Why all this blood?
From Abel to the temple courts, Scripture is filled with sacrifice. But if the blood of animals could never take away sin, what was God trying to communicate?
It is impossible to study the Scriptures without encountering the frequent mention of blood, sacrifice, and death. There is frequent mention of their necessity, and the Christian world offers myriad explanations for why they have ever been necessary. Indeed, the language of scripture is full of sacrificial terms: expiation, propitiation, atonement.
But very fundamentally: if one believes God to be a rational, intelligent, loving, and lovable person (as many Christians are persuaded), why would God ever want the death of innocent animals?
Why should the suffering of another atone for a guilty party’s sin (as some say, and as is popularly understood)? And how could this be the satisfaction of “divine justice”?
Does this intelligent God really want sacrifice? And if he does, what sort or nature of sacrifice would it be?
It is well documented that many of the religions of antiquity practiced animal sacrifice of some kind. The reasons varied, but one idea runs through many of these systems: that an offering must, in some sense, placate the deity so that, by sacrifice, the worshipper might turn away his wrath and make him willing once more to bless and help. In extreme circumstances, some peoples even offered human sacrifices, the life of another being given in the hope of averting calamity or obtaining the favor of an offended god.
Is this how we are to understand God?
Suppose again that the Creator is a most intelligent and thoughtful person, who wants nothing higher than the happiness, freedom and individuality of his creatures, so that they may freely give him their love, reverence and worship. How then does it make sense to say in the same breath that this same person must be placated by the very sort of gifts that men supposed would placate the gods of antiquity?
Socrates raised this problem in essentially the same form. In Plato’s Euthyphro, when piety is eventually described as knowing how to please the gods by prayer and sacrifice, Socrates reduces the proposal to something remarkably crude: an art of asking and giving — a sort of commerce between gods and men. Earlier in the same dialogue he had also expressed his difficulty with stories that attributed morally objectionable conduct to the gods. If the stories made the gods worse than good men, why should they be believed merely because they were stories about gods? (Euthyphro 6a–b; 14e–15a.)
And if we make the God of the Bible (this intelligent and thoughtful person) into that kind of god, who must be placated by sacrifice and reconciled to people by means of it, doesn’t that leave us with essentially the same problem?
Why would God want sacrifice at all?
The history of sacrifice in the Bible
The faintest possible hint of sacrifice in the Bible is in Genesis 3, where after the disobedience of man—which, among other effects, renders the man and his wife naked—there is mention of animal skins which God makes to clothe the couple. The passage does not actually say that these animals were sacrificed, so perhaps we should not make it say more than it does.
From Genesis 4 onwards, however, the history of animal offerings is well established. Abel brings the firstborn of his flock. Noah offers burnt offerings after the flood. Abraham repeatedly builds altars and offers sacrifices. And under Israel this eventually becomes part of an organized system of rites and ceremonies.
By the first century the scale had become enormous. Josephus reports that at one Passover the priests counted 256,500 sacrifices (Jewish War 6.9.3). Whatever we make of the population calculations Josephus draws from that figure, the scale of the sacrificial system by this time is difficult to miss.
But why did all these animals have to die?
What did God really want in the offering of them, if he really wanted them at all?
One very striking passage on this question is in Hebrews:
“As it is, however, the sacrifices serve year after year to remind people of their sins. For the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins. For this reason, when Christ was about to come into the world, he said to God: ‘You do not want sacrifices and offerings, but you have prepared a body for me. You are not pleased with animals burned whole on the altar or with sacrifices to take away sins. Then I said, “Here I am, to do your will, O God, just as it is written of me in the book of the Law.”’” — Hebrews 10:3–7, GNB
There is an important distinction here.
Hebrews does not mean that the sacrifices had no divinely appointed function. Leviticus itself repeatedly says that the priest would “make atonement” for the sinner and that “he shall be forgiven” (Leviticus 4:26, 31, 35; 5:10, 13, 16, 18).
What Hebrews denies is that the blood of an animal could itself take away sin.
The animal could not change the character of the worshipper. Its blood possessed no magical quality. Nor could it change God from unwilling to forgive into willing to forgive.
The sacrifices could serve the purpose God had appointed them to serve. But the blood of a bull or a goat could never itself remove sin from the universe or from the human heart.
And perhaps this is also where we should recover something of what the word atonement was originally meant to convey in English. The old word was literally an at-one-ment—the bringing together again of parties who had become estranged, a reconciliation. Tyndale could even use “atonement” in Romans 5:11 where modern translations normally read “reconciliation.”
We should not, of course, use the history of an English word to determine the meaning of the Hebrew words used in Leviticus. But the old sense captures remarkably well the end toward which the entire process moves.
Sin has separated.
Atonement restores.
Those who have become estranged are brought again into fellowship—into the oneness that existed before the estrangement.
“I have given it to you”
This distinction becomes even more significant when we listen to God’s own explanation of the blood:
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls.” — Leviticus 17:11
“I have given it to you.”
That reverses the direction in which sacrifice is so often understood.
It is not first of all that man finds something precious enough to give God, and so persuades God to forgive him. God says he gave them the blood.
