According to the law, nearly everything is cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 22. Saint Paul speaks here of legal purifications and remissions, which (verse 10) he calls carnal justices and ordinances, (verse 13) purifying the flesh. How then, it may be asked, were sins remitted under the law? I answer, by true repentance, joined with faith and hope in the promised Messias. As to the cleansings and expiations of the Mosaic law, they were generally effected by water and animal blood, and were typical of the real cleansing of the conscience by the water of baptism, and by the blood of Jesus Christ. The flowing, therefore, of the pure water and blood from the wound in Christ’s side, denoted that the real expiation was now complete, and the cleansing font set open; and on this account, they are appealed to by Saint John, as two of the three terrestrial witnesses, whose testimony is so efficacious for the confirmation of our faith, that the crucified Jesus was the Christ foretold by the prophets. And thus “the old law confirms the new, and the new fulfils the old.” S. Paulinus.