The Blood of Jesus Christ
RO29-01

God's Holiness vs. Man's Sinfulness

Now, how to satisfy these elements of God's holiness, while bringing people guilty of sin into heaven, is the problem. And unless the dilemma separating the sinner from God is solved, man must suffer in hell forever. That's the background upon which the whole book of Romans is written. This problem exists, and it requires a solution.

Redemption

In Christ

God's Plan of Salvation

God's plan preserves His Holiness. Consequently, the sinner receives forgiveness for his sins, and he is credited with absolute righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The result is that he is spiritually alive again. This divinely provided solution is offered to all people as a gift from God. It's an act of God's grace. Some people accept the divine solution for their alienation from God. Most people reject God's solution for their alienation. Those who accept it spend eternity in heaven. Those who reject it spend eternity in hell.

The Doctrine of Election

A man yesterday was telling me of having visited in the home of a very wealthy man. He said that he saw that he was indeed a man of great wealth by the home that he had. And he went on to describe all the fantastic things he saw in this house. Obviously, this man's treasures were here on this earth, and he was making the most of them. In the course of meeting with him, our man here at Berean witnesses to him concerning the gospel, and concerning eternal life. And when he was through, the man made a statement which people often make, and perhaps you've had people make to you. That is, "I wish I could believe the way you do."

One of the things you want to remember when a person says something like that (who has received a witness of the gospel) is that he is telling you in those very words that, in all likelihood, he is non-elect. At least at that point in time, he is acting as a non-elect person, because this is what every non-elect person may say: "I wish I could believe, but I can't." No truer words could be spoken, because a person who is not chosen for eternal life by almighty God (a person who is not chosen to come under the benefits of this plan described here Romans) is a person who will not be able to believe: "I wish I could believe the way you do, but I can't." The reason he can't is because God has not given him the faith and the capacity to accept the provision that Romans describes.

So, if you are born again, accept it, not only with joy, but with considerable humility and a sense of relief. That is very much in order, because it is indeed the grace of God that enabled our darkened mentalities, and our antagonism toward God, and our antagonism to spiritual things, to be overcome so that we could be brought into the family of God forever.

At the heart of the divine atonement for man's sin, which Romans is describing to us, is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross in payment for the sins of the world. It is this death which propitiated the wrath of God against the sinner. This propitiation was secured by means of the physical death of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God, who shed His literal blood for the sins of the world, as well as the spiritual death of His separation from God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Romans 3:25 indicates that salvation is by means of faith in Jesus Christ, and propitiation is by means of the literal shed blood of Jesus Christ: "Whom God had set forth to be a propitiation in His blood through faith, to declare His righteousness for the remission sins that are passed through the forbearance of God."

The Old Testament animal sacrifices for sin shed literal blood. This literal blood portrayed that a life had been given in death to preserve the life of the guilty person; that is the worshiper (the offerer) of the animal. The Old Testament animal sacrifices portrayed the future death of Jesus Christ for the sins of the world.

Now, the animal has to be killed by a method which actually shed the literal blood of that animal. The shedding of that blood was an integral part of the forgiveness of sin, though it was on a temporary basis, until the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, made the full and final and real payment for sin. While it was portrayed through animal blood, the animal blood had to literally have been shed, and that animal blood was actually literally involved.

The animal blood then had to be applied in proper ritual to provide for the covering for sins. And animal sacrifices, in this way, temporarily propitiated the wrath of God against the sinner. The basic reason for the actual use of literal blood, we have seen, is based upon the fact that God says that life is associated with the blood. And the giving of the blood actually gives the life of that individual itself.

There are many other things undoubtedly that are involved here. We can ask many other questions. Why did it have to be actual literal blood? And the answers are not entirely at our disposal. But this much seems to be basic to that, and that is that life is associated with blood. When that blood is poured out, there is no doubt that a life has been given in death.

