“The blood of Christ is my vaccine” – a response

This isn’t a post debating the scientific benefits or the political leanings of the COVID-19 vaccines. I’m not qualified to speak on such things and there does seem to be some sensible and justified reasons for some people not to be vaccinated. This instead is a response to one of the more common theological sentiments popping up across social media, usually in meme form. It reads “the blood of Christ is my vaccine.”

What makes this interesting to me is it’s held across a wide range of Christian persuasions. This is surprising, as when you follow it to its necessary conclusions, you find yourself faced with a very specific and unavoidable Christian heresy. Let’s have a closer look.

‘The Blood of Christ’ and physical healing

The first implicit suggestion in this idea is that the blood of Christ is specifically about physical healing, or at least protection from ill health.

Jesus, however, never once invokes blood of any kind, metaphorically or physically, in His healing ministry. Neither does Paul or any of the Apostles. It is never specifically linked to healing.

Instead, the blood of Christ is associated exclusively to atonement, through the forgiveness of sins (Jn. 1:7; Matt. 26:27-28; Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:22). It’s about eternal reconciliation with God (Col. 1:20) and buying us back into relationship with Him (Acts 20:28). This follows from the sacrificial system used throughout the Old Testament (Lev. 17:11).

I think the closest verse connecting blood to healing would be Is. 53:5, ‘by his wounds we are healed’, however the beginning of that verse specifically tells us that this is a healing of our ‘iniquities’ and ‘transgressions’. A similar idea could be found in Passover in Ex. 12, where blood painted on a doorway saved the occupant from death. Again, however, the application of this today is commonly understood to be about salvation, not physical healing.

In fact, the only way to make the blood of Jesus about physical healing this side of Heaven would be to make the atonement itself about physical healing. This strays very close to the false idea that Jesus died to give us a perfect life today.

A logical problem

The second issue with this is a logical one. Using the reasoning presented, you could actually replace the word ‘vaccine’ in “the blood of Christ is my vaccine” with any number of other words such as food, drink, family, friends, or even love.

This is because the underlying idea behind the sentiment is the sufficiency of Jesus should lead us to reject all other good things. In fact, we should be discouraged from seeking them at all. This leaves us with an extreme asceticism. Under this idea one might decide to reject all things of sustenance, health, or pleasure, and live starving and rejected until Jesus ‘fixes’ all our worldly issues.

This assumes it is God’s place is to provide for us all we need to live healthy now without any effort or engagement on our side. It turns God into a thing that gives, rather than a person who loves.

A question of faith

The final issue with this sentiment is it doesn’t truly require us to have faith in Jesus.

Faith in Jesus means trusting Him personally and fully with our life, despite its many struggles and tragedies. We are called to relate with Him, walk with Him, and live with Him in the midst of the realities and pains of this world.

This, however, is not the faith muscle used in “the blood of Christ is my vaccine” – at least not on the surface. Instead of faith in, it appeals to faith that. Faith or belief that is entirely different to faith or belief in. Faith that is measured in quantity (did you not have enough faith?) whereas faith in is about quality (do you truly know Him?).

One must assume, for instance, that if you contracted COVID-19 despite having ‘the blood of Christ’, then either, 1. The blood of Christ is somehow defective, or 2. You didn’t have enough faith that he would protect/heal/fix you.

Believing that Jesus should do certain things for us, or that He’s ‘supposed’ to provide a certain lifestyle for us, is not a healthy faith. It is faith that, not faith in. We want our faith to hum in the middle of crisis and illness, not be completely unearthed by it. The measure of our faith, after all, is not evidenced in the absence of struggles or difficulties, but the ways in which we walk through them with Jesus.

The bottom line

There is an unfortunate anti-Jesus sentiment behind “the blood of Christ is my vaccine” – one that treats Jesus like a machine to expect from, rather than a person to relate to.

This isn’t to say there aren’t reasonable people with reasonable reasons to avoid vaccines. I think there are. And there is also a reasonable connection between following Jesus and trusting Him to love and protect us to a certain degree. I think, therefore, that we should pray for healing of and protection from COVID-19.

The big differences, however, are expecting, quantifying, and rejecting: Expecting Him to fix us and to guarantee us perfect health; quantifying our faith to activate that healing and protection; simultaneously rejecting help from others.

The theology behind “the blood of Christ is my vaccine” then, is by its nature ‘prosperity gospel’, or the belief that Jesus should, because of our faith, provide us with health, wealth, and protection this side of heaven. This is a genuine heresy which preys on the vulnerable, dilutes the atonement, is logically bankrupt, rejects true faith in Jesus, and redesigns God into a vending machine. It’s not a good look.

Prosperity is one of the most evil and distasteful beliefs to have ever come out of Christendom – and telling people to reject the vaccine because the ‘blood of Jesus’ will protect them from COVID-19, or any other illness, is not faith; it’s fanaticism. And frankly the church could do with less fanatics.

Jesus can and does heal – but the expectation that He always should is misguided. Diluting the atonement to hijack the ‘blood of Christ’ to this end is even more so.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash