The cross as John tells it, with hyssop and unbroken bones, and the one word the New Testament uses for the death when it wants to say what it did
The Hour of the Lambs
The fourth series told the crucifixion four times. This lesson tells it once, in the vocabulary the first seven lessons have built: a lamb without blemish, blood, a door, a veil, a life given for a life. John saw the Passover at the cross and said so twice. Peter, Paul, Hebrews and Revelation all reach for the same word when they say what the death accomplished, and it is not the word death.
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Lesson 8 of 12 · The cross
John dates the death to the preparation day of the Passover, at about the hour the temple began killing the lambs for the evening meal, and then shows the reader three things and says what they mean: a sponge lifted on hyssop, the plant that painted the doors in Egypt; legs left unbroken, so that the Passover rule about the lamb’s bones was kept; and a spear, so that Zechariah’s pierced one was looked on. The rest of the New Testament reads the death the same way, and its word for it is blood. Redeemed with precious blood as of a lamb without blemish, says Peter; without shedding of blood there is no remission, says Hebrews; washed from our sins by his blood, says Revelation; peace through the blood of his cross, says Paul. Blood is Leviticus’s word for a life given on the altar in place of a life, and the writers chose it on purpose. What they did not give is a theory. Ransom, redemption, a curse borne, a lamb’s blood, the mercy seat: these are the pictures, and the systems built on them came centuries later. This lesson keeps to the pictures.
Hyssop
The fourth Gospel ends the crucifixion with a detail that no other account has, and it is a plant.
After this, Jesus, seeing that all things were now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I am thirsty!” Now a vessel full of vinegar was set there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop, and held it at his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished!” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. — John 19:28–30 · WEB
Read the comment on It Is Finished
Jesus, seeing that all things were now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I am thirsty. A vessel full of vinegar was set there; they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop, and held it at his mouth. When he had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished. Hyssop is a small bushy herb, and a poor choice for reaching a man on a cross; the other Gospels say a reed. John says hyssop, and the reader who knows Exodus 12 knows why: take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two door posts. The last thing to touch the Lamb of God’s mouth was the thing that painted the Passover door. Then the word the fourth series ended on, finished, and the bowed head.
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Not a bone
but when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they didn’t break his legs. However, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. He who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, that you may believe. For these things happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled, “A bone of him will not be broken.” — John 19:33–36 · WEB
Read the comment on Blood and Water
When they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they didn’t break his legs; one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. He who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true. For these things happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled, a bone of him will not be broken. The soldiers broke the legs of the two others to hasten their deaths before the Sabbath; they left his, and John stops the narrative to swear that he saw it and to say what it fulfilled. The rule about the bones is the Passover’s (Exodus 12:46, Numbers 9:12), and the psalm about the righteous man’s bones stands behind it. The spear fulfills Zechariah, quoted in the next verse. And the blood and water, which John notes as a physician might, are for him the thing itself: the blood of the lamb, seen to flow, by a witness.
αἷμα haîma G129
of uncertain derivation; blood, literally (of men or animals), figuratively (the juice of grapes) or specially (the atoning blood of Christ); by implication, bloodshed, also kindred:--blood.
Blood — of a person, of an animal, and by a usage the New Testament made its own, the blood of Christ. The phrase, or one like it, occurs some three dozen times, in Paul, Peter, John, Hebrews and Revelation; none of them says "the death of Christ" where they could say his blood. The choice comes from Leviticus 17:11: the life of the flesh is in the blood, and it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life. To say blood rather than death is to say that the death was an offering, a life given on an altar, and every writer who uses the word is placing the cross inside the system the first seven lessons walked through.
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As of a lamb without blemish
Peter writes to churches in Asia Minor and says what they were bought with.
knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things like silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ, — 1 Peter 1:18–19 · WEB
Read the comment on Ransomed, Not with Silver
You were redeemed, not with corruptible things like silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ. Without blemish is the Passover’s word, your lamb shall be without defect, said over every offering in Leviticus. Redeemed is the kinsman’s word, the price paid to buy a relative out of slavery, the go’el the third series ended on. Peter puts the two together and says what the price was: not money, which is what redemption usually cost, but a lamb’s blood, which is what the Passover cost, and the lamb was Christ.
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Without shedding of blood
Hebrews states the law’s principle in a sentence, and then applies it.
According to the law, nearly everything is cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission. — Hebrews 9:22 · WEB
Read the comment on Where a Will Is, There Must Be a Death
According to the law, nearly everything is cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission. That is a description of Leviticus before it is a doctrine: the altar, the horns, the mercy seat, the doorposts, all of them took blood, and the law gave no other way for a wrong to be dealt with. Hebrews does not argue that this was arbitrary or that it should have been otherwise. It argues that the law knew what it was doing, and that the blood it kept demanding was a shadow of the blood it was waiting for.
“For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” Hebrews 9:13–14 · WEB
If the blood of goats and bulls sanctifies to the cleanness of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience: the Day of Atonement’s blood and the cross’s, the lesser to the greater.
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,”” Galatians 3:13 · WEB
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree: Paul reading Deuteronomy 21:23 at the cross, the substitution stated as a curse taken.
“In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” Ephesians 1:7 · WEB
In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace: redemption, blood and forgiveness in one clause, and grace as the reason.
“and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood—” Revelation 1:5 · WEB
To him who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood: the last book’s first word about the Lamb, before he is called one.
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Pictures, not a theory
A reader should know what the New Testament gives here and what it does not. It gives pictures, all of them from the Old Testament: a ransom paid, a slave bought back, a curse carried, a lamb’s blood on a door, a goat’s blood on a mercy seat, a servant bearing iniquity. It does not give a single system that explains how the death worked, and the systems that Christians hold came later: the early church’s picture of a victory over death and the devil, Anselm’s eleventh-century account of a debt of honor satisfied, the Reformers’ account of the penalty for sin borne by a substitute, which is the one most Protestant readers hold and the one this series has been leaning on since the ram in the thicket. Readers who hold different ones all quote these verses, and the verses were there first. What every picture shares is the thing the Passover door showed: something was done, outside the person, at a cost, and the person received it.
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What the hour asks
It asks to be seen as the thing the lambs were pointing at. Every morning and evening for fifteen centuries a lamb burned on an altar, and every spring a household painted a door, and every autumn a priest went behind a veil, and none of them knew the hour they were keeping time toward. John says the hour came at about the sixth hour on the preparation day, and he saw it, and wrote it down so that you may believe. The next lesson is about what believing it does.
Read John 19:28-37 and Hebrews 9:11-28. List every Old Testament thing John sees at the cross and where in the first seven lessons each one came from. Then write one sentence on what Hebrews says the blood of Christ did that the blood of goats could not.
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