"You and me bleed exactly the same"

It's a lovely, sunny Saturday to start off the summer, and so, popping along to the shop to get some milk this evening, I wasn't really paying all that much attention to the radio. But there was a line in a song that caught my attention: “you and me bleed exactly the same.” I've no idea what the song was, and am quite sure it was about something else entirely (it was Radio 1 after all), but (perhaps slightly influenced by spending my sunny Saturday reading Torrance on the Incarnation) it set my mind off in a theological direction. So, allow me to do a bit of theological eisegesis.

1) “You and me bleed exactly the same.”

Jesus and I bleed exactly the same. Jesus and you bleed exactly the same. When He was crowned with thorns, He bled as we would. When He was lashed by the Roman soldiers, He bled just as we would. And when the nails were hammered into His hands and feet, He bled exactly as we would. His body was a true human body of flesh and blood, just like ours (and His body still is a true human body, glorified at His resurrection and now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high). And so He bled like we bleed, He suffered as we suffer, He felt pain as we feel pain. 

And so we can say, “Hallelujah, Jesus! For you and me bleed exactly the same”, because that fact demonstrates that our God has drawn near to us. God the Son has taken to Himself true humanity. He is the true meeting place between man and God, for the eternal Word has united himself to our humanity. Jesus, “for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,and was made man” (Nicene Creed). And only a true man could pay the price for the sins of men.


2) “You and me bleed entirely differently.”

Doesn't that contradict what I've just said? Not at all. His physical bleeding is just like ours with the same pain and the same consequences, because He's a true man. But His bleeding does something that ours could never do. For His blood isn't just the blood of a human being, but the blood of the only sinless human being, and also the blood of God (Acts 20:28). And so His blood can redeem. His blood can cleanse from all sin. His blood can make atonement. 

Unlike our blood, there's wonder-working power in the blood of Jesus. Not because there's anything magical about His blood, but because He has taken my place and paid the price for my sins. So the blood He shed was the blood I deserved to shed. “Amazing love, how can it be that Thou my God should’st die for me?!”

So praise Jesus that He bleeds exactly the same as we do, and praise Jesus that He bleeds entirely differently than we do, for in those truths of His person and work lies our salvation.