A Twilight Musing

One is made to wonder why the major activity of group worship for Christians involves the symbolic drinking of blood, since the eating of blood with meat was forbidden under the Mosaic Law (Lev. 7:26) and was offensive to many early Christians (Acts 15:20).  Under the Old Covenant, to have eaten the blood of animals, even as a part of the ritual of sacrifice, would have desecrated the sacrifice because there was no power in that blood; it was efficacious only in foreshadowing the shedding of Christ’s blood.  But with the sacrifice of Jesus, the perfect and final Sacrificial Lamb, and His subsequent resurrection, the blood of sacrifice was sanctified and its power made available to us.  Though Christians are still to abstain from the blood of animals, to drink symbolically of the blood of Christ is not sacrilege but a source of life in Him.  His shed blood did not represent merely the giving up of life, as it did in the animals, but also the restoration of life, both in Jesus and in the lives of those who have come to believe in Him.  

And so when we drink the fruit of the vine as if it were the blood of our Lord, we are identified with the shedding of His blood; we are crucified with Christ so that we may be raised in His likeness.

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.