By: Al Tichenor

How profoundly sin inexorably links us with the real, moral, blood guilt which necessitated Jesus’ crucifixion. Each of the Ten Commandments, when their roots are fully exposed and traced back to roots deep in the heart, present us as sinners with unquestionable “Blood Guilt”.

“Blood guilt” is different than parking in a red zone. The blood that is shed is not your own, it is the precious vehicle of life given only by God Himself. When such blood is shed, with whom can you plead for mercy? Thinking that a simple apology would have sufficed from Adam and Eve for eating the apple of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is impossible. That knowledge and free moral agency granted with the choice of the “forbidden fruit” became the proof of our God-granted ability to make life and death moral decisions and, thus, the ability to garner real moral “blood guiltiness” beyond our ability for which to atone.

Each commandment has its own link to “Blood Guilt”. For example, the First Commandment: “No other gods before Me.” Choose another and you’ve chosen another god, which is finite and often corrupt. A false god has no appeal, no ultra dimensional wisdom. See here the bloodshed from past decisions. Check Roe vs. Wade or the Dread Scott decision on slavery. Check the impossible decision to remove prayer from the schools.

Or check the fifth Commandment: “Honor your father and mother.” Over 14,000 Frenchmen died in the heat wave of 2003, the elderly, sick, poor, and the forgotten. Heat stroke, exposure, and indifference claimed their toll. The average Frenchman went to the beach to cool off from the heat for the month. There was little “honor” there. Did children fail to respond to parent’s needs or did parents fail to instruct children of the need for family respect and responsibility? I see blood guilt all over that catastrophe and in the extension of all of the Commandments.

Peter is way off here in this passage from Matthew. He was working the mischief of Satan himself. Ignorance or specific determination to break down the work of Jesus on the Cross can and does bring us all to a real moral and unforgivable guilt, which is the essence of Satan’s workshops. Just as Jesus thrust Peter behind Him, so He thrusts us into the grace and beauty of a life which can be forgiven both in Heaven and here on earth, in our realm, through that Grantor of our very being and our blood. This sublime state could come only from the sacrifice of our personal Creator and Grantor of our stupendous but dangerous moral freedoms. His shed Blood pays the price, the only possible price, for our reckless free moral agency and for my sin and yours.