Is God the Son's blood divine and infinite or human and finite (Protestant interpretation)

Question

Something I hear a lot is "Jesus has to be God because it took an infinite sacrifice to appease the infinite anger of an infinite God", or something like that.

My question concerns whether God the Son's blood is human or divine.

If human, then I don't understand how it was infinite enough to be an acceptable sacrifice, why he needed to be God, and how this is not an abomination.

If divine, then it must carry the supposed qualities of divinity (infinite, eternal, and unchangable) so that he is not a real human.

According to Protestant trinitarianism, when God the Son's blood was shed, was this a shedding of human, finite blood, or was it divine, infinite blood?

Answer 1

Jesus's blood is strictly part of his human nature

According to Chalcedonian Christians in the incarnation Jesus took on a complete human nature which was united to the divine nature of God. Jesus's body is part of his human nature and was created in the incarnation. The divine nature of God is spirit, uncreated, non-physical. The Chalcedonian definition says that the two natures of Christ are united without separation, but also without mixture or confusion. Jesus has two distinct natures, not one hybrid nature, which means that his blood is strictly human, not divine.

The infinite nature of sin

I think the infinite nature of sin could be better referred to as the total, complete, and unquantifiable nature of sin. Under the Jewish law there was a sense in which individual sins were to be atoned for by individual sacrifices, that certain sins needed certain sacrifices. But none of these sacrifices could actually deal with the sinful nature we possess (Hebrews 10).

Our sinful nature is all-encompassing - none of us are only partially sinful, we just are sinful. We don't need partial saving, we need complete saving. We aren't partially dead, we are dead, and Jesus doesn't make us partially alive, he makes us alive. So when we consider the atonement Jesus brings us, it's not like we count up our sins and subtract them from Jesus's sacrifice. Jesus brings us complete redemption, regeneration, and reconciliation.

If there is an "infinite anger" (a phrase I haven't heard before) then it would be in the same sense: as we are totally unquantifiably sinful, so God is totally unquantifiably angry at our sin. But God is not only angry at us. Though we may not be able to understand how, at the same time as God is unquantifiably angry with us, such that he can even call us his enemies, he loves us enough to die for us to save us (Romans 5:6-10).

The infinite nature of the atonement

While there is a debate within Protestantism over the scope of the atonement as it applies to humanity (the debate over so-called "limited" atonement), all would agree that Jesus's sacrificial atoning death was of infinite capacity, sufficient to cover every sin of every human who has ever existed.

While the blood of Jesus is important, because Jesus paid the blood debt we all owed (or the blood punishment for those who are okay with that terminology), we shouldn't think of the atonement being accomplished solely or even primarily by his blood. The 5 litres of his blood don't need to be distributed among humanity as if we need one red blood cell each. While we Western Christians like to think individually, and while it is necessary that we do each have a personal faith and receive salvation ourselves, the atonement was for the church as a group.

On the cross Jesus received the condemnation which the whole world deserved. He destroyed the power of sin and death, and he initiated the end of the time of Adam. In his resurrection he is like a new Adam (Romans 5, 1 Cor 15), bringing new life to a new humanity. His death is the end of the old and his resurrection the beginning of the new, although we are waiting for judgement day when the beginning will be completed. We receive this not through an individual gift or transfer but because we are united to Christ, we are "in Christ" as the NT frequently says. I think we can say that we are in effect one step removed from the blood of Jesus: Jesus sheds his blood in the judgement of the old humanity and destroys sin and death, and then receives vindication, new eternal life, and initiates the new humanity in his resurrection. We die and are raised in him (Romans 6), so that the death of one man can cover us all because we are united to him.

Answer 2

I have heard this to be a reason why Jesus is God as well, but I cannot find any biblical reference for this belief. One way to think about this is that if Adam, a finite human, was enough to bring sin into the world and to affect his progeny, then Jesus needn't be God in order to appease some "infinite anger" of God. Remember, Jesus was the incarnation of God's word. The words and deeds of Jesus were according to God's will. Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets, so placing one's trust in Jesus (faith) and following him (the fruit of one's faith; see James) brings one to salvation.

Answer 3

In the olden days, people believed that the fetus received the mother's blood. Since Jesus' blood was pure that must mean, they thought, Mary's blood must be pure. This led to the doctrine* that Mary must have been conceived without sin (immaculate conception, Roman Catholic) or she became pure at the annunciation (Eastern Orthodox). But this was bad science that led to divisive doctrine.

The baby in fact creates its own blood**.

Now, we also know that the virgin conceived and bore to term the baby. So, it was divine blood, which is to say, not of the fallen Adam nature, not of Mary. Yet, Christ did have flesh, so it was human blood, but again, without sin or its consequences (death), which is why Christ resurrected on the third day.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception **http://www.justanswer.com/pediatrics/1f2ym-does-baby-s-blood-father-mother.html **https://www.babble.com/pregnancy/anatomy-fetus-placenta/ **many other references are available