The sacrificial provision therefore already presupposes God’s gracious disposition toward the sinner. God is not waiting to be persuaded to provide a means of return. He provides it.
And why blood?
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood.”
The blood represented life. God was not declaring his need for suffering. He was teaching, through the symbol of blood, something about life, sin, death, and restoration.
Sin has brought man into the realm of death.
God is still the giver of life.
And he gives the estranged worshipper the means of coming again into communion with him.
Why blood, though?
One might reasonably ask: if God did not need blood to forgive, could he not have found some other way to teach these things?
Of course he could.
The point is not that there was something in blood itself which God absolutely required, but that there was something in the use of blood which was particularly fitted to impress the lesson upon the mind of the worshipper.
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood.”
Sin and death can very easily remain abstractions. One may hear that sin causes death, repeat it, even believe it in some general sense, and yet never really appreciate what is involved in the statement.
The sacrifice made the matter visible.
Here was life.
Here was blood.
Here was an innocent creature becoming involved in consequences it had not itself produced.
And perhaps there is something of the human condition brought to view here, for we are very capable of minimizing sin so long as its consequences remain unseen. We excuse it, rename it, explain it away, or suppose that because no immediate consequence has followed, nothing very serious has happened.
The sacrifice would not permit the worshipper to do this so easily. It forced the matter before the senses.
Sin was presented not merely as a broken rule written somewhere in a book, which some legal process might placate. Not so. It affected life. It involved the innocent, and it ended in death.
This may help explain why Hebrews says that in the sacrifices there was “a remembrance again made of sins every year” (Hebrews 10:3). God was teaching through something the worshipper could see and feel.
The blood was therefore not something God needed to see before he could forgive.
It was something the worshipper needed to see to understand.
Atonement is wider than punishment.
This also helps explain why the language of atonement in Leviticus is considerably broader than that of punishment. On the Day of Atonement, blood was applied not merely to persons but to the sanctuary itself:
“And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel…” — Leviticus 16:16
And again:
“He shall cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.” — Leviticus 16:19
That is enormously significant.
Consider that the sanctuary has committed no crime. You cannot punish an altar. A building cannot receive somebody else’s legal sentence.
Yet atonement is made for them.
Whatever else atonement means, therefore, we cannot reduce it simply to punishing one party in the place of another.
In the sanctuary it includes cleansing. The removal of defilement. The setting right of what sin has disturbed—the restoration of things to their proper relationship with God.
And there are other indications of the same thing.
The very poor Israelite who could not afford even two birds could bring fine flour as a sin offering:
“But if he be not able to bring two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, then he that sinned shall bring for his offering the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering…” — Leviticus 5:11
And after the offering:
“The priest shall make an atonement for him… and it shall be forgiven him.” — Leviticus 5:13
Consider that, in this case, the worshipper shed no blood, yet the priest made atonement, and God forgave him.
This alone should make us careful about turning Hebrews 9:22 into an absolute statement that God is legally incapable of forgiving unless somebody dies.
The blood mattered because of what God had appointed it to mean—not because there exists in God some inherent necessity to see blood before he can extend mercy.
Without shedding of blood?
There is a famous passage in Hebrews that seems at first to establish precisely such a rule:
“And almost all things are cleansed with blood, according to the Law, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” — Hebrews 9:22
It is easy to see how language like this, detached from the larger meaning of the system, could be understood to mean:
“If there is no shedding of blood, God cannot forgive me. Therefore blood is the thing which makes God willing to forgive.”
And once the symbol has been turned into a payment, the question naturally becomes one of quantity. If some blood satisfies God, might more blood satisfy him more? If my sin is very great, do I need a greater sacrifice?
But notice two qualifications in Hebrews itself.
“Almost all things.”
And: “according to the Law.”
The writer is describing the ritual order of the sanctuary. He is not necessarily announcing a metaphysical law which limits God’s ability to forgive.
What God actually wanted
Micah seems almost to take this sacrificial logic and pursue it until its absurdity becomes visible:
“With what shall I come to the LORD And bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, With yearling calves? Does the LORD take pleasure in thousands of rams, In ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give Him my firstborn for my wrongdoings, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, mortal one, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?” — Micah 6:6–8
Notice the escalation.
A calf.
Thousands of rams.
Ten thousand rivers of oil.
My firstborn.
How much does God require before God is satisfied?
And God’s answer is almost startling in its simplicity. You have misunderstood what I wanted.
“Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”
Again, the actual requirements of God stand in complete contradiction to the transactional conception of sacrifice.
The same thing appears in Psalm 50:
“I do not reprimand you because of your sacrifices and the burnt offerings you always bring me. And yet I do not need bulls from your farms or goats from your flocks; all the animals in the forest are mine and the cattle on thousands of hills… If I were hungry, I would not ask you for food, for the world and everything in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Let the giving of thanks be your sacrifice to God, and give the Almighty all that you promised.” — Psalm 50:8–14
This is especially interesting because God does not rebuke them for failing to sacrifice. He says, “I do not reprimand you because of your sacrifices.”
They were sacrificing. That was not the problem.
