In the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, men drank of each other’s blood, in order that they might have a common life; and they ate together of a mutually prepared feast, in order that they might evidence and nourish that common life. In the outreaching of men Godward, for the privileges of a divine-human inter-union, they poured out the substitute blood of a chosen victim in sacrifice, and they partook of the flesh of that sacrificial victim, in symbolism of sharing the life and the nourishment of Deity. This symbolism was made a reality in Jesus Christ. He was the Seed of Abraham; the fulfillment of the promise, “In Isaac shall thy Seed be called.”[601] He was the true Paschal Lamb; the “Lamb without blemish and without spot”;[602] “the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world.”[603] The blood which he yielded, was Life itself. The body which he laid on the altar was the Peace Offering of Completion.[604]
“Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith:
Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not,
But a body didst thou prepare for me;
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure:
Then said I, Lo, I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of me)
To do thy will, O God.
Saying above, [He here says,] Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein [as if in themselves sufficient] (the which are offered according to the Law); then [also] hath he said, Lo I am come to do thy will. He taketh away the first [the symbolic], that he may establish the second [the real].”[605]
He was here, in the body of his blood and flesh, for the yielding of his blood and the sharing of his flesh, in order to make partakers of his nature, whosoever would seek a divine-human inter-union and a divine-human inter-communion, through the sacrifice made by him, “once for all.”