Blood

Blood, in Scripture’s own vocabulary, is the life of a living creature — “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11) — and for that reason it functions in the Bible as the substance of atonement and the matter of covenant.

The text says that the eating of blood was forbidden from the earliest listings of human obligation, since blood is the creature’s life (Genesis 9:4; Deuteronomy 12:23), and Leviticus grounds the prohibition in the altar: the blood is what is given “to make atonement for your souls” (Leviticus 17:11). Blood is also what ratifies covenant — “Behold, the blood of the covenant which Yahweh has made with you” (Exodus 24:8) — and the letter to the Hebrews states the principle generally: “apart from shedding of blood there is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). The same material carries guilt when it is shed unjustly: the blood of Abel cries out from the ground (Genesis 4:10), and blood shed in the land defiles it (Numbers 35:33).

The New Testament writers apply this whole complex to Christ. Redemption and forgiveness are “through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7); the assembly was “purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28); the price paid was “precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:18–19). The same blood cleanses — “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7), and Christ “offered himself without defect to God” to “cleanse your conscience from dead works” (Hebrews 9:14) — and it consecrates: “the blood of an eternal covenant” (Hebrews 13:20), with believers “sprinkled with his blood” (1 Peter 1:2). Revelation ties it to purchase from “every tribe, language, people, and nation” (Revelation 5:9), to washing “in the Lamb’s blood” (Revelation 7:14), and to victory over the accuser (Revelation 12:11); Revelation 1:5 likewise speaks of being washed from sins by his blood. The Supper’s words give the phrase its covenant frame: “this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

Christian traditions differ over how this language is to be understood. Catholic and Orthodox teaching read the eucharistic cup as a genuine participation in Christ’s blood and the Eucharist as a sacramental sharing in his one sacrifice, whereas most Protestant bodies treat the Supper as sign, memorial, or real spiritual feeding while locating the work of the blood chiefly in a once-for-all atonement; within Protestant theology the emphasis falls variously on penal satisfaction, on cleansing, or, in a Christus Victor reading of Revelation 12:11, on triumph over the powers. Traditions also divide over Acts 15:29, where the apostolic letter asks Gentile believers to abstain from blood — some churches still keep this as a rule of practice, others regard it as a temporary concession no longer binding.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.