Pleading the Blood - The Truth

As a convert to the Catholic Church from the Pentecostal tradition, there is something I have been pondering for some time that needs a solid teaching, and that is this whole idea that many Pentecostals and Charismatics have about "pleading the Blood of Jesus" over everything and anything.   The question here is - is "pleading the Blood" even Biblical?   That is what we want to explore. 

Among Pentecostal and Charismatic circles, the practice of "pleading the Blood" is a common one, and almost a tradition among them.  For years, I even prayed that sort of stuff myself even.  But, even as I participated in it, something in the back of my mind - a still, small voice if you will - kept gnawing at me and asking, is this right to do?  The more that voice asserted itself, the more I was coming to realize that perhaps the Holy Spirit was trying to say something to me about it, so I thought I had better explore the question a little more.  And, so I did.  Here is what I came up with.

When the Blood of Christ is mentioned in Scripture, it essentially is in reference to two things:

1.  The forgiveness of sins through the Atonement.
2.  Healing of the physical body as another promise of the Atonement.

The application of the Blood of Jesus then is tied to what we as Catholics would understand as sacramental grace - due to the fact it entails both the forgiveness of our sins and the healing of our bodies, for the Catholic the Blood is tied into at least three of the seven Sacraments of the Church - the Eucharist, Confession, and Unction.  If that is the case then, why do so many of our Pentecostal brethren attempt to "plead the Blood" over their cars, finances, and other things then?   That is where we need to consult the pages of Scripture to see where this idea comes from.

Many Pentecostals who engage in this practice point to one thing in particular that they can gain some justification for their idea from, and that is Exodus 12:7 - prior to the event of the Exodus itself, the Israelites in Egypt were instructed at the first Passover to slaughter an unblemished lamb and sprinkle its blood on the doorposts of every home to protect it from the judgment God was about to mete out on the Egyptians, in this case the death of the first-born son of every house.  The Exodus was indeed a foreshadowing of the coming of Christ, but it doesn't mean that every event deserves repetition - what God told Israel to do literally at that time has no bearing on the promises of the Atonement, as rather we see it as a typology of the Atonement in that it symbolized God's salvation of His people from destruction, that is all.  For the ancient Israelites, it was a literal deliverance and salvation from the bondage of Egyptian slavery, but for us as Christians it is the liberation from the effects of death and sin.   It must be understood that everything that happened in the Old Testament were real events, but at the same time God used real events to point people to Christ - that is the bottom line of why Scripture is important to us in retrospect.  Christ is at the center of all Scripture, and thus everything points to His personhood and His divinity.  It doesn't mean though that we as modern Christians have to repeat every single action we read about in Scripture though, which is a major weakness with many faithful Pentecostal people.

Pentecostals often try to bring into the present a past event like the Exodus by pointing to some New Testament references for their justification, such as I Corinthians 5:7, where Jesus is rightly called our "New Passover Lamb."  They also take passages such as Hebrews 12:24 and I Peter 9:26-28, both of which refer to the sacrifice of Himself Christ did for us to redeem us and forgive us our sins, as a model for their practice.  Other passages, such as Romans 3:25, are used as well in speaking metaphorically of Jesus as a lamb, and these things are taken as a mandate by some Pentecostals to do exactly what the passage says - applying the Blood - to every aspect of life in order to gain some sort of special merit.  They however fall short here, as the references in Scripture would more aptly point to the Passion of Christ, and thus would be more in line with the Catholic position of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which is for our salvation.   And, it therefore reduces the Precious Blood to a talisman or a mere pious superstition, which is what I want to talk about now.

It is important to understand that trivializing holy things and reducing them to some sort of magic act is tantamount to blasphemy, and many well-meaning Pentecostals who "plead the blood" over everything from their doorposts to their diamond rings don't realize what they are truly doing when they do that.  It in essence reduces the Blood to a mere pious "tradition of men" and a quasi-occultic talisman and it makes those who do such things minimize the true benefits of Christ's sacrificial act for us.  I have talked in the past of various manifestations of what is known as "charismatic witchcraft," and the more I understand how erroneous this whole "plead the blood" practice is, the more I am becoming convinced that it is a form of witchcraft.  If anyone reading this is doing it, stop immediately - by denigrating the ultimate gift of God to save us in such a way, you commit blasphemy without knowing it.  This leads to one final observation before I conclude.

