According to Romans 5:7 we are justified by His blood; according to Ephesians 1:7 we have our redemption through His blood; according to Colossians 1:20 God has made peace through the blood of His cross and thereby reconciled all things to Himself; according to Ephesians 2:13 those that were once far off have been made nigh in the blood of Christ. It is scarcely possible to believe that in this association between the blood of Christ and His saving activity no reference should be intended to the ritual of sacrifice in which the blood plays so prominent a part.
It is scarcely possible to believe that in this association between the blood of Christ and His saving activity no reference should be intended to the ritual of sacrifice in which the blood plays so prominent a part. It has been asserted indeed by Weiss that the effusion of blood figures in these statements simply as the sign of a violent death, so that wherever the blood is mentioned this must be understood as ascribing the saving character of Christ's death to its violent nature and not to its sacrificial import.
This seems to us untenable for three reasons. In the first place, Romans 3:25 and 1 Corinthians 11:25 show that Paul actually associated the blood of Christ with the idea of sacrificial propitiation.
Secondly, elsewhere in the New Testament this association is so plain on the surface as to be recognized by everybody. If Peter and John conceive of the blood of Christ as sacrificial blood, it would be strange if the same or similar expressions, when occurring in Paul, possessed nothing of this association.
And, thirdly, if the reference to the blood of Christ were to be understood from the point of view of the violent character of His death, this would be out of harmony with the apostle's general mode of viewing the death of Christ. Where the violent character of the death is made prominent, emphasis is placed upon its having been inflicted by others, so that Christ appears as sustaining to it a passive rather than an active attitude. But Paul usually emphasizes the very opposite, viz., that Christ voluntarily took upon Himself this death, that it was the culminating act of His obedience, a representation obviously much more in harmony with the sacrificial idea than with that of the blood as the exponent of a violent death.
It is scarcely possible to believe that in this association between the blood of Christ and His saving activity no reference should be intended to the ritual of sacrifice in which the blood plays so prominent a part. It has been asserted indeed by Weiss that the effusion of blood figures in these statements simply as the sign of a violent death, so that wherever the blood is mentioned this must be understood as ascribing the saving character of Christ's death to its violent nature and not to its sacrificial import.
This seems to us untenable for three reasons. In the first place, Romans 3:25 and 1 Corinthians 11:25 show that Paul actually associated the blood of Christ with the idea of sacrificial propitiation.
Secondly, elsewhere in the New Testament this association is so plain on the surface as to be recognized by everybody. If Peter and John conceive of the blood of Christ as sacrificial blood, it would be strange if the same or similar expressions, when occurring in Paul, possessed nothing of this association.
And, thirdly, if the reference to the blood of Christ were to be understood from the point of view of the violent character of His death, this would be out of harmony with the apostle's general mode of viewing the death of Christ. Where the violent character of the death is made prominent, emphasis is placed upon its having been inflicted by others, so that Christ appears as sustaining to it a passive rather than an active attitude. But Paul usually emphasizes the very opposite, viz., that Christ voluntarily took upon Himself this death, that it was the culminating act of His obedience, a representation obviously much more in harmony with the sacrificial idea than with that of the blood as the exponent of a violent death.