The Blood of Christ

So, now let's do some thinking about this subject. When the Bible talks about the blood of Christ in relationship to salvation, is that literal blood? Did Jesus Christ actually have to literally bleed in order to provide eternal life for us? Is the literal blood of Christ part of the atonement? Did Jesus Christ actually bleed on the cross? How much did he bleed? What was the effect of that blood? What happened when that blood hit the wood on the cross? What happened when that blood dripped down on the soldiers who were underneath the cross performing their duties, or on the hands of the soldiers as they put Him on that cross and those nails in? Is there significance of that blood?

Well, let's start back with what we've already gone over. Let's go back to the Old Testament – to the type. Remember that the Old Testament has pictures. We call those "types." Those are illustrations. You get to the New Testament and you have what you call the "anti-type;" that is, the reality that was portrayed by the picture. The type is a picture; and the anti-type is the reality. So, we obviously have the type of the death of Christ in these animal sacrifices. The type describes in considerable detail what the reality is going to actually be. So, we can learn something about the reality (the anti-type) from the type.

The Bible very clearly links the Old Testament shedding of animal blood with the New Testament shedding of the blood of Christ. And I'm using the term "blood" in terms of that fluid that runs in human vein, made up of red and white corpuscles and the serum (basically water).

The Literal Blood of Christ

So, when that high priest entered into the holy of holies, he, in effect, was portraying Christ entering into heaven to do what? To make atonement for the sins of the people. The high priest walked in with animal blood into the holy of holies, a part of the tabernacle. He made atonement for the sins of the people. By the same token, the picture now is fulfilled in Jesus Christ who entered heaven. I'm not saying that He entered with His actual literal blood. But on the basis of His literal blood, He entered heaven, and made the full atonement for the sins of the world.

So obviously, here's the connection between the death of Christ as the Lamb of God and the Old Testament sacrifice. This is the very direct connection. In Hebrews 9:13-14, again, the Old Testament sacrifice is connected to the sacrifice of Christ: "For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh (the Old Testament animal ritual), how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"

There's a very clear connection there between the Old Testament animal sacrifices and the New Testament sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The Old Testament was the type. The New Testament was the anti-type.

In Hebrews 9:23-26, you again have that connection made: "It was, therefore, necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves, with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figure of the true, but into heaven itself (the real holy of holies), now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that He should offer often, as the high priest entered into the holy place every year for the blood of others. For then He must often have suffered since the foundation of the world, but now, once, in the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself?"

Here, the connection is the fact that the high priest in the Old Testament had to do this ritual once-a-year for the atonement of the people. Every year, he had to go back into the holy of holies with the animal blood to make atonement. Now it's comparing Jesus Christ as the high priest who walks in with a blood that has the kind of value that He only has to do it once. Only once does He have to appear in the holy of holies of heaven in order to make atonement for our sins. There's a very definitive connection between the Old Testament literal blood of animals and the New Testament literal blood of Jesus Christ.

Let's look at one more passage making this connection. Hebrews 13:11-12: "For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned outside the camp. Wherefore, Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate." Even as the refuse (the remains) of the animal were taken and burned outside the city, so Jesus Christ was, in effect, crucified outside the city. This is a direct connection between the two.

All right, what do we have here then? Jesus Christ has been presented to Israel as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This is the expression in John 1:29, which John the Baptizer used when he saw Jesus. He identified Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Again, this was clearly connecting Him in the minds of the Jews with their ritualistic sacrificial system. They caught the connection immediately.

The shedding of literal animal blood was absolutely required to obtain forgiveness. You could not obtain forgiveness in the Old Testament unless actual literal animal blood had been shed. That's part of the type. We have this in Hebrews 9:22: "And almost all things are, by the Law, purged with blood. And without shedding of blood there is no remission" (or no forgiveness). That's a very definitive statement.

