Question: I...never thought I would disagree with you on anything, but—in answering a letter you said, “Jesus had human blood.” If that was true, there would have been no need for the Virgin Birth.... | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

Question: I always look forward to your Berean Call and never thought I would disagree with you on anything, but—in answering a letter you said, “Jesus had human blood.” If that was true, there would have been no need for the Virgin Birth. We all get our blood from our father. I enclose two pages from M. R. DeHaan’s book The Tabernacle in which he explains that Christ’s blood was “the blood of God, not the blood of a man.”

Response: Your objection and the pages you enclosed from DeHaan seem to me to go against God’s Word. First of all, I find no basis either in the Scripture or in reason to understand what is meant by “the blood of God.” God “is a Spirit” (Jn:4:24) and therefore has no blood. The Father has no body. It is therefore puzzling to me how anyone could assert that the blood through Jesus’ veins “came from His Father” and was not human but (per DeHaan) “divine blood.” What does that mean? Where do we find it in the Bible?

DeHaan claims that the expression “the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pt 1:19) proves it was “the blood of God, not the blood of man.” But there is no basis for such a conclusion. The Bible also says, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints” (Ps:116:15), but the saints aren’t divine. Scripture refers to “the precious ointment” (Ps:133:2) upon the high priest, but it wasn’t “God ointment.” The word “precious” is found 76 times in the KJV but not once does it mean “God’s” or “divine.”

DeHaan cites scriptures we certainly believe, which teach that redemption and remission of sins come only through the shedding of blood—but that does not prove that the blood shed is “God’s blood.” Again we say, God the Father is a spirit and has no blood. The statement by Paul, “the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts:20:28), shows clearly that the man Christ Jesus is fully God, but it does not say that He had some special “God blood” flowing in His veins.

We believe the Bible teaches that Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was not part God and part man, which His body surely would have been if what you and DeHaan say were true. Jesus is not a hybrid. He had to be a genuine man in order to die for and redeem us. Many scriptures make that clear, among them the following: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead” (1 Cor:15:21); “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin...the grace of God, and the gift of grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many” (Rom:5:12-15); “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tm 2:5). Our Lord Jesus Christ is called the “second man” and the “last Adam” (1 Cor:15:45,47). And He often called Himself “the Son of man” (Lk 19:10, etc.).

How could Jesus have been a genuine man if “the blood of God” flowed in His veins? His body was certainly a human body of flesh, and the blood was an integral part of that flesh, for “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lv 17:11). How could a human body have “God’s blood” even if there were such blood? In fact, both His flesh and blood are declared to be the same as that shared by all mankind: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily he took...on him the seed of Abraham” (Heb:2:14-16).

Our redemption is through His precious blood. Therefore, the desire to make Jesus’ blood into some special “God blood” is, on the one hand, understandable in human sentiment, but on the other hand it is not biblical. Our redemption doesn’t come through some special divine quality of His blood, but through its being poured out in death in sacrifice for our sins. And the One who was sacrificed had to be fully man.