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Exodus 29:19-20  “Take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on its head.  Slaughter it, take some of its blood and put it on the lobes of the right ears of Aaron and his sons, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet.  Then splash blood against the sides of the altar.”

Reading this chaper in Exodus is quite a achallenge for someone like me who has difficulty even cutting up a chicken for a stir-fry, and who never had any intention of becoming a butcher or working at the abattoirs.

One of the truths that came out of the Sixteenth/Seventeeth Century Protestant Reformation is that sin has affected every part of us – our intellect, our will, our feelings.  It became known as Total Depravity, not meaning that we are as bad as we possibly could be, but that there is no part of us that functions as it was designed to function but is in rebellion agaist God.  This is why Paul says we are saved by grace through faith alone (Ephesians 2:1-10).  It is all God’s work from start to finish (Philippians 1:6).  We can’t work out how to get back into a right relationship with God by logic; we are not free to exercise our will to choose to turn back to him; and we can’t depend on our feelings to be right with God.  In all these areas we are dead in our sin (Ephesians 2:1, 4).

All of this is symbolised in the rigmarole which Aaron and his sons had to go through for their ordination and consecration as priests who could bring the people into the presence of a thrice-holy God.  The whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, makes clear what is summarised in Hebrews 9:22, referring to Leviticus 17:11 – “In fact, the Law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”  The ubiquitous splashing of the blood of the sacrificial ram throughout the Rite of Ordination, and the application of the blood to the ‘extremities’ of the priest’s body – the ear lobe, the big toe and the thumb – is symbolic to some extent of man’s ‘total depravity’.

With my built-in abhorrence of cutting up animals and coping with the blood this spills makes me particularly glad that my allotted life span is this side of the Cross of Christ, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the One who “entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12), and the One concerning whom it is written: “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.  Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrews 4:14-16)  And he did all this for me, while I was God’s enemy, still in my trespasses and sins!  “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!” (John Newton)

– Bruce Christian