… ¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

While we don’t know what physical blood type Jesus had, we know it was spiritually blood type “S,” for salvation. It is far superior to the blood any animal or, for that matter, any other human being could provide. While the blood of animals dealt with outward actions of transgression against God’s law, the blood of Christ, according to our passage today, deals with our conscience. For it is not the outward actions that defile us, but the thoughts and attitudes of the inner person.

The scribes of Jesus’ time prided themselves in knowing the law thoroughly, but our Lord, “… knowing their thoughts said, ‘Why are you thinking evil in your hearts?’” (Matt 9:4). Is this not what the proverb means, “For as he thinks within himself, so he is…” (Prov 23:7)? They kept the law outwardly, but inwardly they were failures.

The blood of Christ is superior to that of sacrificial animals because His sacrifice was offered “through the eternal Spirit” and was perfect in every way. Sacrificial animals needed to be the best of the flock or herd, as determined by outward inspection. But Christ was impeccable in every way, He was eternally “without blemish.” So His sacrifice was perfect for all time, not just temporarily or to be repeated.

Though we transgress the law repeatedly, we do not need to continually offer sacrifices, for it is an eternal sacrifice, not a temporal one that Christ accomplished. It was eternal because it was offered through the “eternal Spirit.” Therefore, the cleansing of our conscience (that is, the complete and thorough forgiveness that, just like the Word of God, penetrates to the dividing of soul and spirit—Heb 4:12) is eternal, once for all.

The irony of the religious life is the vain, but erroneous, belief that outward conformity to the religious laws will bring holiness. Those works are dead, they do not bring spiritual life. The truth about the blood of Christ releases us from such worthless thinking.

It is no wonder that we celebrate, in communion, not just the body broken for us, but also the blood of Christ? “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). We were redeemed, “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. (1 Peter 1:19).

Praise God that I have been forgiven and made clean!