propitiation.

Propitiation is the offended party wanting to be reconciled instead of bitter or resentful. God wants more than justice. He wants peace and, in a sense, peace at the highest possible price. For those of us who have accepted God’s propitiation we have what Paul calls “peace with God”. It is not just a truce or a cessation of hostilities which could erupt again at any time. It is a permanent peace that goes far beyond the satisfaction of the demands of justice. It is not just a settlement that can be reversed or appealed or amended. It is irreversible peace with no condemnation that comes through the blood of Christ – and only through the blood.

3.  Paul’s focus is not on stories about Jesus’ life or even his teachings…but on his role as the perfect sacrifice and the firstborn of the new creation. Paul quotes Moses, Abraham and the Psalms far more than he quotes Jesus. Paul does not teach in parables or even reminisce about Jesus. He never asks, “What would Jesus do?” You could say the earthly life of Jesus is not Paul’s interest. He virtually ignores that because of the greater and essential work of Jesus as the Christ – as the sacrifice, as the reconciler and the first of many to come. For Paul, Christ has risen and is alive so he is not looking back at the history of Jesus except as the perfect sacrifice for sins.

In some ways, we have made him more of a great teacher or a victim of powerful forces, a moral philosopher or an example to follow. We want to incorporate his teachings and example into our own lives more than understanding his role as Christ the sacrifice. In wanting to make him “real” we have made him all too mortal. We forget he did not come as an example of a standard for our best behavior.

In a recent controversy in the Anglican Church, the Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori has concluded that Jesus is only divine in the same way all of us can be divine. He showed the path for our own divinity.

“Jesus is divine,” she means something entirely different – in some senses, perhaps even diametrically opposed – to what the church teaches about the divinity of Christ. So she does not deny that Jesus is God in so many words. Instead she is re-defining the meaning of “God” into something which means: a superbly good man. So when she says, “Jesus is God,” what she means is: Jesus was a man, albeit a superbly good one.”

In the same way, the Transcendentalist movement represented by Ralph Waldo Emerson came to the same conclusion and affected not only other writers like Thoreau and Walt Whitman but the attitudes of many, many influential people in the early days of America. Even today the recognition of Jesus as a superbly good man and teacher – even Superhero – is not uncommon. We aspire to be like him and see him as an example of our highest achievement but that is all.

“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! The understanding caught this high chant from the poet’s lips, and said, in the next age, `This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.’ The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man’s life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, gives a false impression; it is Monster.

In this point of view we become very sensible of the first defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love..”

In other words, Jesus is the best example of what we could all be..but not more than that. He was not God’s provided sacrifice or expiation or propitiation.

Not so for Paul. The word Jesus is used 36 times in Romans and only three times without Christ or Lord as part of his title. Paul moves us from stories about Jesus to something far deeper. From the personality of Jesus to the work of Christ. For him, Jesus is not a standard of perfection for us to use as a new Law but a gift of reconciliation from God. We cannot be Jesus but we can have new life through Christ.

Paul is telling us that the blood of Jesus is as important as the biography of Jesus. The sacrifice is the central part of the story – not the miracles or the example or the teaching. Salvation comes through faith in his blood – not his teaching or miracles or even admiration for a sinless life. As the author of Hebrews says, there is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood.

4.  I know that talking about the blood of Christ is often uncomfortable. For many years it was an obstacle for me. I not only had a great fear of blood itself but the whole issue was distasteful and off-putting. I wanted the Gospel but I wanted it cleaned up. I did not want to associate with the early Christians who were considered to be cannibals because of their drinking the blood and eating the flesh of Jesus. I would skip church when I knew the worship leader was going to have us sing what he called “blood medleys” filled with songs about the blood of Jesus. It sounded grisly – like some Stephen King novel.

Nothing But The Blood

“Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,”
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Power in The Blood

“Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?
There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;
Sin-stains are lost in its life-giving flow;
There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.”

There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

No wonder people called it “that bloody religion”. It was…and it is.

Like many others today, I wanted a more civilized religion. While I have differences with those who overemphasize the horrors – physical and emotional – of the crucifixion because there are worse ways to die or shed blood. As well, I think it sometimes produces more repulsion, emotion and guilt than genuine gratitude. Still, many of us desire a more abstract and symbolic and thought provoking religion that discusses the blood as a concept but not a fact. Nothing could be less abstract and more concrete than blood and sacrifice.

I’m sure the Greeks struggled with it as well. Their religions were bloodless and practical. They wanted enlightenment, insight and wisdom for living – not blood. They wanted a religion they could understand that also led to making the world make sense – not something as incomprehensible as the necessity of suffering and sacrifice. As Paul says, the cross is foolishness to them.

We want God to be something other than what He reveals himself to be. We want to excuse or explain the more barbaric and violent parts of his behavior. How can we market a loving and kind God to the world if he demands blood? The Greek in us wants philosophy, order, intellectual stimulation and reason. A safe and sensible God we can introduce to friends without any reservations or embarrassment. The Jew in us wants miracles and entertainment and five keys to a happy life.

None of us want blood. It’s not a euphemism for death. it’s the physical sacrifice of blood. Not symbolic blood or simply pricking a finger like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to show they were in the club. Romans 5:9 makes it clear that our whole peace with God is based on the blood of Jesus.

5.  However, if we are to understand what it means to be at peace with God we need to understand the blood. There are four ways:

a. The blood is our protection. Read: Exodus 12:7-13
b. The blood is the basis of the covenant with Israel. Read: Exodus 24:3-8
c. The blood is a requirement for atonement. Read Leviticus 16:15-22
d. The blood is the requirement for peace with God. Read Ephesians 2:13 and Colossians 1:20

Our understanding and accepting the requirement of the blood of Jesus is essential because it is the heart of how we are reconciled with God. A bloodless Christianity is powerless. What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 1:17: “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel – not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”

We want a less bloody, less violent and more thoughtful religion. No more blood medleys or at least make the blood a little more symbolic and more palatable. No fountains filled with it or sinners plunged beneath it. Is that just me or do you have the same reservations? Maybe we should have a religion that is divorced from our Jewish roots and that might eliminate so much of the blood talk. However, as Paul says, we are grafted on to the root and without the root we will die. We cannot separate ourselves from our Jewish roots and at the core of Judaism is blood and sacrifice and atonement for a holy God.

6.  Christianity separated from its Jewish roots – including the requirement of blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins – becomes stories about Jesus. Christianity without Jewish roots eliminates Creation, the Fall, the covenant with Abraham, the Law, the Messiah, and the people of God. Christianity without talk about blood is a rootless, immaterial and meaningless philosophy. It is a distorted religion of cheap grace and false love. A Christianity without the requirement of the Cross and blood is the idolatry of Jesus. Without the roots which require the blood we would turn Christ into what the world desires him to be and we would create an image of God while less fearsome and demanding would be a lie.

So, just a few questions for you to think about as we close.

1. Have I tried to civilize and even domesticate God by avoiding talk about blood being the basis of our reconciliation?
2. Have I missed the bigger picture by simply wanting more stories about Jesus?
3. Do I truly believe I have peace with God because of the blood of Jesus. Not just God loves me or Jesus died on the cross but it is the blood that has been sprinkled on me that reconciles me once and for all to God. Do I have a permanent peace or a temporary truce based on my behavior?