The Importance of Blood

Hebrews 9:11-22

The Bible has much to say about blood, did you know that the average adult has about 5 to 8 pints of blood in his or her body. One unit of blood is roughly the equivalent of one pint. This proportion is much greater in children, and slightly different in men and women.
Men, on average, have five to eight pints while women have four to five pints.
Larger people and populations can go much higher, up to 8-12 pints depending on the size of the person. Blood is a specialized bodily fluid that delivers necessary substances to the body's cells – such as nutrients and oxygen – and transports waste products away from those same cells.  Blood consists of a mildly alkaline aqueous fluid (plasma) containing red cells (erythrocytes), white cells (leukocytes), and platelets; it is red when oxygenated and purple when deoxygenated. Red blood cells carry the protein hemoglobin, which gives blood its color and can combine with oxygen, thus enabling the blood to carry oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. White blood cells protect the body against the invasion of foreign agents (e.g., bacteria). Platelets and other factors present in plasma are concerned in the clotting of blood, preventing hemorrhage. Blood makes up about 7% of your body's weight.  Being someone who has worked around technical folks whose job it was to design and develop new products; I would be so bold as to say that blood is a designed product, and it had to have a designer.

Therefore, it is important to look at what the Designer has to say about the subject: in Genesis 3:21, after man’s eyes were opened to sin, they understood they were naked, and verse 21 tells us that God made garments of skin and clothed them.  This was a substitution death, the shedding of blood by God.   A life had to be sacrificed before Adam and Eve could be clothed physically.   But God has also provided adequate covering for man to stand before Him, clothed in righteousness, and only in Christ is man ever properly clothed.  We also find God talking with Cain about killing his brother, and telling him that Abel’s blood is crying to me from the ground, in Genesis 4:10.

The Scriptures have much to say about the importance God has placed on blood.  In the book of Exodus before the death angel was to come and kill all the first born, they were told; “The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.  No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. (Exodus 12:13)  But a lamb had to die, it was the substitute, its blood was on the door of their houses.  In both Exodus 30:10 and Leviticus 17:11, we have blood as the annual atonement for the sins of each person on the altar.  It is very important to see this from God’s viewpoint; “it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” (Leviticus 17:11b) 

Now that brings us back to Hebrews, and remember in chapter 9:7 when it was reminding the Jewish Christian of how they in the past got a yearly pardon from their sins.  “But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.  The Holy Spirit wanted both those Jewish Christians and you and me to understood that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness, Hebrews 9:22.  Our Designer, who is also our High Priest, stated in Matthew 26:28, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  And the apostle John said; “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  (1 John 1:7)  Eternal Life is found in the blood of Jesus!

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice