In the ancient world people saw the life of a creature as residing in its blood. For this reason, there were all sorts of pagan rituals that involved the use of blood. These included ritually fertilizing a field with animal blood and consuming animal blood to gain some power. This partly explains the instructions here in Leviticus 17. But the idea of the life being in the blood is taken up symbolically here to ingrain a deeper truth. The blood of any animal that could be used for sacrificial offerings (ox, lamb, goat) was to be given wholly to God. The key idea at work here is that all life comes from God and therefore belongs to God. No one has the right to spill the blood of any creature. But God allowed his people to kill a strictly limited category of animals for food, provided that the blood was given back to him. The blood of authorised animals was to be used exclusively as a sacrificial substitute, life for life, for humans. And this of course was to prepare the way for the ultimate outpouring of sacrificial blood to which all previous sacrifices pointed. The blood of Christ represents God’s payment, life for life, for us. Jesus therefore invites us to symbolically drink his blood in the Lord’s supper: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them” (John 6:56). In other words, Jesus did not just give his life for you, he makes his life dwell in you. Your life always belonged to God, as all life belongs to him. But now you are doubly his.
Open your heart to Jesus today and let him fill you with life by the Holy Spirit.
Read Leviticus 17
