When I read the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus, including the scourging and mocking, I am struck by their brevity. Matthew devotes just 24 of the 1,071 verses of his Gospel to the scene, just 2.25% of his entire book. Mark covers it all in just 22 verses, or 3.25% of 678. Luke uses just 21 of his 1,150 verses, or 1.8%. And John, who is generally considered the most theological of the Gospel writers, is briefest of all, limiting the scene to just 14 of 879 verses, 1.6%. Not to suggest that the crucifixion is unimportant to the Gospels; it’s the central event in all four. But they don’t dwell on the specifics of the suffering of Jesus.
The first disciples had seen many crucifixions and were keenly aware of Jesus’ suffering, but it was not central to their interpretation of the event, which they understood in terms of the Old Testament sacrificial system. They saw Jesus as a new Passover Lamb, the blood of which had marked the homes of the Hebrews in Egypt so the Angel of Death would pass over them and spare their lives. (Exodus 12:13) And his shed blood was like that of the sacrificial animals, which was sprinkled upon the people who were seen as dead in trespasses and sin (Hebrews 9:13-14). In both cases blood is symbolic of life, and that life is being given by God to his people.
Now, the Old Testament sacrifices were often misinterpreted as something the people were doing for God, as though they could bring him food to make up for their sins. Psalm 50 specifically addresses this confusion:
If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?
Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you...." (Ps. 50:12-15)
And the cross of the New Testament is often misinterpreted in much the same way, as though God were in need of a victim to suffer in our place; a death to substitute for our death.
But the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and the cross of the New, are about God replacing our death with his life. The life is in the blood, and this is why we sing of “power in the blood” and of being “washed in the blood”. And it’s why we receive the wine at communion with the words, “Take and drink of it all of you; this is my blood”. If we simply substitute the word “life” for “blood” it all becomes much clearer and, incidentally, less gross. Perhaps the following illustration will be helpful.
Many years ago my eldest brother, Rick, was diagnosed with leukemia and told his only hope was a bone marrow transplant. Tim, the second youngest in the family, was found to have compatible marrow so they prepared for the procedure. Over a period of a few days Rick’s marrow was attacked with chemicals and radiation and completely destroyed. Bone marrow is essential for the production of blood and since, as we all know, the life is in the blood, at this point Rick was essentially a dead man. But Tim’s marrow was injected into Rick’s body, took up residence within his bones, and began to produce blood; Tim’s blood, in Rick. Rick lived another eleven years before cancer eventually took him, but during this time he sometimes paraphrased Paul’s words, “I died: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but [Tim] lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
In Christ, upon the cross, God poured out his blood (life) for us, that we who were dead in sin might live. We receive his life, in place of our death, much as my brother received Tim’s life-giving bone marrow in place of his own dead marrow. When we receive Christ we die, and yet still live, but it’s no longer us who live; Christ lives in us.
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature...and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (Colossians 3:5,10)
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