There Must Be Blood

INTRODUCTION: When it comes to the doctrines, the core principles our faith that are presented to us in Scripture there are those topics that we love to talk about, things like , faith, hope, love, and grace. And then there are those topics that we’d honestly much rather not discuss. We don’t like to talk about death, hell, sin, or our topic from last week; “repentance,” why do we avoid such topics, it’s simple they make us uncomfortable for various reasons, and because of that fact many pastors avoid them like the plague. For better or worse you can rest assured that I’m not one of those pastors!

We love to talk about salvation, the freedom from sin that is offered to each of us on the basis of our faith in Christ, but what we often don’t like to talk about is how that salvation is brought about. We like the ending of the story but not necessarily how we get there, consider this passage of scripture which will be our key text for the day. (Hebrews 9:22) What is the Hebrews writer (who I believe to be Paul) talking about? He’s speaking about the atonement, and without flinching he says that “There must be blood”

It’s the very fact that the atonement focuses on blood that it is often downplayed or outright ignored. Unless we’re a person who’s enamored with vampires, we’d much rather keep the blood in the veins where it belongs. Most of us have seen the movie the Passion of the Christ, and most people found it to be rather gory and revolting, and that is the reaction that we should have had, why… because it was gory and revolting! It also paled in comparison to reality.

BACKGROUND: This passage that is at the heart of the message today was written sometime in the 60’s AD during a time of persecution against the church. During this time some in the church that were of Jewish decent were reverting to Judaism in an effort to avoid this persecution. Hebrews is a letter to these Jewish Christians encouraging them to remain faithful to Christ, because what is offered under the New Covenant is “better” than that offered under the Old Covenant, and he breaks down this fact in terms that his readers would have no problem understanding, and in our case here he shows how the “atonement” under the New Covenant is far superior to the “atonement” under the Old Covenant.

PROPOSITION: So even though it’s an often ignored and sometimes misunderstood doctrine, that is a core principle of our faith, scripture makes it clear to us what the atonement is and why it’s so important.

TRANSITION: To understand this concept we have to look at the three primary issues that are at its core, its nature, necessity, and extent. So we begin by looking at the nature of the atonement.

I. NATURE

a. The essence of the atonement, which is the central issue of our faith, is that Jesus gave Himself as a substitute to suffer the penalty of sin in our place

• Now some challenge this idea based on the grounds that its immoral to punish an innocent person in the place of a guilty one who actually deserves it, even if the former in a willing party

• Jesus being God is essential to him being able to do what Scripture tells us that He’s done, both in the atonement and later in His resurrection