Septicemia occurs most frequently in people who are hospitalized or have other medical conditions. While bacteria can spread from person to person through unhygienic practices, most of us are not in danger of blood poisoning because “toxic” blood is not contagious through the air or by touch.
Metaphorically speaking, neither can our blood be tainted spiritually, socially, or culturally by living among people of other nations or ethnicities, by mingling or even procreating with them. Biblically speaking, such an idea is a pernicious myth, more dangerous than any germ.
What does taint a person? Isaiah 1:15-18 will tell us:
When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
As Isaiah portrays it, sin is what causes a stubborn stain. We are all stained by it. No ethnic or national group is exempt.
While we wish to show ourselves to the world as clean, unblemished canvases, our sins are evident to God’s eyes in bright, unmistakable colors.
Just as the preventative for septicemia is thorough and prolonged hand-washing, so conscientious confession after the fact is recommended for eradicating the stains of personal (and even societal) sins.
Unconfessed sin affects our relationships—with God and others. As Isaiah says, it prevents our prayers from being heard, even though we’ve offered many and presented them with sacrifices; if we pretend we aren’t sinners and yet carry on with mindless rituals, we remain out of fellowship (1 John 1:6-10).
No one desires the matter of our sin to be settled more than God. He wants to enjoy full and free fellowship with us, but sin prevents that openness. Because of sin, the blood of Jesus Christ is on all our hands.
What’s surprising is that, in the grace of God, the blood of Jesus is the very cleansing agent that washes away sin (Colossians 1:19-22). It alone resolves the friction between us and God.
Rather than covering up with religious attention to the performance of good deeds, we must go to Jesus for mercy. He has promised receive anyone who comes to Him (John 6:37). He will teach us all the ways we offend God and how to do right.
Hands full of blood
Murder—indicated by the phrase, “hands full of blood”—is sin most foul. Bloodguilt can be both individual and societal, and its stains are deeply dyed. We may have washed the victim's blood from our hands and disposed of the evidence, but God sees deep into our fibers the spots we have forgotten or ignored.
The only way another person’s blood taints us is if we have killed them or left them to die. Sins of commission and omission violate the obligation we have to be our “brother’s keeper” and amount to an indelible stain on our hands.
In Jesus’ day, religious leaders were adhering strictly to laws about tithing while ignoring “weightier” matters like justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23-24). As in Isaiah’s day, even if they were not actually committing murder they were putting vulnerable people at risk through oppressive policies. Neglecting to protect and nurture the wives and children of deceased brethren essentially made them widows and orphans. In this, Israel was violating the biblical pro-life ethic.
The apostle James drew Old Testament law into the Church Age by saying, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (1:27).
What leaves a mark is not association with sinners but adoption of godless attitudes and actions. The idea that blood is poisoned by contact with “outsiders” is as pernicious as murder and virally contagious.
Related: Life is in the blood
Next: How and why should I be pro-life?
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Sources: Cleveland Clinic, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21539-septicemia; Johns Hopkins, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/septicemia
Image credit: Christ before Pilate by Jacek Malczewski, 1910, https://www.wikiart.org/en/jacek-malczewski/christ-before-pilate-1910. This painting is in the Lviv National Art Gallery, Lviv, Ukraine. The basin for handwashing is barely noticeable, but you can't miss Pilate’s callous indifference to Jesus’ agony, which is on our behalf. Pilate could be scrolling through his phone.
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