Precious Blood
Christ being come, a high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation: neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats or of oxen, or the ashes of an heifer, being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost, offered himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God?
Today we celebrate the feast of the Most Precious Blood of Christ. It is therefore appropriate that we hear from the Epistle to the Hebrews of how Christ has fulfilled in his own person the hope of the old covenant for atonement for sin, through the perfect sacrifice of himself on our behalf.
But what does it mean to speak of Christ as the fulfilment of the sacrificial system of the old testament? In order to answer this question we need to first understand how the Jewish sacrificial system worked. This is not easy for us to do because the offering of animal sacrifices to God seems perhaps the part of the old testament that is most remote from our understanding of worship today. The sacrificial system and the Holiness code of the Book of Leviticus seems to us to be hard to comprehend so we are apt to pass it over and focus on other books of the Old Testament. While this may be true for us today it was very different for the ancient world. Whereas we find the sacrificial system the strangest aspect of the religion of Israel, to the ancient world it would have seemed the easiest part of the faith of Israel to understand. Sacrifice was part of the worship of the ancient world. The peculiarity of the religion of Israel was not that it involved sacrifice, but that the Israelites worshipped only one God, rather than the plurality of gods and goddesses that other ancient peoples worshipped. The desire to achieve atonement through animal sacrifice was itself quite familiar.
But how did the sacrificial system work in practice? There were burnt offerings and peace offerings and sin offerings. The sacrifices were performed in the Temple in Jerusalem by priests who were sons of Aaron. The specifically priestly action was not the death of the victim (although that was obviously part of the sacrificial process) but the offering of the blood of the victim upon the altar (the blood symbolised life- hence the prohibition of drinking blood). The most solemn day of the year was the Day of Atonement, when the high priest offered sacrifice, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, and then entered into the Holy of Holies (the most sacred part of the Temple) and offered the blood of the victim upon the altar.
But there was one crucial problem. Though they offered the sacrifices as a means of atonement for the sins of the people, the priests, including the high priest, were themselves sinners and needed atonement as much as anybody else. That was why this act of ceremonial cleansing by means of blood happened every year. The people therefore hoped for a new covenant in which sins would finally be forgiven and communion between God and his people restored permanently.
What the Epistle to the Hebrews is saying is that this hope has now been fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He has offered himself as both priest and victim. He did not, like the high priest on the Day of Atonement, need to offer sacrifice first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He is the true high priest and by a greater and more perfect tabernacle and not with the blood of bulls and goats, but with his own blood, has entered into the true holy of holies, having obtained eternal redemption for us. “And therefore he is mediator of the new testament: that by means of his death, for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former testament, they that are called may receive the promise of an eternal inheritance, in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Now that he is risen, ascended and glorified, he is able to intercede on our behalf, our true high priest and the propitiation for our sins until the end of time. Even priests could not eat the sin offering on the Day of Atonement, but we now have an altar in which those who under the old covenant ministered in the tabernacle had no right to eat. This is the Christian Eucharist, the Mass, in which the sacrifice which Christ offered once for all in time and history and now pleads before God in the heavenly sanctuary is made present to us. We no longer need different sacrifices, but receive atonement for our sins from the one perfect sacrifice.
St. John Chrysostom states “What then? Do we not offer daily? Certainly we offer thus, making a memorial of his death. How is it one and not many? But it was offered once, like that which was carried into the holy of holies… For we ever offer the same person, not today one sheep, and next day a different one, but ever the same offering. Therefore the sacrifice is one. By this argument then, since the offering is made in many places, does it follow that there are many Christs? Not at all, for Christ is everywhere one, complete here and complete there, a single body. Thus, as when offered in many places he is one body and not many bodies, so also there is one sacrifice. One high priest is he who offers the sacrifice which cleanses us. We offer even now that which was then offered, which cannot be exhausted. This is done for memorial of that which was then done, for “Do this” said he for the remembrance of me. We do not offer a different sacrifice like the high priest of old, but we ever offer the same. Or rather we offer the memorial of the sacrifice.”
In the words of William Bright’s great hymn:
“Once, only once, and once for all,
His precious life he gave;
Before the Cross in faith we fall,
And own it strong to save.
One offering, single and complete,
With lips and heart we say;
And what he never can repeat
He shows forth day by day.
For as the priest of Aaron’s line
Within the holiest stood,
And sprinkled all the mercy shrine
With sacrificial blood;
So he, who once atonement wrought,
Our Priest of endless power,
Presents himself for those he bought
In that dark noontide hour.
His Manhood pleads where now it lives
On heaven’s eternal throne,
And where in mystic rite he gives
Its presence to his own.
And so we show thy death, O Lord,
Till thou again appear,
And feel, when we approach thy board,
We have an altar here.
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
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