Blood is Currency
Blood is currency.
The sacred altar drips with sacrifice.
Our territories are not just won, but paid for with the blood dripping off the curb. The serenity we often take for granted is born from the crunching crucibles of fire.
Cities are not concocted by wish, but shaped by narratives inked with the blood of sacrifice.
The ocean’s roar explains its tranquil placidity, as it is home to the leviathan.
It is through sacrifice that fathers pave the way for sons, and life, in its cracking, gives birth to spirit, fire to firmaments.
The ache is the precursor of the cycle, chaos is the mother of order, and the price resides in the den with the lions.
Everything is in flux here today, gone tomorrow, with nothing forgotten that needs remembering except the wailing blood of martyrs.
Life is no glide and glamour in the valley of the shadow of death. We have been pulled and suctioned into lives we never bargained for: bills for life, insurance for bodies trying to defy gravity, homes we bought that won’t pay for themselves. It’s a way to Gethsemane, watching Jesus carry the cross as the captain of our faith, so that we, too, can.
Blood paid for it; it has never been free. Freedom has a price; living and dying have a price. Government and corporations are all blood-dependent. What about the income you thought was yours until the tax sucked through your treasures? Forget the tidy forgetfulness of our civilization; they were all paid for by broken bones, cracked minds, broken homes, and on the backs of the dispossessed.
Though we paid for everything pouring forth the whole of our lives, all we inherit at death is dust and ashes, life without closure, just some depth in the dust trodden at its height by people who never sent flowers when that loneliness ravaged us, romanticized in depression dressed as courage.
Remind those who want to inherit the palace and reign in power that they never had an idea whose sacrifices laid the foundations. Tell it to those who thought life was a photo op. Tell them that blood is the price; no one owns it until their blood drips on it.
The only water that quenches the thirst of the gods is blood, and without the spirit, nothing is owned or made that is made. Spirit administers the gifts; the blood of martyrs paid for it. The communion is in the fellowship, but there is a fee for that frequency.
Sanctification by the sacred text of the oracle, consecration to the course of the oracle is the metrics of the blood, to bleed is to die, to die is to put down the seed for your resurrection.
It so happens that man needed a redeemer because the tabernacle of Israel now resembles a butcher’s house. The peace offering, the trespass offering, the burnt offerings, and the priest making the offering needed atonement for their own humanity. The sacrifice for sin and atonement for iniquities is a throng of lambs and bulls at the altars, renewed annually, because the blood of bulls and rams cannot take away the world’s sins. Still, the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Essenes keep bringing them, looking for peace in the sacrifice that is attuned by the blood of the beast.
Sacrifice was offered without repentance or change of mind because, though it was delivered, it was not paid for because it cost the giver nothing.
It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
The rituals and ordinances of the Old Testament are intended to point us to our need for a Messiah, just as the futility of our endeavors to possess the material world points us to the need for something more substantial, such as the necessity of spiritual life.
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
In seeking to offer the blood of bulls and goats as a substitute for the redemption of man’s sins, the scale falls short of its essence and only points to the symbolism of what those rituals were: religion entwined in empty rites.
Without sacrifice, there is no remission for sin. Without sacrifice, there is no flow. There might be a trickle, but you can be sure they are not from God. Trickle is the realm of idols. Overflows connect your faucets to the dam; you cannot flow without God.
Jesus embodies the architecture of the God and human enterprise, God in human form. As the archive of our collective trauma and triumph, His blood became the perfect sacrifice for sin.
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:21–22
Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
John 6:17
In Christ, the sacrifice was the giver, not the gift.
In Christ, God found a perfect substitute for the sins of the fallen man. Here, parallels and equivalences exist. The sacrifice matches the stature of the transgression, and the offering has a signature of substance to it because spirit was offered for spirit and God for God in perfect submission in unison.
Sin entered the world by one man’s rebellion and righteousness by another man’s obedience.
Death Through Adam, Life Through Christ
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned —
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To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 5:12–21
Without the sacrifice on the cross at the hills of Golgotha, human civilization would have been non-existent, humanity might have fossilized in the dark age of debauchery, genocidal wars fueled by rage to own land and resources we never created, and to foist hegemonic dominion over others who do not look like us or practice what we profess.
The truth is that every civilization is created first at the core of spiritual ordinances before it becomes a lifestyle codified as technology.
Without the teachings of Christ about what the architecture of heaven looks like and the culture that governs the cosmos, this life would have been one of endless bickering over worthless issues like race, gender, territorial wars over land that eventually consume its inhabitants.
Just like you have right now amongst those who believe that might equal right, the ones who never learnt anything from history, arrogating privileges and power to how loud they get on the bully pulpit.
As we dim the light on the finished work of Jesus his commandments to let it be on earth as it is in heaven our planet spiral into chaos, the cultural wars deepens, deluding ourselves that we own something of this world and that life starts and end on the table of grift and getting, forgetting we are all one and that we are all in this spinning ball we call our home tied together in destiny because there is no where to run or any other address we know in the billions of galaxies out there.
Blood is currency; seek God now when He can be found.
In the Old Testament there were tabernacle for the rituals of sacrifice in the New Testament the body of the believers is the offering for sacrifice, you are sacrificed in the altar of the word of God, in prayer, fasting and consecration with the deep understanding of the sacrifice of Christ and the offering of his very being so that mere men can attain divinity and mortals morphed by sacrifice into immortals.
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
Then I said, ‘Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll —
I have come to do your will, my God.’”
First, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” — though they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again, he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First, he says:
“This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds.”
Then he adds:
“Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more.”
And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary.
Hebrews 10:6–18
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