So, the Old Testament animal blood-shedding for sin was the type, while the blood shedding of Jesus Christ for sin was the anti-type. And on the basis of the connection of the two, we must conclude that it took the literal blood of Christ as it took the literal blood of the animal. There is no reason to say, "Here is the type (Old Testament animal sacrifices) demanding the actual literal blood of this animal to be shed for the covering of sin; and, then to come over to the fulfillment of that picture, in the anti-type, of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, and say, "His literal blood was actually not involved." That's point number one that we're saying. On the basis of the Old Testament pictures, the literal blood of Jesus Christ (we would anticipate) would be part of the atonement. If He had not bled, there would not have been atonement. If he had not bled in the right place, at the right time, and under the right conditions, there would not have been atonement. The bleeding of Jesus Christ was not simply the results of the abuse that He physically took. It was part of the divine provision of atonement.

Here's another problem if you say that: "The blood of Jesus Christ is just a symbol. It just stands for something spiritual, like His spiritual death." Immediately that you do that, you violate the basic principle of literal interpretation. When you violate the principle of literal interpretation (when you take something, and say it's a symbol), you have to have a very clear reason in Scripture for doing that. The principles of sound interpretation, therefore, demand that the references in the New Testament to the blood of Christ be taken, first of all, in their literal sense. When the Bible speaks about the blood of animals, we take in a literal sense. That's the normal way to take it. When it speaks about the blood of Christ being shed for the sins of the world, we must take it in a literal sense, because that's what the principles of sound interpretation demand, unless there is an indication that it is not to be literally understood.

Let's see if the Bible does it that way. Turn with me, for example, to 1 Peter 1:18-19, where he says, "Forasmuch as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold from your day manner of life, received by tradition from your fathers." First of all, Peter says, "I'll tell you how you were not saved. I'll tell you how you were not born again. You were not born again through silver and gold." Now what does silver and gold stand for? Is this a symbol of something, or is it actually standing for money? Well, obviously it is actually standing for money. There's no reason that you should take this verse, and say, "This race is not actually saying, 'You did not buy your eternal life. You did not purchase it with some material means.'" That's exactly what he's saying.

Let's go to 1 Peter 1::19 with that same principle of interpretation in mind: "But (and he tells us what we were purchased with) with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." But he says, "But you were born again (you were brought to eternal life) by the blood of Jesus Christ." Again, on the principle of literal interpretation, we had to take silver and gold and silver and gold; so, we must take the blood of Christ in the very next verse to mean the blood of Christ. There's no reason in the world for us to assume that, suddenly, in verse 19, the precious blood of Christ becomes a symbol for something like His spiritual death, or some other things that He provided for our atonement. Both verses are dealing with what is literal, and there's no problem with either case. Therefore, we apply this literal principle to this word "blood" in other passages.

For example, in Ephesians 1:7, we find that forgiveness of sins is attributed to the blood of Jesus Christ. Again, there is no indication that it is not the literal blood to which this forgiveness is attributed: "In whom we have redemption through His blood: the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

We Cannot Spiritualize the Words

So, spiritualizing the blood of Christ into an expression for His spiritual death on the cross only (or some other meaning) is to violate the basic principle of biblical interpretation; which is, that you take it literally unless there's indication that it's something else.

There are actually words in the Greek language for death which could have been used if the literal blood of Christ, as such, was not in view – if he simply meant the death of Christ as such. That's what we tend to spiritualize by saying, "Oh, yes, every time it says, 'The blood of Christ,' that means His death." No. There's are some passages you will find where you cannot just substitute the word "death" for the word "blood."

For example, this is true concerning the Passover lamb. When they were told to take the blood of that lamb and to put it on the door posts (on the lintel, you can obviously see that you could not substitute the word "death" for the word "blood." The word blood meant the literal blood of the animals. So, you cannot fall into that trap of spiritualizing the blood of Christ by simply saying, "Well, that just means His death." The Greek language has all the words it means to say "death," but that is not what was done.

The redemption price of mankind, therefore, is declared to be the literal blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible repeatedly refers to that fact of associating redemption with this blood.

The apostle Paul, in giving his admonition to the pastor-teachers in the city of Ephesus, connected their responsibility to this particular factor of the atonement – the literal blood of Jesus Christ. In Acts 20:28, Paul said to these pastors, "Take heed, therefore, unto yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood." He's reminding these pastors that when they are teaching God's people, and feeding them the divine viewpoint of the Word of God, he is dealing with people for whom the literal blood of Jesus Christ was shed in atonement. Therefore, that is what makes every human being of absolute, maximum, monumental value. Nothing is more valuable in the universe than a human being, because Christ's literal blood was shed for each of us. And the pastors who minister are to remember that.

