In tracing the theme of the blood of Christ through Paul’s epistles (not chronologically as written, but as positioned in our New Testament), we have discovered that the Spirit of God through the Apostle Paul first links the blood of Christ with the propitiation of God (see Rom. 3:25).  It is the blood of the Innocent Sacrifice that alone satisfies God’s holy demands regarding the penalty for man’s sins.  We further noted that first having looked Godward, the apostle’s second reference to the blood looks toward man:  believers are “justified by his blood,” that is, declared righteous in the sight of God by virtue of faith in Christ’s vicarious death.  In light of these two truths, how precious, then, is Paul’s third mention of the incomparable blood of Christ.

            “The communion of the blood of Christ.”  Writing to the church at Corinth concerning the Lord’s table, Paul asks, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?  The bread we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (I Cor. 10:16).  The word communion means “participating” and is elsewhere in the AV translated “fellowship.”  The NASB translates the word in our text as “sharing.”  The communion service, then, constitutes a by-faith sharing in the blood of Christ.

            It is not, as Rome teaches, a partaking of the literal blood of Christ, nor is it, as Lutheranism teaches, a partaking of the element in which the blood of Christ is present.  Rather, it is a memorial service (cf., I Cor. 11:24, 25), which points back to the literal sacrifice of Christ, His broken body and His shed blood.  It is an ordinance that attests to the union of believers with Christ in His death and that proclaims the efficacy of His blood to cleanse us from sin and bring us into fellowship with the Father, with Christ, and with other believers.

            Neither salvation nor its many benefits are obtainable by any means other than through the shed blood of Christ.  If God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26), much more has He made of one blood—the shed blood of His Son—one church to dwell with Him in heaven.  If the life of the flesh, physical life, results from the blood flowing through the bodies of men, the life of the Spirit, eternal life, results from the blood flowing from the body of Christ.

            We are sharers in Christ’s shed blood by faith, or we are lost in sin and on the way to hell.  We are sharers in Christ’s blood by faith, or we are forever shut out from the presence of God and banned from His fellowship.  We are sharers in Christ’s blood by faith, or we have no part in the fellowship of the church, the communion of the saints, the love of the brethren.

            There may be every sort of religion and a variety of apparently pious activities, but apart from the communion of the blood of Christ, there is no gospel, no church, no Christian, no salvation.  All that is truly precious and wonderful to the believer and all the promises to us are secured by the blood of Christ.  A gospel without the blood is at best the Lion’s, the Shriners, the Masons, or the Elks, a social organization.  But it is surely not a church, for the church is brought into communion with God and with its various members through the blood of Christ.

               We must not—we cannot—abandon the doctrine of the blood of Christ.  Be it ever so offensive to the world of sophisticated men, as the distillation of the message” of “Christ crucified,” the shed blood is, nevertheless ,“the power of God” unto salvation (I Cor. 1:18).