“In Him We Have Redemption Through His Blood”: How Does That Work?

Regarding the fact that the blood of Christ is the price paid for our redemption there is no controversy. In addition to the one cited in the title of this article (Eph. 1:7), the New Testament is replete with verses testifying to this central fact of redemption history. For example, in Colossians 1:20 St. Paul writes that Christ “made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself,” and in Revelation 12:11 we read that the brethren “overcame him [the accuser] by the blood of the Lamb.” In fact, the blood of Christ is key to the New Covenant, which replaced the requirement of the Old Covenant for animal sacrifices. However, even in orthodox Catholic circles there is confusion about how Christ’s sacrifice on the cross bought about our redemption and whether this is the only way this could have been accomplished.

To explain the doctrine of the atonement, we must understand two basic facts. First is the nature of God Himself. In God is the perfection of all virtues, and two of those virtues are justice and mercy. Psalm 7:11 proclaims, “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day,” and Acts 17:31 records St. Paul as preaching, “He hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.” This presents a logical problem: How are justice and mercy to be reconciled? In our justice system, this is accomplished through compromise. The law might call for a certain punishment for an infraction (demanding justice), but a court might sentence the offender to a lesser punishment (showing mercy). In fact, a parole board might later eliminate the remainder of the sentence entirely. God, however, does not compromise. In Him perfect justice and perfect mercy co-exist.

Second, Hebrews 9:22, an important but often neglected verse, proclaims, “Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.” These two facts — the nature of God and the remission of sins through blood — are crucial to understanding the doctrine of atonement.

Let’s begin at the beginning, with the sin of our first parents, the very reason our redemption was necessary. God created Adam and Eve in a state of perfect righteousness. Their destiny, as was the destiny of all generations that would follow them, was to live with Him in perfect peace, each beholding the other face to face. In fact, Scripture tells us man was created in God’s own image (cf. Gen. 1:27), so that each saw the other not as strangers but as friends. (It is worth noting that both male and female were created in God’s image.) However, Adam, representing mankind, destroyed that fellowship by his sin and cast the fate of mankind into a somewhat unpleasant and possibly uncertain future. Much ink has been spilled in speculation over the nature of Adam’s sin, but there is really no need for any quandary here. His sin was simply a matter of disobedience, the root of all sin.

God did not make us men as puppets or pets but as His companions. That fellowship, however, must be entered into by our free choice. Adam, created with free will, chose to disobey God, and by that choice he spoiled all of creation, not only his own union with God but that of all of nature as well. As a result, the Earth now brings forth “thorns and thistles,” and as for man, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Gen. 3:18-19).

At this point, God could have admitted that creating man was a mistake and simply willed him out of existence. This is unthinkable, however, because even in sin man retains the image of God. As an orthodox and learned man speaking on Catholic radio reasoned recently, God could have wiped away man’s sin and simply started over. But, considering the nature of God, this was not possible. By his sin, man incurred a debt — a debt which in justice had to be paid. Simply to ignore man’s sin would have been a contradiction of God’s very nature, and such a thing is not possible.

The redemption of mankind required a reconciliation of both justice and mercy, and God’s perfect plan would accomplish this. However, this plan could not be effected immediately, as much preparation would be necessary. Man’s redemption would take place in God’s own time, at the exact moment He considered propitious. To fill in that gap in time, He instituted a system of animal sacrifice that would mirror the final and perfect sacrifice, and He placed this system in the custody of a single tribe of people whom Scripture calls the Israelites. With them would abide God’s truth and also the entire process of the redemption of the human race.

God’s plan required the shedding of blood through the offering of animals. Actually, we find this requirement very early in Scripture. Even in the beginning, God required of His creation a sin offering. To this end, Adam and Eve’s sons brought their sacrifices as an offering before the Lord. Abel, who was a keeper of sheep, brought the “firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof,” while Cain, a tiller of soil, “brought of the fruit of the ground.” The Lord “had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect” (Gen. 4:3-5). My father, an agricultural specialist and a farmer at heart, was perpetually scandalized by these verses. Why, indeed, was one sacrifice better than the other as a sin offering? The answer lies in Hebrews 9:22, quoted above: “Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.” As it is written in Leviticus 17:11, “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: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”

In fact, the entire system God required of the Israelites is amply set forth in the Book of Leviticus. It can be summarized in three main points:

1. The animal to be sacrificed is to be “a ram without blemish out of the flock” (5:18)

2. The law of the sin offering is that “in the place where the burnt offering is killed shall the sin offering be killed before the Lord: it is most holy” (6:25)

3. The priest who offers the sacrifice “shall eat it: in the holy place shall it be eaten, in the court of the tabernacle of the congregation” (6:26)

The Israelites kept the law of the sin offering, along with an elaborate temple ceremony, for centuries, until the time God chose for the one perfect sacrifice that would fulfill and replace the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant. (It is worth noting that the concept of blood sacrifice to please the gods was nearly universal among primitive peoples, a holdover from the earliest days of human civilization, as illustrated in the story of Cain and Abel.)

