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A crimson blotch expands across the villain’s crisp white shirt. He glances down with the stunned recognition that the hero’s bullet has finally found its mark and his life will soon be ending. He futilely presses his hand against the spreading stain, but he knows his life is over and slumps down in defeat. This scene has often been repeated in our movies over the years. In it, the sudden sight of blood is an immediate signal that everything has changed. While blood contains several components, it’s the red cells that give it its alarming flash. No other color is so associated with warning and danger as the color red. Our stop signs, tail lights, and emergency indicators are always decked in its vibrant hue. The color is arresting, and I’m convinced, precisely because of its age-old connection to blood.

The Bible has much to say about blood, and what it says about it has much to say to us. From the earliest pages of the Bible blood itself has had a voice, even as it called out from the dusty ground beneath the feet of Cain. Indeed, one of the most common terms for murder in Scripture is “bloodshed.” “Bloodthirsty” is the name given to the murderer’s appetite, and his vicious crime presents him “bloodguilty” before both man and God. And all this sanguinary attention in the law of God is for the clearly stated reason that “life is in the blood.” (Lev. 17:14) The law forbade the eating of meat still dripping with the butchered animal’s blood for this very rationale, that it meant its life was there. Even David refused to drink the water that his mighty men had captured from the guarded wells of Bethlehem, for in his mind their jeopardizing feat had turned that humble liquid into blood. “Is this not the blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their lives” he cried and poured it on the ground. (2 Sam. 23:17)

No factory on earth can produce this precious, life-sustaining stuff; its only origin is the inside of our bones. And though countless gallons have been made by mankind’s marrow, that single, ancient fountainhead of Adam is the spring from which each ruddy droplet flows. “He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth….” (Acts 17:26). The Bible knows a vast array of nations, tribes, and tongues, but only recognizes Adam’s one and universal race. Though the scattered members of his seed bear various measures of melanin in their skin, the “one blood” coursing through their veins means the most common attribute among them all is sin. This is the true and perpetual pandemic that marks us all. How could there ever be peace on earth when we all partake of this one polluted spring?

Ah, but here the clear and clarion call of Gospel gladness rises! A babe was born in Bethlehem, a Son of Man, whose mother’s veins flowed with Adam’s stream like us. And yet this new Child didn’t bear the same unholy source, for though His mother hailed from Adam’s faulty line, His Father was the eternally holy One on high. A new creation had begun! First, He lived a perfect life, undoing all that Adam and his tarnished race had done. Then He bore the wrath that curséd line deserved. On the cross, this greater Joshua stepped into the swirling Jordan, which overflowed its banks, and cut off the foul and festering waters that flowed from “very far away at Adam.” (Josh. 3:16) The chosen people who had failed and all the rest of doomed humanity were both, alike, abolished on that tree. “If One died for all then all died.” (2 Cor. 5:14) And this was done “to reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.” (Eph. 2:16) And from the grave, a new humanity arose in Christ, those who once were “far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Eph. 2:13) The only hope for the end of ethnic enmity is to see that it has already been destroyed!

A thousand toppled statues cannot cleanse the guilt of generations past, nor the sinful stain of the present ones who pull them down. Like the hopeless wail of Macbeth as he sought to wipe away his bloody guilt, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”, our nation’s laying hold of things that cannot cleanse, as well. No solutions will be found in earthly governments, for sinful hands control them all. No neutered precincts can remove the hateful hearts long since bittered by abuse. Our Savior’s bloody history is alone our only hope!

So as you wait before the swinging traffic light, or pause before the sign that tells you STOP or see the blazing redness in Autumn’s dying leaves, note that color and remember how His blood has ended enmity and with it, all our strife, for His blood speaks a better word than Abel’s. (Heb. 11:4)

“On the mount of crucifixion, fountains opened deep and wide

Through the floodgates of God’s mercy flowed a vast and glorious tide

Grace and love like mighty rivers, poured incessant from above

Heaven’s peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love”