Body and Blood of Christ

“ As the blood sprinkled upon the door-posts and the lintels of the doors was the sign by which the Angel of the Lord was to know the homes of the Israelites, and deliver their first-born from death, so the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin and delivers us from eternal death.
You and I and all mankind must die, but after this death of the body there comes either everlasting life or spiritual death. Now, when the spirit leaves the body, or is separated from these [233] bodies, we speak of the body as being dead. ”

“ It is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given to us as food for the sanctification of our souls and bodies. "He that eateth my Flesh, and drinketh my Blood, hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day." ”

“ It was simply the blood as the vehicle of the soul, when sprinkled or poured out upon the altar, that is to say, it was the surrender of an innocent life to death, and through death to God, that was the medium of expiation. Even in the sacrifice of Christ it was not by the shedding of blood, or simply by the act of dying, that His death effected reconciliation, but by the surrender of His life to death, in which He not only shed His blood for us, but His body also was broken for us, to redeem us from sin and reconcile us to God. ”

“ Behold and see! The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood descended down into Hell and burst her bands and delivered all that were there which belonged to the Court of Heaven. The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood overfloweth all Earth, and is ready to wash all creatures of sin, which be of goodwill, have been, and shall be. The precious plenty of His dearworthy blood ascended up into Heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there is in Him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father,—and is, and shall be as long as it needeth;—and ever shall be as long as it needeth. ”

“ And if one part of this sacrament be more necessary than the other, it seems to be the cup; since it represents the blood of Christ, to which remission of sins and our redemption are more often ascribed in Scripture than to his body. It is trifling in the Romanists to say that the blood is with the body: since in the eucharist we commemorate, not the life of our Lord, but his death, in which the blood was separated from his body ”

“ Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit. The word flesh is common in Scripture, as is also the word spirit, and the Apostles usually present the two in contrast. The sense is this: that Christ, through His sufferings, is taken out of this life that consists in flesh and blood, as a man on earth who lives by flesh and blood,—walks and stands, eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes, sees, hears, grasps, and feels,—and, in brief, whatever the body does while it is sensible; to all this Christ has died. This is what St. Paul calls a natural body,—that is, the animal life. ”

“ It is not our blood relations who are the nearest to our hearts, but those who are our brethren in the blood of Christ—the children of the Church who fall away." He showed me that the black and gangrened side of the body would soon be cured; that the putrefied flesh which had collected around the wounds represented heretics who divide one from the other in proportion as they increase; that the dead flesh was the figure of all who are spiritually dead, and who are void of any feeling ”

“ One great point for which our divines have contended, in opposition to Romish errors, has been the reality of that presence of Christ's Body and Blood to the soul of the believer which is affected through the operation of the Holy Spirit notwithstanding the absence of that Body and Blood in Heaven. ”

“ If, through loss of blood, or weakness of body, he was necessitated to halt, he was obliged to wait for healing and strength. He undertook his journey; and while he halted under a large shady tree, where the gospel was sometimes preached, one of the missionaries came and preached in his hearing from these words: "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." ”

“ The real atonement — so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy — needs to be understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity, — this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus' life, purchasing the freedom of mortals from sin and death. ”

“ It is a soft, delicate hand; in its palm is a wound, from that wound there oozes out a drop of blood upon the weighed and wanting soul. Instantly the scales go down, till the beam hands are evenly poised, and a voice is heard: "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." ”

“ If we are—if we rely on him and his blood only, and are willing to give up ourselves to him, then the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. No matter though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. ”

“ May we all learn to give the blood of Christ its due place. It is so precious in God's sight that He will not suffer aught else to be added to or mingled [307] with it. "The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." ”

“ The blood is the poured-out life of the Son of God, given as the price, the atonement, the substitute, for the forfeited life of the believer in Jesus Christ. Any poor sinner who receives Christ as God’s gift is cleansed from all sin by His Blood. ”

“ We have in this day professed Christians who are so rarefied and etherealized that they do not want a religion of blood. What do you want? You seem to want a religion of brains. The Bible says: "In the blood is the life." No atonement without blood. Ought not the apostle to know? What did he say? "Ye are redeemed not with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of Christ." You put your lancet into the arm of our holy religion and withdraw the blood, and you leave it a mere corpse, fit only for the grave. ”

“ When Christ, the Lord, died upon the cross and but one drop of blood was left in His heart, His Heavenly Father asked Him: "My dear Son, mankind is saved; to whom wilt thou give the last drop of thy red blood?" ”

“ The same Jesus who raised himself from the dead, said, "This is my body—This is my Blood;" and if we believe that he is truly God, we must believe that the Holy Eucharist is indeed his flesh and blood. ”

“ There is a word which you believe as well as we: ‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ Now surely those who are cleansed in this precious blood need no purifying fires. And there is nothing else. The Book of God tells of no other way. ”

“ The blood that, on the darkest Friday the world ever saw, oozed, or trickled, or poured from the brow, and the side, and the hands, and the feet of the illustrious sufferer, back of Jerusalem, in a few hours coagulated and dried up, and forever disappeared; and if man had depended on the application of the literal blood of Christ, there would not have been a soul saved for the last eighteen centuries. ”

“ When we pay attention to reason, God seems to propose impossible matters in the Christian Creed. To reason it seems absurd that Christ should offer His body and blood in the Lord's Supper; that Baptism should be the washing of regeneration; that the dead shall rise; that Christ the Son of God was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, etc. Reason shouts that all this is preposterous. Are you surprised that reason thinks little of faith? Reason thinks it ludicrous that faith should be the foremost service any person can render unto God.
Let your faith supplant reason. ”

“ If there were not so much indeterminateness of thought, so much unthinking reception of traditional, confused impressions of Scripture texts, it would be superfluous to observe that by the word blood here, and in all parallel passages, is meant simply and literally death: the mere blood, the mere shedding of the blood, of Christ, of course, could have no virtue, no moral efficacy, of any sort. ”

“ Men's lives have been prolonged by the transfusion of blood from vigorous frames. Jesus Christ passes His own blood into our veins and makes us immortal. The Church chose for one of its ancient emblems of the Saviour the pelican, which fed its young, according to the fable, with blood from its own breast. ”

“ If Jesus Christ intrust to his care the souls he has bought by his own blood, what an awful account will he have to give in the day of judgment, if any of them perish through his neglect! Though the sinner, dying in his sins, has his own blood upon his head, yet, if the watchman has not faithfully warned him, his blood will be required at the watchman's hand. ”

“ Christ instructed them, and said unto them: It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words, which I speak unto you, are spirit and life. As if he had said: Understand SPIRITUALLY what I have spoken. You are NOT about to eat this identical body, which you see; and you are NOT about to drink this identical blood, which they who crucify me will pour out. I have commended unto you a certain sacrament: which, if SPIRITUALLY understood, will vivify you. Though it must be celebrated visibly, it must be understood invisibly. ”

“ In Chapters XI and XII the Soul stands alone, face to face with the Lord, who appears to it in two successive visions,—first as Christ alive and walking along all stained with blood from head to foot; and, on a later occasion, as Christ evidently motionless and presumably dead, with His five fountain-wounds, which are sending drops of burning blood towards mankind. ”

“ What will you say when their blood is required at your hands? Let me entreat you to turn from your evil ways and seek forgiveness; for no sins are so great that the blood of Christ cannot atone for them. ”

“ Everything else is but of a secondary consideration, when compared with the atonement that has been wrought out in behalf of man by the great Redeemer, yet, strange to say, there are those in the Christian world, so called, who profess to believe in Christianity and yet deny the efficacy of the atoning blood that was shed by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. More especially has this been the case for a few years past. ”