For the perfect offering of the New Covenant, a man would be required. For it is written in Scripture, “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. 15:21). As with the lamb of sacrifice in the Old Covenant, this man must be “without blemish out of the flock.” But where to find such a man? For it is also written, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). In the Old Testament story of Abraham and his son Isaac, when Isaac asks Abraham, “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” his father replies, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb” (Gen. 22:7-8). And so it was to be at the threshold of the New Covenant: God the Father would provide the sacrificial lamb, which would be His Son.

In God’s plan, the second person of the Holy Trinity would become a man — and He would become the lamb offered in sacrifice. He would wrap Himself in the flesh of a human being, place Himself in the womb of a human woman, and, as with all men, be born of a human woman, though in the humblest of circumstances. There was, however, one problem to be overcome: God’s total hatred and revulsion of sin, as manifested throughout Scripture. It was unthinkable that the tabernacle in which He would place Himself would be touched by sin. For this plan to reach fruition, a special creature would have to be provided.

So, God in His wisdom created Mary. From the moment of her conception, God infused in her soul sanctifying grace and freed her from all sin. It’s not that Mary was without free will; it’s that her soul was so in tune with the will of God that committing a single sin would be unthinkable for her. Hence, for the fulfillment of God’s plan, Mary’s Immaculate Conception, as defined with infallible precision by Pope Pius IX in his apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus (1854), was necessary. (As an aside, it is equally unthinkable that the womb which contained God Himself for nine months should ever contain any mere human, hence the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. It is worth noting that not even the most radical of the Protestant Reformers — neither Luther, Calvin, nor Zwingli — ever cast doubt on this traditional doctrine of Holy Mother Church.) It is with good reason, therefore, that in the traditional liturgy, Mary is called “the flower of our race.” She is also referred to as the “new Eve.” As Eve was so named by Adam because she was to be the mother of all the living (cf. Gen. 3:20), so also Mary is the mother of all the redeemed. This was confirmed by Christ on the cross when He said to St. John, the only disciple who followed Our Lord to the cross and witnessed His perfect sacrifice, “Behold thy mother!” (Jn. 19:27).

Therefore, God offered Himself in human form as the sacrifice that would redeem man in the only way his redemption could have possibly taken place. God the Son offered His sacrifice on behalf of all men. God the Father accepted that sacrifice in the name of that justice which original sin required. Note that it was the God-Man Himself who was sacrificed, He of two natures, divine and human, united in the hypostatic union, in one person. His shed blood restored the connection between man and God that had been broken by the sin of Adam. From that moment on, justice having been satisfied, God’s perfect mercy could shower down on redeemed mankind. In that one ideal sacrifice, perfect justice and perfect mercy were both satisfied. The judgment of eternal death would no longer cast its pall over mankind.

One question that is often raised is whether every suffering Christ endured during His passion, as recorded in Scripture, was really necessary. Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ (2004) portrays the vicious nature of the last day in the life of Christ. We see His agony in the garden, which caused His sweat to fall as “great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Lk. 22:44). We see His mistreatment at the hands of the Sanhedrin at His trial (cf. Lk. 22:63-71). We see in graphic detail His scourging at the pillar, when Our Lord was beaten nearly senseless by the barbaric Roman soldiers, followed by His crowning with thorns by those who had just whipped Him (cf. Mt. 27:27-31). We behold Him dragging His cross along the Via Dolorosa, a journey He could not complete without the aid of Simon of Cyrene (cf. Mt. 27:32). This has caused many to wonder whether God “overdid it” with the severity of the passion.

Not so! The death of Christ on the cross was sufficient to win for mankind (through the Sacrament of Baptism, in which we are “buried with Him…into death,” Rom. 6:4) the gift of sanctifying grace. But God in His wisdom knew that man in his injured nature was prone to sin again and again. He would need a nearly infinite supply of help (called actual grace) in order to live in a state of grace, acceptable to God, and thus be found eligible to gain entrance into Paradise. The “additional” sufferings Our Lord endured for us established that abundant fount of grace, which is dispensed through His Church in the sacraments, particularly in confession, and during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Indeed, if we only realize the shower of grace poured down on this Earth at every Mass, we could not help but wonder at the inestimable mercy bestowed on us by a loving God. It is here before the altar that we are privileged to consume Christ Crucified under the forms of bread and wine, just as the priests of the Old Covenant were commanded to consume the animal brought as a sin offering.

At His Ascension, Christ told His Apostles, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world” (Mt. 28:20). By this He means not only as a spiritual presence, which we can see in the goodness of others, the wonders of nature, and the powerful love of a mother for her child, but as a physical presence as well. He is with us physically in the Eucharist we consume at Mass, and in the small box, the tabernacle, the centerpiece of every Catholic church in the world, accompanied by a tiny red flame, a reminder of his Real Presence, available day and night for our comfort and adoration. One Protestant is said to have remarked, “If I believed that Jesus was really present in that box, I would never leave.” Such should be the attitude of each one of us who believes: to desire never to leave Christ’s presence through sin, and to adore Him constantly in our hearts.

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