Going back to Hebrews 9:12: "Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, He entered once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." Again, it is that actual blood of Christ that is the basis of redemption.

Let's look at one more passage in the book of the Revelation points this out. Revelation 5:9: "And they sang a new song, saying, 'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain (physically slain), and have redeemed to God by Your blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation." That's the price of redemption. And you spiritualized that from the literal blood of Christ? Not really – unless you just decide you want to.

Here's another evidence that the literal blood of Christ was required in salvation. Every time we gather to observe the Lord's Supper, you notice something very significant about that ritual. It is very carefully spelled out to us – very precisely ordained, and very precisely outlined. And we are to follow it very precisely. You will notice, as you well remember, there are two basic elements to it.

Let's go back to our record in Scripture about that event. Matthew 26:28 is one place: "And as they were reading, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take. Eat. This is My body." There is one element that is presented as the critical factor in the atonement.

Verse 27: "And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink all of it, for this is My blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." There it is again: the second element – the blood of Jesus Christ. These are two elements distinctly separated. I think that that's significant. He could have obviously commemorated the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world by the concept of death, simply by saying, "Take and eat his bread. This represents My body. It's going to be given for you on the cross in death for the sins of the world." But that was not enough to preach the Lord's death. It was necessary for Him also to stress the blood of Christ as a separate element separated from that body. It was necessary that Jesus Christ's literal actual blood should be shed for our atonement. And that is clearly, clearly portrayed in the very act of the Lord's Supper when we commemorate it.

Also, "the blood is shed for the many" does not mean that only certain people are covered by the blood, but it just means that the blood of this one Man, Jesus Christ, was sufficient for the many who need this atonement – for the many that the book of Romans is explaining have need for this atonement; that is, the world of unbelievers. That's why the Bible says that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world. That's the many that He's referring to, in contrast to the fact that one man provided this for the many.

1 Corinthians 11 is Paul's record. You'll notice that he makes the same emphasis of separating these two elements of the Lord's Supper. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26: "For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread. And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'Take. Eat. This is my body which is broken for you. This do in remembrance of Me.' After the same manner also, He took the cup; when he had supped, saying, 'This cup is the New Testament in My blood. This do as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the Lord's death till He comes.'"

The Lord's death for what? The Lord's death for the sins of the world. And you will notice that that death, in this pictorial presentation, very definitively stresses the physical death of the body and the shedding of the actual literal blood separate from that body. Since the bread signifies the presence of Christ's literal body in sacrifice for our sins, so too the wine represents His literal blood in sacrifice for our sins. Both elements are essential in our redemption.

So, I think that the Lord's Supper, just the way it's presented in itself, testifies to the necessity of the literal blood.

Jesus Died as a Sacrifice

So, the blood in the veins of Jesus Christ, during his life here on earth, had no redemptive value at all. If that blood had not been shed, there would have been no redemption. The death of Jesus Christ by some other means than the shedding of His blood would have had no redemptive value.

We go back to Hebrews 9:22: "Without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins." So, if Christ died in some other way such that the blood had not actually left His body, there would have been no redemption. The death of Jesus Christ before the sins of the world were poured out upon Him would have had no value.

Suppose that Jesus was out with His disciples, and they were fishing, and He accidentally tripped and fell overboard and drowned. Would there have been redemption? No, because He would have died under a condition where the sins of the world had not been placed upon Him.

So, the Lamb of God aspect was just like a lamb that a farmer would have. If an Israelites had a lamb that he was preparing to use in the Passover, and that lamb perhaps accidentally tripped and fell into a body of water and drowned, that lamb could not have been used in the Passover ritual. And this is the reason that Jesus said that He would not permit Himself to be killed until He was ready to do so. He had power over His life. John 10:17-18 describe for us how He told those people: "I have power to lay down My life. And I have power to take it again. And that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to lay it down, and I'm going to take it again.

