Warning: This post contains graphic content. Proceed to read at your own risk.
With all that I’ve been reading about the Ebola outbreak, by far the most fascinating read has been an article about something called convalescent serum. Basically it is this: the patient receives a blood transfusion containing a serum from the blood of a patient that has recovered from the virus already. The results of this procedure, which has been in use since the 1990’s, seem promising. Evidently the blood of a survivor may contain some antibodies that can fight the disease. Makes sense!
Now, I wonder what a person totally unfamiliar with modern medicine would think if you told them that you were going to treat their disease with someone else’s blood. I suspect that this would, at the very least, seem like an extraordinarily strange and distasteful thing to do. It may seem to that person to be a highly inappropriate thing to do. It would probably produce more than a little bit of fear and loathing. (You’re going to do what? Not on me you’re not!)
The whole thing has me thinking about our most fundamental need as human beings. We need a remedy for the sin disease. Our sin disease is not an infectious disease; it is more of a genetic disease. But every one of us has it. We need a blood transfusion from someone who has survived the problem. But how can there be anyone who has survived the problem, when it is a genetic problem that always results in death? How can there be a human being with the convalescent serum for the sin disease? It would have to be a human being who has a genetic code that does not include the damaged gene. It would have to be someone who had survived death. Enter the Son of God, the one and only human being who could ever, possibly have the convalescent serum for the sin disease! As strange and inappropriate and distasteful and fearful as it may seem, a blood transfusion from this one survivor is our only hope. Praise God that it is available!
learn with me now 