Bo​az Baptist Chronicles

Why did blood and water come out of Jesus’ side when He was pierced?

At His conception, God and man were somehow supernaturally both united into one body. We call that the incarnation. God became man (I Timothy 3:16) “…[A] body hast thou prepared me….” (Hebrews 10:5) The important question to ask, here, is why? Why did Jesus need a body, to begin with? He got a body in order to get blood in it so that blood would be shed on the cross for men’s sins. This wasn’t just any blood, it was God’s blood. (Acts 20:28)

What was the difference between God’s blood and man’s blood? How could someone tell the difference?

Well, even though some men say that when Christ died, he went into hypovolemic shock [a term that refers to low blood volume. In other words, the person would have lost so much blood he would go into shock, and thus the presence of blood and water when Christ was cut], the truth of its composition is seen much clearer in the Scriptures, if we just believe what we read….

“But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.” (John 19:34-35)

What was so significant about the conjoined “blood and water” that John witnessed, that he, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, deemed necessary to record, so that someone after him would read the account and believe? Does he say more about this subject in any of his other writings? Yes, he does…

“Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood.” (I John 5:5-6)

Notice the last nine words “…not by water only, but by water and blood.” There was something very important here that John wanted us to know. Jesus wasn’t only a man, He was the God/man. And, John, one of the only disciples to witness his death, and the only one to write what he saw after he witnessed it close up [the way he described it was more like a crime scene investigator who found evidence], said that blood and water came out of His riven side. This could only mean one thing. This proved that Jesus was who he claimed to be. (John 8:58; 10:30)

Every man has blood running though his veins, but only one ever had “blood and water.”

Pastor Bob