Under the symbolic sacrifices of the Old Covenant, it was the _blood_ which made atonement for the soul. It was not the death of the victim, nor yet its broken body, but it was the blood, the life, the soul, that was made the means of a soul’s ransom, of its rescue, of its redemption. “The life [the soul] of the flesh is in the blood,” said the Lord: “and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement [to be a cover, to be a propitiation] for your souls [for your lives]: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason [of its being] the life [the soul].”[640] “For as to the life [the soul] of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life [the soul] thereof.”[641] And so, all through the record of the Old Covenant. It is the same in the New Covenant, as it was in the Old. Atonement, salvation, rescue, redemption, is by the blood, the life, of Christ; not by his death as such; not by his broken body in itself; but by that blood which was given at the inevitable cost of his broken body and of his death. The figure of leprosy and its attempted cure by blood, may tend to make this truth the clearer. In the leper, the very blood itself--the life--was death smitten. The only hope of a cure was by purging out the old blood, by means of an inflowing current of new blood, which was new life.[642] To give this blood, the giver himself must die; but it was his blood, his life, not his death, which was to be the means of cure. So, also, with the sin-leprous nature. His old life must be purged out, by the incoming of a new life; of such a life as only the Son of God can supply. In order to supply that blood, its Giver must himself die, and so be a sharer of the punishment of sin, although he was himself without sin. Thus was the new life made a possibility to all, by faith. So it is, that “we have redemption [rescue from death] through [by means of] his blood”;[643] and that “the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth us [by its purging inflow] from all sin.”[644] So it is, that he “loosed us [freed us] from our sins by his [cleansing, his re-vivifying] blood.”[645] So it is, that “if any man is in Christ [is one in nature with Christ, through sharing, by faith, the blood of Christ], he is a new creature [Of course he is]: the old things are passed away; behold they are become new.”[646] So it is, also, that it can be said of those whose old lives were purged away by the inflowing redeeming life of Christ: “Ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”[647] And “this is the true God and eternal life.”[648]