Why or how was blood seen as cleansing sin?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘God’s Glorious Plan for Creation’ (2007).
In other words, what does the Bible mean when it talks about the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing us from all sin, and when in the Old Testament was blood seen as cleansing? It is important for us to notice that neither in the Old Testament nor in the New, were people bathed in blood. They were sprinkled with blood. How does blood cleanse? What is the idea behind it? Well let me read a verse that talks about this particular thing.
For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Hebrews 9:13–14)
Let's pick up on that. What does the blood of Christ do? What does it cleanse? It cleanses your conscience. It's obviously not the literal blood of Christ somehow getting inside your head to your conscience. Rather it's this way round: when we have sinned and done some grievous sin, our conscience registers guilt before God. It does so if it's working properly. And when I have a guilty conscience, a question arises, 'How can I get rid of this guilty conscience?' No good just sweeping it under the carpet and saying it doesn't matter. Sin matters and if I've sinned, I have a guilty conscience. My conscience will not really be clear until my conscience has been cleansed from this guilt.
How does the blood of Christ cleanse my conscience? Well it's a metaphor for saying that when Christ died on the cross, the Bible says he bore our sins in his body on the tree, paid the penalty of our sins, so that when we repent and trust the Saviour, God can forgive us our sins and, to use a Bible term, justify us completely. God is righteous to do it because, in Christ, he has paid the penalty of the sin that we have committed and our conscience can be freed from guilt. That is how the blood of Christ cleanses our conscience.
Why does it have to be the blood of Christ? Because the blood of Christ is the symbol of his death. 'The wages of sin is death' (Romans 6:23). The law of God prescribed death for our breaking of his law. Christ paid the penalty by dying for us. The gospel is not just that Christ lived, but that he died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; was buried and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures. Blood cleanses our conscience therefore.
