There is only one blood sacrifice that saves us and that is the blood of Christ on the cross.

Before Christ, people made yearly sacrifices of lambs without blemish to atone for their sins and become acceptable to God. But Jesus blood is the last, final sacrificial blood shed in atonement for anyone’s sins that counts to our Heavenly Father. He came down himself in the body of Christ and took our punishments in our stead, because we are too weak to do it for ourselves in any meaningful way.

There are some who still punish themselves to the point of drawing blood in the belief that this will please our, but it is effectively saying that Christ’s blood was not enough, and I think this may be offensive to him.  

Only the blood of Jesus in acceptable, or indeed needed, to atone for our sins.

When Jesus told this to those who were following him, saying that only those who ate his flesh and drank his blood would have life,  it caused derision amongst the crowd. They could not understand what he was saying and took it literally to mean they had to eat and drink his physical body and blood. But Jesus was talking about the message he was bringing. He was saying that nothing else could save them but Christ who was about to give up his body and blood for the love of humanity.

John 6:53-54 says;

‘Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will *raise them up at the last day.’

 Verse 66 says, ‘from this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.’

We need to understand the importance of his blood, because we all need it to cover our sins…..and we all have sins.

And we all need to ‘eat’ his teachings every day like food, because his body was given to feed us with good news.

We need to thank our God for the love he revealed to us through Jesus Christ, and for the indwelling guidance of his Holy Spirit to lead us in all truth.

This is how I understand my God.

Read for yourself, see what you think.

Notes:

* As I understand it, the word raise in this sentence comes from the word Antistemi which means 1/ to cause to stand up or rise, 2/ to raise up from the dead; to bring into existence.