Many people who are engaged in this practice of "pleading the blood" are often also some of the most virulently anti-Catholic individuals - they mock the Eucharist, and make allegations against Catholics by saying we supposedly "crucify Jesus all over again."  In reality, that is not what the doctrine of the Eucharist is about, and as I explained in my studies on Scott Hahn's The Lamb's Supper, it doesn't have anything to do with that.  But, to humor those who would say such a thing and make dumb accusations, let's say that it did - they criticize Catholics for the Eucharist, yet they throw the blood of Christ around like beads at a Mardi Gras parade, so who is being more disrespectful?   As we have noted several times before, the Eucharist is Biblically-based, and it also has substantiation for its observance over two thousand years of Church history.  The whole "pleading the blood" practice though does not - it is less than a century old, and many of those who teach it are also dubious in other areas as well, as they are mostly televangelists on religious television who do a number of other outlandish things and try to blame the Holy Spirit for it.  Some Pentecostals and Charismatics like painting themselves as "spiritually elite," yet in this and so many other areas, they often show a woeful lack of spiritual maturity, and as a result many of them fall away fast when the pressures of life challenge them.  A good recent example is a former classmate of mine from my undergraduate days who recently has taken a shocking turn in his life.  When we were in school together over 20 years ago, this guy was noted for being a super-charismatic - he was on staff at one of the biggest megachurches around then, and he was so Charismatic in his practice that people got the impression that he was some sort of spiritual powerhouse.  This guy was also a good friend back in the day too - we talked a lot about many things, and when he later became a priest in an Old Catholic group of some sort, he often would call me to "pick my brain" on things regarding the Eastern Church and such.  However, only a few short years ago, it was almost as if he fell off the face of the earth, as I lost touch with him.  When I found him on social media some years later, he had drastically changed - he ended up divorcing his wife, moving to Asia, and by all appearances he has embraced the "gay lifestyle" and spends a lot of time photographing semi-nude male models in weird poses.   This was one of those people who engaged in the practice of "pleading the blood" at one point, and at this time he is engaging now in a sort of revisionism of the lives of the saints and of Christian doctrine itself by making it more "gay-friendly" - one of his recent things he wrote about was part of the whole "gay Christian" appropriation, for instance, of certain saints of the Church (in this case, Saints Sergius and Bacchus) by recasting them as "gay lovers" based on the mis-translation of some Greek word.  One of what used to be the most on-fire Pentecostals I knew, in other words, is now an activist for the LGBT community and is resorting to blasphemy and historical revisionism to justify himself.   It is a slippery slope to base faith and religious belief on emotions, as it can have some catastrophic consequences, and the whole "pleading the blood" idea sounds good, but in reality it can cause a lot of damage, as can any blasphemous or heretical practice. 

I may have gotten a bit harsh toward the end of the last paragraph, but I do so with good reason - the miracle of salvation and of the fact that God Himself became man to save us is a precious thing, and I would even go as far as to say that the decision one makes to follow Christ is the most important life choice one could ever make, as it is for eternity (or, more correctly, has eternal consequence).  Especially in a society that grows more irreligious and secular (the culmination of almost 400 years of Enlightenment influence), it is vital that we approach Christ with a spirit of humility and of reverence, two things sorely lacking among many who profess Christianity of any sort today.   One reason I am no longer Pentecostal myself is due to that very thing - while there are many fine people who are devout Christians in Pentecostal groups to which this doesn't apply, there are also many more who display an arrogance and just a nasty attitude that in no way reflects the Lord they claim to serve, and also lacks the fruit of the Holy Spirit they claim to revere.  They turn out to be obnoxious jackasses to be honest, and anyone who is around such people quickly picks up on that too - it nullifies any potential Christian witness that such people could have had.  Often it is these sort of people who flippantly throw around the whole "plead the blood" schtick as part of their own little pious masquerade, and they don't understand the implications of their behavior.  They will one day have blood, in other words - the blood of many people they could have reached but did not crying from their own hands.   That blood will have a different sort of plea - the plea of those who died in their sins for justice against those who could have showed them the way but didn't.   That is frankly not a plea one should desire to hear, as it is a hallmark of shame.   On that note, I want to now conclude with a few challenges for some different groups of people.

If you are one of those Pentecostals, Charismatics, or even Evangelicals or Catholics who has gotten caught up in the whole "pleading the blood" practice, I challenge you as Saint Paul did young Timothy to "study to show yourselves approved" by educating yourself on what the true purpose of Christ's Blood is about.  As you do so, renounce what you have been doing, and ask God to forgive you for it, as you need to get this right.  If you are a person who has been hurt by this sort of thinking and either have come to your senses or maybe were at the receiving end of some Pentecostal nut throwing the Blood around flippantly, I first offer an apology to you on behalf of Christians as a whole, and also would ask that you not let this color your perception of Christians nor hinder you from examining the claims of Scripture and of Christ for yourself.   "Traditions of men" such as "pleading the blood" over one's favorite shoes and other such nonsense have done more harm to the evangelistic mission of the Church than many realize, and it is important to discard those things and focus on true belief and faith instead.  NO ONE should be hindered from receiving a chance to accept Jesus Christ and believe in Him, and no fruity, overly-pious, goofy Charismatic fad should hinder anyone in doing so either.  The time has come for Christians to stop playing games with their faith and with the fates of others, as we live in a world that is increasingly hostile to the truth of God's Revelation, and we cannot afford any messing around, as that could create innocent martyrs.   This was a tough message to write today, but hopefully it will impact others who read it.  God bless until next time.