So, Jesus Christ did not die until the point of time where His death was redemptive. That was from high noon to 3:00 in the afternoon when the sins of the world were poured out upon Him. At that point, He could now die as the Lamb of God for the sins of the world, and not before. So, Jesus Christ, at the right time, permitted His life to be taken. While the Jews were going about making their mad plans to murder the Son of God, they were actually fulfilling a timetable that God had predetermined in eternity past.

Acts 2:23 says, "Him (Jesus Christ), being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (that means by the pre-planning of God), you have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." You have taken, at a certain point in time, that God, by His counsel and planning had predetermined, and not before. So, that Jesus Christ died at a certain point, and only at that point.

Now there can be no sacrificial body without a sacrificial pouring of blood. So, Jesus Christ gave His body as a sacrifice. That's what Hebrews 10:10 tells us. That means that He gave His body by the means of shedding of blood.

So, the analogy of Jesus Christ to the Old Testament Passover lamb, in itself, demands the shedding of blood. Jesus is presented as the Passover Lamb. 1 Corinthians 5:7: "Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that you may be a new lump as you are unleavened. For even Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us." So, what I'm saying is that the provision for our sins was in the form of a sacrifice. When you use the word "sacrifice," you're automatically speaking about a death that sheds literal blood. The fact that Jesus had to be sacrificed – not just die, but to be sacrificed in death indicates that the literal shedding of blood was a critical, integral factor of that atonement before God.

So, the reference to the shedding of blood cannot be counted as simply His death. It was counted as the actual shedding of blood.

Having said all this, I want to make one thing very clear. The Old Testament animal sacrifices not only represented the physical death of Jesus Christ, but they did also represent the spiritual death of Christ on the cross. I've heard some preachers come down very hard and say, "No. The Old Testament animal sacrifices did not represent the spiritual death of Christ on the cross – only as physical death." Well, Jesus Christ did die physically on the cross. We can establish that very definitely. There's no question about it. He did die physically on the cross. John 19:33 says, "But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers, with a spear, pierced His side, and immediately blood and water came out," indicating that He was dead. What the soldier's spear probably did was went right up through the side of Jesus and struck the heart cavity; broke the pericardium; and, out of it poured the blood clots and the serum, indicating that He was in the condition of death.

He was dead physically. However, there's also the truth (Scriptures make clear to us) that on the cross, He died spiritually, and that that was an essential part, obviously, of our salvation, because the wages of sin is not only physical death, but the wages of sin was obviously spiritual death. When God told Adam and Eve what was going to happen to them when they sinned, He used an expression in the Hebrew that was an intensified death that they would experience. This is expressed, if we were to translate it literally, as, "Dying, you shall die." And the intensified form of the death that would come upon them was signifying that there will be an immediate death, spiritually, which there was, and that's why they tried to hide from God. That immediately took place. And then "You shall die" indicated that in the future, there was going to be a secondary follow-up death on the physical level. So, the sin in the Garden of Eden precipitated both spiritual and physical death upon them.

The payment for sin is not only physical death, but it must also be spiritual. That that's our problem. This is one of the blocks between us and God, such that He says, "The only way I can resolve this problem that you're in is that you must die spiritually." We turn around, say, "But, God, how can I die spiritually when I'm already dead?" And God says, "That's the problem, isn't it?" And that's what Romans is explaining – how He resolved that problem.

So, He did die spiritually on the cross. Matthew. 27:46 teaches us that: "And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' That is, to say, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" "My God" was addressing first the Father; and, then "My God" was addressing secondly the Holy Spirit. "Why have You forsaken Me?" Forsaken Him now? Because God, the Father and God the Holy Spirit had turned Their backs upon Him and separated Themselves from God the Son while He was under the curse of the sins of the world. And that is spiritual death. To be separated from God is spiritual death. The second death is eternal separation from God in the lake of fire.

