I grew up in a Baptist church where we didn’t potluck without casseroles or sing without hymnals. As a kid I remember thinking that we sang a lot of hymns about blood, and I was especially confused about the song “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

O precious is the flow
that makes me white as snow;
no other fount I know;
nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Red is a primary color, but I had never seen it turn anything white. You have to work to get red wine and red blood out, not on.

Not only is Jesus’ blood precious “like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:19), His blood purifies sinners. It “will purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). “The blood of Jesus…cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). His blood also purchases salvation; “he entered once for all into the holy places…by means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). And His blood whitens stains, as when “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9, 14).

In Adam humanity got started. In Noah humanity got restarted. In Christ, the true second Adam, humanity got remade. His blood is regenerating a new humanity, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). Precious is the flow, the fount of the sin-bleaching, new civilization-building blood of Jesus.