By: Amy Downey, M.Div., M.A., Ph.D. | May 4, 2025
A few weeks ago, Christians gathered in churches around the world to remember the death, burial, and resurrection of our Messiah Jesus. We remembered the cross, the grave, and the glorious triumph as Jesus rolled the stone away and announced victory over sin and death. Yet … the question that I want to ask is how many of us focus on the blood Jesus shed and the salvific meaning behind it all?
The Redemptive Power of Blood and the Covenants
There are hymns about the redemptive power of the blood that stained Jesus’ cross. However, most of them are older, for it seems as if the blood of Jesus makes us uncomfortable today. Yes, we will admit that Jesus died on a cross, but “The Passion of the Christ” was over twenty years ago, and Mel Gibson’s brutal imagery of Jesus is a distant memory that we do not like to recall. And … that was probably not even brutal enough of a display for what the real Jesus experienced for our sins.
Blood is messy. Blood stains. Blood is, for lack of a better word, bloody. Yet, life is in the blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Heb. 9:22; cf. Lev. 7:11). For … God requires a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. It seems to have begun in the Garden of Eden when an animal of some variety was killed (Gen. 3:21) so that Adam and Eve could cover their nudity. The first murder occurred because God accepted Abel’s blood sacrifice but not Cain’s offering of the fruit of the ground (Gen. 4). The story of blood sacrifices continued throughout Genesis and was especially evident in the life of Abraham in chapters 15 and 22 with the story of the sealing of the Abrahamic Covenant and the Akedah (sacrifice) of Isaac. Blood sacrifices are not just an Exodus through Deuteronomy event for God.
Blood atones for sin in the eyes of God. Blood covers humanity’s errors. Blood replaces what our “best” could not. This was why God required sacrifices in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is why Jesus came to be the ultimate sacrifice for humanity in the Gospels. Blood is life on both a human and an eternal level.
Power of Blood and a Person’s Health
This truth became reality to me with the life and death of my mother. On 12 September 2011, my mama was involved in a horrific car accident. By the time she was care-flighted to Parkland Hospital (Dallas, TX), she was bleeding out, the Trauma Unit was pumping O Negative blood into her as fast as they could, and she was still bleeding out. The doctor tried to prepare my sister and me for the fact that mama would not survive, and so everyone who was with us immediately went to prayer.
Suddenly, and dare I say miraculously, the doctor found the arterial bleed under her tongue and stopped the bleeding. However, over the next three days, mama still had to receive almost nine pints of O Negative blood – including the pints she received the first night in the hospital. Incidentally, the human body only contains 10.5 pints of blood, which meant that mama almost had an entire “lube job.”
In May and June 2020, my sweet mama had a brutal flare-up of her diverticulitis, which she had fought for years. She ultimately began to bleed internally on 14-15 June and the only possible option was a third surgery within six weeks. Additionally, the hospital was low on O Negative blood, and both my sister and I were O Positive (meaning that we had been Rh Factor babies at birth) and could not donate blood to mama. Mama chose to forgo the surgery and she went to Heaven on 20 June 2020 due to internal blood loss from diverticulitis.
The Eternal Blood of Jesus
Blood can be life-giving but a lack of blood is life-taking. But … Jesus’ blood is eternity. The lack of his blood on our lives is the lack of eternity. So … while mama died physically from a lack of blood in June 2020, she entered eternity at that same moment because she was covered in the blood of Jesus from a young age. This uniqueness of blood as it relates to mama’s life and death and eternal joy has never left me. Yes, blood is messy but without it where would any of us be?
About the Author
Amy Downey, M.Div., M.A., Ph.D.
Dr. Amy Downey serves at the President and Director of Tzedakah Ministries, a ministry devoted to sharing the Gospel of Yeshua with Jewish people (http://tzedakahministries.org). Originally from Lubbock, Texas, Amy surrendered her life to full-time Christian service at the age of 16, but still struggled with her call to missions. Afraid of the price she might have to pay, Amy decided to serve God but in her own way. However, and finally, at the age of twenty-eight, Amy followed the mission call to reach the Jewish people with the truth that Jesus (Yeshua) is the Jewish Messiah.
This mission call has taken her across the country to speak in churches and meetings across more than thirty states and four continents (8 countries) about the need for the Christian church to take on the responsibility of Jewish evangelism mandated in Romans 1:16 and 11:11-24. Amy has shared the truth of Jesus to Jewish people on street corners, airplanes, parks, restaurants, and even in churches. In addition, she spent three of the most spiritually challenging and rewarding years of her life in the heart of American Jewish life – New York City.
Amy has a Bachelor of Science in Education degree from East Texas Baptist University and a Master of Arts in Communication and Master of Arts in Theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and was the first woman to complete a Ph.D. in Theology and Apologetics from Liberty University (May 2016). She is also the author of Paul’s Conundrum (2011) and Maimonides’s Yahweh (2019) along with numerous magazine articles and booklets that are available at https://tzedakahministries.org. Amy serves as a contributor and Associate Vice President for Bellator Christi Ministries.
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