The Red of Love

Love—deep red love— 
came struggling through 
the pressure of the birth canal 
and landed safe in loving hands
that washed away the blood
and held him close.
They did not know, not yet,
that Love’s own blood
would someday spurt
from lashes to his back,
from nails plunged straight
through his own hands,
and through his feet—
blood of Life and supreme Love
that would bring hope to anyone
who trusted in his words
and in the power of his shed blood
to wash away the curse of sin.
It sealed a covenant of peace
between the Lord and his dear ones,
a document of liberation
signed in crimson blood,
the red of Love.

Blood is not usually something we love to talk about. But that can change! Being involved in the process of translating the Bible into the Nyarafolo language has put me on a steep learning curve, and the importance of blood is one part of that climb.

One of the most significant elements for me was learning about “covenant.” It is a concept we only mention these days when we apply it to marriage. And yes, marriage is a legal agreement—a covenant—between two people, with promises to support one another and stay together. But this year during the Easter season as I contemplated Jesus’ last words to his disciples and the incredible significance of his death, this struck me: a new covenant was being made between God and the humans who would accept the criteria.

In the early 2000’s, Moïse and I were launching into translating the Old Testament, just after Mark’s Gospel had been translated and printed. We realized that the New Testament would not be easily understaood without the background of the Pentateuch. So Genesis was the challenge before us, full of new terms to understand.

The hardest one was “covenant.” When we asked other team members for suggestions, the most popular proposal was a Nyarafolo term that meant “promise.” It didn’t seem to fit in logically for me, but we went with it. We were working in association with SIL (Wycliffe Bible Translators), and they require that each translated section be checked by a consultant before it is given to the people. When the consultant was meticulously going through the first part of Genesis with us, we got to chapter 15 and whammed into the problem of “covenant.”

“The word you have chosen in Nyarafolo means ‘promise,’ you tell me. But what would happen if someone were to break their promise?”

The team’s answer was, “Well, you wouldn’t be happy with them.”

“So, no consequences?” the consultant asked. “That seems weak, because this covenant was actually a legal agreement that included promises if it was kept, and consequences if it was not respected.”

That led to another long discussion. The one word that seemed to fit the bill had been pushed away by the Nyarafolo team because it was an agreement that was negotiatied with other local gods in the traditional religion, a practice that is still ongoing. But the debate came to a wonderful conclusion when Moïse told how his family had previously needed to renew their contract yearly with the god of their farmland territory in order to have a good harvest. One year his grandfather was standing by the stream that bordered their land, and when he threw the sacrificial chicken into the water a crocodile appeared, grabbed his leg and pulled him into the stream. He was able to kick loose but limped the rest of his life. And the crops failed; the family lost all they had. They knew that some family member had done something forbidden in the agreement.

Moise was just about ready to underline the creepy occult background to this when he stopped, choked up. “Wait!” he said. “This one in the Bible is different: it is not a human reaching to a god, it is God reaching to Abraham to make this agreement!  He is not far away—he is the one initiating the relationship with a human!  We have to use this word!”

So yes, it is the word in the Nyarafolo biblical text, and it has great impact. Nyarafolos assume that God exists but is far off, so only local gods can be interacted with. The Bible’s message is the opposite. God is always reaching out to humans.

And here is an element that struck me: I suddenly saw a crucial link myself between blood and a covenant. Read Genesis 15 and you will see it. Abraham wanted to know how he could have descendants, and Yahweh told him they would be as numerous as the stars. Abraham believed God’s promise “and it was counted to him as righteiousness” (15:6). Then Abraham was required to gather certain animals and cut them in half. He lined them up. The blood must have been flowing into the path between them. When it got dark, God revealed the hard trials that would be coming to his descendants, 400 years of affliction but afterwards they would have a land of their own. A smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between the bloody animal halves, and the covenant was sealed.

The Hebrew word for “covenant” is berith, “derived from a root which means to cut, and hence a covenant is a cutting, with reference to the cutting or dividing of animals into two parts, and the contracting parties passing between them, in making a covenant (Gen. 15; Jer. 34:18, 19).”[1]

And the Nyarafolo word for “covenant” is nyakungɛngɛ, which means “cut-mouth-give.” Interesting links there!  They also cut the neck of the sacrificial animal so that blood flows, then agree to the words the mouth speaks! This opens understanding to what the Scripture is telling us about the extreme importance of a covenant agreement!

When Yahweh offered his crucial covenant to the people of Israel through Moses, blood also sealed it:

³ Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.” ⁴ And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. ⁵ And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD. ⁶ And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. ⁷ Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.” ⁸ And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, “Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.” (Exod. 24:3-8 ESV)

The shedding of blood for those ancient covenants in the Bible has great relevance for the application of that term to the new covenant that Jesus sealed with his own blood. We hear about it when we take communion, following the process that he went through with his disciples during that last Passover dinner he shared with them. He shared the bread, his body broken for them, then the wine:

²⁰ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”  (Lk. 22:20 ESV)

The wine represents his blood, shed on the cross for us. And that new covenant is the one we agree to when we come to Jesus, repent of our sins, give ourselves to him! He sealed it with his own wounded body and his blood. We enter it, this eternally valid legal contract that gives us life forever with him!

What Israel forgot, and what we often forget, is that a covenant comes with consequences for those who act against its requirements. Deuteronomy is full of those, and in one section where Yahweh was laying out the consequences of disloyalty to him when Israel turned their backs on him to serve other gods,  it says:

²⁴ all the nations will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ ²⁵ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt . . .((Deut. 29:24-25 ESV)

On the other hand, there is so much in that covenant to benefit those who are faithful:

All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant. (Ps. 25:10 NIV)

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you. (Isa. 54:10 NIV)

And Yahweh made it clear, through the prophet Jeremiah, that he was going to make a new covenant:

³³ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”  (Jer. 31:1 ESV)

Knowing him personally was going to come with the forgiveness he would offer! When Jesus was explaining that the new covenant was in process right then, he said:

This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (Matt. 26:28 NIV)

I hope you’ve walked this far with me in this reflection on the deep meaning of the kind of death Jesus suffered, one in which blood flowed from his back as he was whipped, and from his hands and feet nailed to the cross. There is so much more to explore here, because we Gentiles are also offered participation in this covenant—which is why we are reflecting on this together. We are also his people! And we believers participate in the covenant that brings us into relationship with the God who brings us peace and everlasting life and shows us how to live for him. The person who wrote the book of Hebrews underlines this in their farewell:

²⁰ Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, ²¹ equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.  (Heb. 13:2 ESV)

Amen! May it be so for each of us!

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[1] M. G. Easton, Illustrated Bible Dictionary and Treasury of Biblical History, Biography, Geography, Doctrine, and Literature (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893), 164.

Photo: ancient Hebrew scroll, Adobe stock images