Did Christ’s Blood Decay?
DR. DANIEL STEELE, in the Advocate of Bible Holiness, enters the following solemn protest against any such statement as that “The blood of Christ dried and decayed on the ground.” His objections are as follows:— 1. It is derogatory to the dignity of the Son of God, and plucks the crown of divinity from his head, to assert that one part of his humanity, and that a vital part, is permanently subject to death. If death retains the blood of Jesus, the vehicle of his earthly life, under the dominion of corruption forever, then the king of terrors is, in an important sense, Christ’s eternal conqueror. 2. It is taking the first step in the path which ends in “counting the blood of the covenant an unholy [common] thing,” i. e., like the blood of an ordinary man. 3. The Christian man who asserts that the blood of Jesus was decomposed like that of an animal, can give no better reason for his assertion than to say, This is the law of nature. In saying that natural law had its course in disposing of the blood of Christ, the writer has put himself into a position where a skeptic can logically force him to make the same admission respecting the body of Christ. Thus one-half of the fortress of supernaturalism is needlessly surrendered to the enemy, who will use his advantage to force the surrender of the other half. 4. If it is said that Christ’s resurrection is proved by positive Scripture testimony, we say that the incorruptibility of his blood is established by just as strong testimony of Holy Writ. Thus Peter, in Acts 2:27, asserts that the prediction of the psalmist is fulfilled in Christ, “Thou wilt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” This covers the blood, the very medium of life; if it does not, the Holy One saw corruption. But still more plainly does Peter proclaim the undecaying nature of Christ’s blood in the first epistle, 1:18: “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ.” Acids may dissolve silver and gold, but no chemical agent can decompose the precious blood of the Lamb of God. If Peter does not assert this, then he asserts nothing intelligible on this question. In refuting this error we are not under obligation to show what became of the blood of Christ, but for the information of the reader we will say that two theories have divided theologians and exegetes. 1. That it was restored to his veins when he arose from the dead. This is a modern theory devised by the Romanists after they had begun to deny the cup to the laity. They were told that the touch of the priest changed the wafer into the veritable body of Christ, and that, since the blood was in the body, the laity received the blood in the wafer. There is not a shadow of a hint in the Scriptures on which to base this theory of the restoration of the blood. It is a pure invention of popery. 2. The view of eminent Christian writers, including some of the greatest names in church history, such as Chrysostom, Calvin, and Bengel, is that the blood always remains blood shed, ever fresh and pure from corruption, in the presence of God, having been carried into the heavenly sanctuary by Jesus, the great high priest, after his resurrection. Heb. 9:12: “By his own blood he entered once into the sanctuary, after he had obtained eternal redemption.” Since the whole office of a priest, especially of a high priest, was blood-sprinkling, it follows that Jesus, the great antitype, must (Heb. 8:3) have had blood to offer in the tabernacle not made with hands. In John 20:17, we have an intimation that this high-priestly act was performed on the resurrection morning, immediately after his appearing to Mary. He says to her, “Go to my brethren and say unto them, I am ascending unto my Father.” If this refers to the ascension after forty days, why did Jesus use the present tense? And why did he send such a message to his disciples, whom he was to see and speak to nine times during that period? Mary could have delivered no other message than this: “Jesus is ascending to his Father.” I know that my readers may feel a shrinking back from the incongruity of material blood in Heaven, a sphere of purely spiritual realities. But there is no greater incongruity in the presence of Christ’s material blood in that sphere than there is in the presence of the very body that was laid in Joseph’s tomb. The advantages of this doctrine are:— 1. It makes the atonement a vivid, present reality, eternally fresh and efficacious, as if the blood of the divine victim were continually flowing before the eyes of all moral intelligences. 2. It explains the studied peculiarity of the Scripture phraseology. Our redemption is always through the blood shed, and not through the shedding of blood. As our redemption is eternal, the price remains eternally existent, just as if the Redeemer hangs on the cross daily, and daily dies for us. It is fitting that the price of redemption should ever remain an objective reality, the immutable basis of faith. 3. It gives a beautiful symmetry and a wonderful significance to the Lord’s supper, the bread being the shadow of a true substance, the really existent body; and the fruit of the vine the shadow of a true substance, the really existent blood of Christ, and not the shadow of a shadow, the non-existent blood of atonement. 4. It gives a powerful leverage to my faith, when I attempt to move God in prayer. Says Bengel, “He who will not straightway shrink from that which seems at first a paradox, will soon after taste its sweetness with the progress of faith.” My experience has abundantly verified this remark of the great exegete in his extended note on Heb. 12:24, where he shows that we have in Jesus a living mediator, and in his blood (a separately existing material substance), the ground of eternal salvation. “Ye are come unto Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling.” 5. It affords an intelligent conception of the truth that the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin. For the shed blood stands in the presence of God, as the eternal reason for administering pardon to the penitent believer, and the eternal purchase price of the Holy Spirit, the regenerator and sanctifier.