“For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” Leviticus 17:11

Many lives have been saved by blood transfusions. Dr. James Blundell, an Englishman, was one of the first doctors to successfully use the technique to save the lives of women who were hemorrhaging after childbirth. Extant etchings poignantly capture Blundell looking on as a woman stands next to the bed of a dying woman and delivers her blood through a tube into the woman’s vein.

The benefits of blood transfusion also impacted soldiers embroiled in the First World War. Battlefield medics carried a wooden box containing two large jars of the life-giving liquid and word quickly spread among the troops that “There’s a bloke who pumps blood into you and brings you back to life even after you’re dead” [Source: P. Brand. P. Yancey. In His Image].

These are wonderful stories but they don’t begin to compare with the blood transfusion that took place when Christ went to the cross of Calvary and shed His blood as a ransom for our sins. Twenty centuries ago Christ voluntarily laid down His life so that we might live. He gave His blood freely, and for everyone. He gave incorruptible blood. And He gave blood that can be transfused into every “blood type” of every person who is prepared to receive it by faith.

This transfusion is unlike any other. You can’t pay for it. The blood that gives eternal life is absolutely free. All you need do to receive this life-giving blood is to trust Him now. For Christ doesn’t convey Himself genetically. He isn’t passed from one generation to the next. If He was then His offspring would be one-half Christ, one-fourth Christ, one-sixteenth Christ, and on and on until only faint evidence of his bloodline remained (cf. P. Brand. P. Yancey. In His Image).

Rather, through His Spirit, He chooses to convey Himself directly and incorruptibly, by offering each of us a transfusion of His blood. John 6:53-57 says, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.”

So if you haven’t done so, trust in Christ today. For “it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” Leviticus 17:11.

 There is a fountain filled with blood

 Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

 And sinners plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains.

W. Cowper