Behold Our King (John 19:1-16a)

“Lev.17:11: ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I, I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your soul…’ In the [Biblical] case of sacrifice, the offerer tends to think, ‘I am putting this blood on the altar for the Lord.’ But here, the Lord turns that idea on its head. As scholar Baruch Schwartz explains in his essay “Prohibitions Concerning the ‘Eating’ of Blood”: What our clause does, in its unique, metaphorically graphic way, is to take a set phrase, the ‘placing’ of the blood on the altar, and to reverse the conceptual direction of the action: ‘It is not you who are placing the blood on the altar for me, for my benefit, but rather the opposite: it is I who have placed it there for you—for your benefit."‘ In his mercy and grace, the Lord has provided a way for guilty sinners to be forgiven.”

— Jay Sklar