The Life is in the Blood by Robert Peck

Part 1 in the series “Precious is the Blood”

It used to bother me when I read Old Testament passages about life being in the blood. I was trying to understand it from a natural perspective. How does blood make us alive? Yes, without blood we die, but the same is true of the heart, or brain, why not say the life is in the brain since we can’t live without it? I didn’t realize at the time that God was not so much stating a medical fact as He was decreeing a thing to make it so.

Let’s look at a few passages that equate life with blood.

Genesis 9:4  But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 

That verse was about animals, but here’s one about people.

Psalm 72:14  He will redeem their life from oppression and violence; And precious shall be their blood in His sight. 

The life of people and animals is declared to be in the blood.

Leviticus 17:14 tells us, “for it is the life of all flesh. Its blood sustains its life.” Other translations say:

• the blood of it is for the life thereof (KJV)
• its blood is its life (ESV)
• the blood of it represents the life of it (AMPC)
• the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof (ASV)

The word of a king is law. Where a king rules as sovereign, whatever comes out of his mouth is law the moment it is uttered.

For example, if a king says, “Tuesday is a holiday,” it doesn’t mean the king is smart enough to read a calendar and realize Tuesday is a holiday; it means the king has just made Tuesday a holiday by decreeing it to be so.

Also, the creator of a thing has moral authority over his creation to make, design, or even recreate it as he sees fit.

God is not explaining medical facts in these passages. Rather, as our Creator and the sovereign king, He is decreeing that the life of all flesh – man and animal – is hereby made to be in the blood thereof. The decree of the Creator/King makes this a literal and legal fact.

By divine decree, blood is the life of all flesh, sustains the life of all flesh, is for the life of all flesh, represents the life of all flesh, and is all one with the life of all flesh. You cannot separate life from blood or blood from life; it’s established by legal decree.

This explains how blood can be said to be innocent.

Deuteronomy 19:10  lest innocent blood be shed in the midst of your land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and thus guilt of bloodshed be upon you.

Blood is an inanimate object without free will or choice of action. Yet blood can be guilty or innocent based on whose veins it runs through, as their life, person, and essence is legally and literally bound to that blood. For this reason, God declares the shedding of innocent blood to be an abomination, yet justice requires the life of the guilty, not because of the quality of the blood, but because the life and essence of the person is in, joined to, and by decree all one with the blood.

In the Old Testament, God used the shedding of the blood of animals to teach the lesson that the wages of sin is death – blood (life) must be shed for sin.

However, the blood (life) of animals could not atone for the sins of men; it only covered them over for a season.

If man is guilty of sin – a capital offense – then the blood (life) of man must be shed. But the shedding of our blood would not take away sin; it would only be the just penalty for sin. To take away sin, the blood (life) of one not guilty of sin had to be offered in place of those who had sinned.

Robert Peck lives in Spokane Valley, Washington. As a Christian man who finds himself compelled to take a stand in the civil arena, Bob has served in political campaigns, promoted Constitutional education in the community, provides technical assistance to various Constitutional causes, and also manages to write the occasional article. He is an elder in ZChurch and a tech leader on the ZTeam.