Edifier du Jour-Leviticus 17:7-12 (NASB)

7 "They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which they play the harlot. This shall be a permanent statute to them throughout their generations."' 8 "Then you shall say to them, 'Any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who offers a burnt offering or sacrifice, 9 and does not bring it to the doorway of the tent of meeting to offer it to the LORD, that man also shall be cut off from his people. 10 'And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. 11 'For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.' 12 "Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, 'No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood.'

Verses 8 and 9 are interesting. Sacrifices are to be made at the proper place. One can't just make a sacrifice on one's own. I'm not quite sure if this is a proper hermeneutic, but that points to needing to be part of a church rather than worshiping God on ones own.

However, the more interesting part is 10-12. Eating blood isn't kosher, and not just because God was protecting them against blood-borne diseases or from pagan rituals. "Nothing but the blood of Jesus" is going through my mind right now, followed by Dubya's SOTU favorite "there, is power, power, wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb." Our life is in the blood of Jesus, which makes an opaque shield over our sins.

Question-how is it that we're not to eat blood here, yet Jesus in communion has us drinking of his blood? Mere metaphor? Drinking versus eating? Changed covenant?

Comments

[Lee Anne Millinger]

I've wondered about the blood question myself, Mark. I have heard some people interpret it to mean that Christians should not receive blood transfusions -- but that may just be a small sect. Do you know where this comes from? Is it Scriptural?

[Larry]

Since Baptist believe the drink is symbolic of Christ's blood, and not the real blood,
we avoid that problem. The O.T. presents the picture of life in the blood. You could not consume it and you could not shed it,
only God could give and take life. So, blood could be shed on the alter, for only in the shedding of blood could sin be forgiven. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice who once for all shed his blood, entering "the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12). We drink the wine\juice to commerate the shedding of his blood for us.

[Mark Byron]

To Lee Anne-I think the Jehovah's Witnesses have that quirk about blood transfusions. To the best of my knowledge, that isn't scriptural, but it is a err-on-the-side-of-caution application.

To Larry. Most evangelicals, myself included, see it as symbolic as well. I'm not sure how the transubstantiation crowd sees it and deals with that.

[craig]

1. I read verses 8-9 in the light of 7, as a prohibition against private devotions to other gods: offer it to the LORD, or don't do it. I read 10-12 as a prohibition against holding back some of the offering for eating; here, the sin is trying to offer your sacrifice and have it too.

2. "The transubstantiation crowd", or anyone else who affirms the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, sees this as a sacrament. This is a different language than you descendants of Calvin and Zwingli speak. It is the language of the early Church.

The fundamental premise of Christianity is that God has created everything for a purpose, including the physical world. God chooses to use the physical world to convey His graces to man (otherwise why an Incarnation?), and that Christ Himself ordained certain means explicitly for this purpose (Baptism and Eucharist, at the least). These acts have purpose beyond symbolism or mere obedience; they do something to the participant. (A classical definition of a sacrament is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace".) God is not limited in how He may bestow grace upon man, of course.

With respect to Levitical offerings, the implication of eating and drinking Christ's body and blood (John 6: "this is a hard teaching") is that the offering is complete and accepted, and God in his generosity has given it back to us for our own nourishment.