The problem was what they had come to think the sacrifices did.
God almost caricatures the pagan conception they had formed of the sacrifices:
Do you imagine that I eat bulls?
Do you think I drink goats’ blood?
Do you think I need something from you?
No.
“Let the giving of thanks be your sacrifice.”
The worshipper was more important to God than the animal. “It is your prayer of thanksgiving I want to hear. It is the faithfulness represented by the payment of your vows I would be pleased to see.”
Some in Israel understood this very clearly. For example, David, after his great sin, prayed:
“You do not want sacrifices, or I would offer them; you are not pleased with burnt offerings. My sacrifice is a humble spirit, O God; you will not reject a humble and repentant heart… Then you will be pleased with proper sacrifices and with our burnt offerings; and bulls will be sacrificed on your altar.” — Psalm 51:16–19
David saw something his sin had made painfully clear. The death of an animal, no matter how precious, could not grant him that which he really needed.
An animal could not repent for him.
An animal could not make him truthful.
An animal could not create in him a clean heart.
And so he prayed:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God.” — Psalm 51:10
The sacrifice God wanted was the worshipper’s humility and repentance —the willingness to let God act on the sin.
This was the intended effect of the sacrifices. God meant that the offering should affect the worshipper: that seeing what sin does should make him sorry enough for his sin to desire a change of heart and a reformation of the life.
The sacrifice did not bypass the worshipper’s mind. It addressed it.
It was meant to teach.
To confront.
To persuade.
To bring the sinner to repentance and once more into harmony with God.
And notice that David does not finally abolish sacrifice.
“Then you will be pleased with proper sacrifices.”
There was therefore a proper way of sacrificing and an improper way. A sacrifice offered as a substitute for repentance was meaningless. A sacrifice offered from a heart already turned toward God could express exactly what God intended.
More than this, David appears to understand that God’s favor precedes an acceptable sacrifice.
He first prays for mercy. For cleansing. For restoration. For God to be gracious to Zion.
And then: “Then you will be pleased with proper sacrifices.”
The sacrifice, in his understanding, was never meant to purchase the favor of God or to reconcile God to the worshipper. Rather, it belonged within the process by which the worshipper was reconciled to God.
This is the same appeal repeated through the prophets:
“I want your constant love, not your animal sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me than burn offerings to me.” — Hosea 6:6
And:
“Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.” — 1 Samuel 15:22
And perhaps most strikingly:
“For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices. But this thing I did command them: Listen to and obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people.” — Jeremiah 7:22–23
Jeremiah cannot mean that the Torah contains no commandments concerning sacrifice. It plainly does. The force of the passage is the contrast in priority.
What God was after was never ritual for ritual’s sake.
Obey my voice.
Know me.
Trust me.
Walk with me.
The sacrifices were subordinate to that purpose.
Over and over, then, God appeals to a people who had made a ritual end of what he meant to be a moral and epistemic process—a means by which they were to understand sin, understand him, and return to a life of trust and obedience.
By the days of Christ, the temple itself had become a marketplace. Ellen White comments quite insightfully:
“As Jesus came into the temple, He took in the whole scene. He saw the unfair transactions. He saw the distress of the poor, who thought that without shedding of blood there would be no forgiveness for their sins. He saw the outer court of His temple converted into a place of unholy traffic. The sacred enclosure had become one vast exchange.” — The Desire of Ages, p. 157.2
That sentence is remarkable: “They thought that without shedding of blood there would be no forgiveness for their sins.”
The symbol had become the mechanism. What God had given to teach them something had become something they thought God needed from them.
So did God want sacrifice?
Yes and no.
God prescribed sacrifices. But the testimony of Scripture is equally emphatic that he did not desire slaughter as an end in itself.
He did not need the animals. He did not eat them. Their blood did not nourish him. Their death did not persuade him to become merciful.
Nor does the sacrificial system require us to believe that punishment had to be legally inflicted upon somebody before God could forgive.
The blood was something he had given them.
The sacrifices were an enacted lesson in the terrible seriousness of sin.
Sin defiles.
It ruptures communion.
It hurts the innocent.
It corrupts.
And it ends in death.
But the lesson did not end with death.
The blood represented life. God was teaching that while sin brings death, life remains his gift; that he can cleanse defilement, forgive guilt, renew the covenant, and restore fellowship.
The sacrifice was therefore supposed to do something to the mind and heart of the worshipper.
It was supposed to make sin visible enough to hate.
To awaken gratitude.
To bring repentance.
To restore trust.
To teach the worshipper to listen again to God.
To reconcile the estranged worshipper to the One from whom sin had separated him.
God never meant the blood to make him gracious.
He gave it because he already was gracious.
And this is why the sacrifices could point forward to Christ without teaching that God needed Christ’s death before he could forgive. They pointed forward because Christ would eventually demonstrate in reality what they had taught in symbol.
The innocent would become involved in the consequences of the guilty.
Sin and death would show themselves for what they really are.
God would reveal his provision of life more fully than he ever had before.
And reconciliation would no longer appear merely in animals and ritual.
Which brings us inevitably to the much larger question:
Why then did Jesus have to die?
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