Actually, that passage within context was referring to those who eat or consume blood. In the New American Standard version ends with "...for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement." A better passage is Leviticus 16:15-19, but then it talks in 16:20-22 of a live goat offering to be released in the wilderness to "bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land".
Oh ok. I didn't know that. I'm actually a baby in Christ, for varying reasons.
Fedos, what comments do you have for the Prodigal Son parable. This has always been one of my favorite passages because I felt that it was an anaology for God's Mercy and Forgiveness to those who repent of sin and "come home" to worship Him.
Well, as I said, I'm still a baby in Christ, my growth has been stunted for sinning when I first accepted the Lord as my savior. From what I gather, that would be a good understanding of the passage. I guess it would then depend on what a person viewed as God's way or what is the true path of salvation that God has established.
You mentioned something earlier about what passages were there in the Old Testament that pointed toward Jesus dying for the sins of the world, or shedding his blood. The passages in Isaiah I think are a good picture of what the savior would have to ultimately do:
'Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form of comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we shouldd desire him.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows (on the cross): yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgement: and who shall declare his generation?
for he was cut off out of the land of the living:
for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief:
when thou shalt make his soul an offering to sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied:
by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors;
and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.'
