QUESTION: Please explain why it was necessary that the spear should be thrust into the side of Christ, seeing He was already dead. Was His death not full payment to God for sin? Why is it said, "It is the blood [not the death] that maketh an atonement for the soul"? M.B.
ANSWER: The spear thrust into the side (the heart) of Christ showed to all that His death was real, and moreover drew out those tokens of atonement and purification (blood and water) on which we rest, and by which we are cleansed. The death of Christ was a full atonement for sin, but blood out of the body, apart from it, is a proof of death (in the body, it is the life of it); and hence the blood is everywhere used for the atoning value of the death of Christ; not that blood is different from death, but because it is a proof of it. The blood "making atonement" is a more beautiful thought than the death, because it means the perfect life given up in death. The blood which was the life, now poured forth in death, is that which is so precious in God's sight. You will observe that when the death is spoken of, it is more often in connection with resurrection, presenting the truth of deliverance from sin (Rom. 6), rather than atonement for sins (Rom. 3).