Blood is central to Scripture. A quick search of the New International Version of the Bible finds the word blood in more that 350 verses. Why is blood such an important part of the message of the Bible? What should this blood mean to us today?

For believers, the blood sacrifice of the Old Testament immediately reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice. D.L Moody once said, “A man who has not realized what the blood has done for him has not the token of salvation.”

Moody continued: “Look at that Roman soldier as he pushed his spear into the very heart of the God-Man. What a hellish deed! But what was the next thing that took place? Blood covered the spear. Oh! Thank God, the blood covers sin. There was the blood covering that spear, the very point of it. The very crowning act of love; the crowning act of wickedness was the crowning act of grace.”

-Joe Stowell, Today in the Word, July 2003, p. 2


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A beautiful golden flower called the aconite blooms in early spring in England.
Sometimes the meadows are carpeted with them. There is a legend that these
flowers grew in England only where Roman soldiers had shed their blood. It’s
just a legend, of course, But it is no legend that there is power in the blood.
It is no legend that, in a sense, the flowers of forgiveness and grace and
mercy bloom where the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has been shed.


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Christ began His ministry turning water into wine and ended it turning wine
into blood. The first was literal, the second was symbolic. We often use the
word “blood” in a symbolic way. When we speak of family we say that blood is
thicker than water. When we speak of inherited gifts we say, “It’s in his
blood.” We say that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.
We say the murderer has blood on his hands, but we do not necessarily mean that to
be taken literally. Gain that comes at the price of human suffering we call
blood money. In the Old Testament the blood of Abel cries out from the ground.
In the New Testament, Pilate says he is free from the blood of Jesus, while the
crowd says, “Let his blood be on us and on our children.” It is,
then, not surprising that the word has such rich symbolism in Christian hymns
and in preaching.


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