Slaying the Vampire God
There is this notion floating around that the God of the Bible is a blood-thirsty rage-aholic whose terrifying wrath can only be held off by the offering of blood. Blood is the only thing that can pacify this God and throughout the Old Testament people offered Him or Her (but most likely Him? – Have you noticed that no one quibbles about the gender of Satan… Could the embodiment of evil be a she? Do we miss something by not seeing that possibility…? Back to business.) the blood of animals as a way to buy time until the ultimate blood offering – the blood of the perfect sacrifice, Jesus. That blood was so good that it satisfied the Vampire God for all time and people could once and for all be spared from His wrath.
Sounds weird and messed up right? Well it should.
It’s also not Biblical.
To spare you the trouble of looking it up, the big GOTCHA! verse for this would be Hebrews 9:22 where the author says, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Found the verse. Open and shut case right? Not even close. One verse does not a Bible make. Even more so when the go to Ah-Ha! verse isn’t even a whole verse or sentence, just a phrase.
The first part of that 9:22 sentence that often gets left out says, “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and…” (bold, italics, and underline mine). So even in Hebrews 9:22 it is clear that there is forgiveness without blood.
I’ll get into the non-vampirish significance of blood in a minute. But let me point out some of the ways and references that God, in the Old Testament, forgave people and offered forgiveness to people without blood.
- In Exodus 30:11-16 God forgave people in exchange for giving money, half a shekel, to the temple.
- In Leviticus 5:11 God says that poor people can use flour – which doesn’t bleed – instead of a lamb or a pair of doves as their sin offering. Freebie – The sacrificial system only prescribed ways for unintentional sins to be forgiven. It is presumed that for intentional sins the Israelites had to repent and look to God for forgiveness.
- In Leviticus 14:29 God instructs the priests to use oil in a priestly ritual as a means of forgiveness and atonement.
- In 2 Samuel 12, God forgives David immediately after he repented – nothing was killed to make that happen.
- In 1 Kings 21, God forgave the evil King Ahab because he humbled himself and repented of his sins – no blood.
- In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God promises forgiveness in response to people turning to God in humility and repentance.
- In 2 Chronicles 32:24-27, God forgave the proud King Hezekiah when he repented and humbled himself – no blood.
- In 2 Chronicles 33, God forgave the evil King Manasseh when he repented and turned to God in faith and humility – again, no blood.
- God forgave the Psalmist (see Psalm 32:5) when he or she confessed their sins and repented.
- In the third chapter of Jonah, God forgave the Ninevites when the responded to Jonah’s message from God with humility, contrition, and repentance towards God – again, no blood.
- Then in the book of Hebrews (10:4), home of the popularly misused GOTCHA verse for this topic, the author says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
- Finally, for verses where God says it isn’t burnt offerings God is after but our hearts being devoted to God and committed to doing what’s right see 1 Samuel 15:22, Psalm 40:6-8, Psalm 50:7-15,23, Psalm 51:17, Proverbs 15:8, Isaiah 1:10-20, Hosea 6:6.
The God of the Bible is not a Vampire God and has never needed blood to forgive. The sacrificial system and the sacrifice of Jesus was never about changing God’s heart towards us, but about getting us to change our hearts towards God.
God was never the one who needed changing. We were, and are. God has always been forgiving (Psalm 86:5, 103, 145:8-9). God has always been running after us. The question is and has always been will we turn to God? Will we accept the forgiveness God is holding out to us?
I hope your answer is yes.
PS – Hopefully I’ll get to write more about what Hebrews chapter 9, and especially verse 22, is really about sometime. It’s good!
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