Jesus was in terrific agony. Thus, He screamed out in the pains of the fact that He was not only separated from God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and thus had died spiritually, but He was under the horrendous suffering of bearing the sins of the world. In other words, He found what hell was like. And hell was transferred to that cross. He bore all of the wrath of God.

The physical bearing of that wrath is something that we're going to get into in the next session. We can't get to that right now. Most of you probably have never really thought through what happened from the moment He knelt in prayer in Gethsemane until He cried those victorious words, "It is finished" on the cross. If you'll start thinking through step-by-step what had been done to Him on a physical level, you'll see how the analogy of the Old Testament literal blood sacrifices was fantastically fulfilled right down to the minuteness detail.

So, Jesus Christ was separated spiritually from the Father, so He died spiritually. So, the total payment for sin was what? It was to reverse the problem that Adam and Eve had, and which they passed on to us – physical and spiritual death. How do you reverse it? There's only one way to reverse death, and that is to reverse the effects of it, and that is to remove it. So, resurrection removes it physically; and, being born again, removes it spiritually – coming alive in our human spirit reverses spiritual death. And Jesus Christ provided the means for both on the cross. It is it is His death that our resurrection is based. It is in His death that our spiritual coming-alive is based.

Therefore, because we know that He died on the cross, both physically and spiritually, we can read back into the Old Testament animal sacrifices the fact that, while the physical death was very clearly portrayed, it also connoted the spiritual death of Christ. We just read it back, because both were necessary for our salvation. He had to die physically, and He and He had to die spiritually, or there would have been no atonement. Therefore, the animal sacrifices which lent themselves very readily to portraying physical death, but did not lend themselves so readily to portraying spiritual death, nevertheless, in the sight of God (that's what I'm talking about – in the eyes of God), when He saw those animal sacrifices, He saw not only physical death, but He saw actually the spiritual death of His Son as well.

So, the significance here is what all of this meant to Jesus Christ Himself.

How, having said all that, I think you can see that it is very difficult for us to treat Scripture on the simple statement of its words, and not come to the conclusion that the physical death of Christ was involved in paying for the sins of the world. The spiritual death of Christ was involved for paying for the sins of the world, and that death required (in order to be a sacrificial death) the actual shedding of His literal blood. And that literal blood was involved in paying for the sins of the world. All of the details of that, I admit, we don't know. Why, in the wisdom of God, that actual blood was necessary, and so on, beyond the fact that it clearly represented the giving of the life.

There are some fantastically horrendous things which have been done with the actual literal blood of Christ, and claim for it. In the next session, we're going to come right down to that subject itself – the actual literal blood of Christ; what it could have done; and, what its effects were upon those who are in the presence of it. And then we're going to make our way step-by-step through the actual crucifixion and the actual sufferings of Jesus Christ.

We're going to trace just exactly what happened to that little blood from the first time it appeared, which was in the garden where He was so traumatically moved by emotions, and so caught up in the agonies of what He knew was coming. He had predicted it, and He told His disciples what they were going to do with Him physically, and what was going to happen. But He also knew what was going to happen to Him spiritually in bearing the filth of the sin of the world, and being separated from God the Father. That created such a traumatic, emotional trauma in the person of Jesus Christ that it caused the capillaries of the sweat glands to explode under the intense pressure. This is a common, understood, medical phenomena. And the result was that blood was then mixed with sweat, and the blood started coming out of the body of Jesus Christ.

We're going to trace that right down the line. I think you're going to have a new appreciation for the literal blood of Jesus Christ that you have never had before, because most people have never thought this through. Most people don't even know what is actually involved in the step-by-step execution by crucifixion. If you know that, you'll understand why some people never even made it to the cross under the Roman method of the steps to crucifixion. There are some people that never made it out of the barracks. This was a testimony to the fantastic physical capacity of Jesus Christ. Here was a Man that really was in health. Here was a man that was really at maximum physical strength and capacity, because they poured it on Him in a more intense way, because of the aggravated hatred of the Jews against Him. And the fact that Jesus ever made it out of the barracks is a testimony to His physical capacity, because He should have died at that point. We'll look into that in detail.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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