One thing that I’ve been thinking of is how attachment psychology relates to God’s dealings with us.  Particularly attachment in infants.  A lot of study on child psychology and development has taken place in recent years, leading to a resurgence in practices like co-sleeping, baby wearing, and even breast feeding.  One article I came across has a good overview of how parental practice affects attachment in infants and parents.

It’s interesting.  When a mother nurses her infant, the hormone oxytocin is produced both in the mother and the infant from the close physical contact.  Oxytocin is directly associated with attachment and bonding between people, whether between spouses or between a mother and her child.  Not only does the infant produce oxytocin, but it obtains a “double dose,” as it were through its mother’s milk.  Nursing is God’s designed way of bringing a mother and her infant into close fellowship, attaching them to one another, and providing a physiological foundation for the mother to joyfully and effectively raise her child.  This stage of attachment is particularly important for the healthy development of an infant.  You can’t wait a few years to bond and hope for the same effect.  An infant who does not attach may suffer severe consequences throughout life, well into adulthood.

It’s an amazing thing, God’s great design.  But the purpose of my posting this isn’t to argue the benefits of breast-feeding infants.  There are plenty of good articles that do that by much more qualified people.  I’m posting this to dig a little deeper.  Like so many aspects of humanity, nursing does not stand alone, and it’s not merely utilitarian.  A psychologist may be able to describe what is happening physiologically, but he cannot tell you why it is so in a deeper sense than that of natural cause and effect.

It’s no accident that feeding a child is directly associated with attachment in the design of this universe.  The one who feeds attaches.  In fact, God uses the imagery of nursing children and other images of feeding to describe  his love for his chosen people.  The passage comes first to mind is Isaiah 66:10-13.

“Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her;
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious abundance.”

For thus says the LORD:
“Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip,
and bounced upon her knees.
As one whom his mother comforts,
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.

God promises his people that in the day that he extends peace to Jerusalem, he will feed them.  And not merely feed them, but nurse them.  They will be nourished and comforted.  And when did this happen?  When did God give Jerusalem peace, that his people might rejoice and be fed by her?

Of course, the final peace of the true Jerusalem, the Church, is found in Christ.  It’s interesting to note that it is specifically Jerusalem who feeds us in the prophecy.  Also striking is the imagery of Jerusalem’s citizens as nursing babes, all of them.  While it is Jerusalem who feeds, it is God who comforts in Jerusalem.  The juxtaposition of nursing with comforting is clear as well.  Long before our modern psychological studies, the prophets knew that nursing and comfort and attachment all to together.

And today in the Church age after the coming of Christ and the extending of God’s peace to us, Jerusalem does feed us, through the meal that Christ gave us in his Lord’s Supper.  Through the Supper we are continually spiritually joined to Christ and his body, the Church, the New Jerusalem.  It’s a vital part of our attachment to Mother Kirk.  Without its faithful partaking, as with the infant without a nursing mother, it is not impossible that we should grow in the Church, but it is against God’s design, and only makes things needlessly difficult.

Finally, I did mention that nursing is critical in infancy, because of that child’s development.  If the first months are neglected, all is not necessarily lost, but both infant and mother have been deprived of God’s designed way to facilitate a loving bond.  Neither mother nor child might even realize what has been missed.  Obviously, the infant has no conscious understanding of what is happening when it nurses.  But something has been lost, which cannot easily be recovered.

Likewise, if we neglect God’s designed way to nourish and strengthen the bond between the Church and her members, and if we say the Church should not feed her little ones, we shouldn’t be surprised if they do not attach, and later grow away from Mother Kirk.  As with an infant, it is not so much the understanding of being fed that is important.  It is the feeding itself.

And so the Church must feed its children, especially the little ones.  Because it makes the faith of the Church the faith of the child.  A son of the Church will grow with and into the conscious understanding that it is not his parents who ultimately give true spiritual food, it is Jesus Christ Himself, working through his Bride and Body the Church.  The daughter of the Church will know from experience that it was not her own understanding that saved her, but only Christ who set her apart at birth and fed her from the day she could handle solid food.

So in what way did the fruit of the Tree convey death to Adam and to the human race after him? Was the fruit toxic? Did it carry in it a hereditary disease? Not at all. The fruit itself was good for eating, for God created all things good. It was covenant commandment that was attached to the fruit that conveyed with it consequences. Adam brought death to himself and to his race by eating the fruit, but it was not the fruit that killed him. It was the covenant sanctions attached to disobedience that brought death.

Today, the Church also has a covenant food. A meal with blessings and curses attached to it. It has become common among even Reformed Christians to say that in the Lord’s Supper, nothing actually happens. The bread and wine do not physically become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore it would be superstitious to think that the bread and wine are anything special or that eating them might actually do anything to or for you, right? After all they are only useful as means to help us to remember Christ’s sacrifice.

But that is not how covenant food works. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that those who eat and drink unworthily eat and drink judgment to themselves. The reciprocal is also true. When we eat and drink rightly, we have true fellowship with Jesus Christ. Is it anything inherent in the bread and wine that brings this about? Not at all. But that does not diminish the use of bread and wine, for they are covenant symbols (there is nothing “mere” about a symbol) of what they represent, namely the body and blood of Jesus Christ. To dishonor the elements or to use them lightly is to dishonor Christ himself. Not because the elements have been mystically changed, but because they represent him as their covenant function.

A good analog might be the Reformed doctrine of imputation. When God justifies and declares us righteous, he does so on account of Jesus’ righteousness, in commendation of a righteousness we do not have in ourselves.  Even so, the covenant food is imputed or reckoned to be to us Christ’s body and blood.  It is the God the Holy Spirit who applies the reality of the sign so that it is as if you had eaten his flesh and drank his blood, as he says we must do in John 6.

Just as it is the Spirit that applies the reality of the sign, it is the Spirit that judges the use of the sign.  When Adam misused covenant food it was not the food that judged him, but God himself.  So also if we misuse our covenant food it is God who judges, not the food. There is no active causality in the food, but there is direct correlation.

But the Table of the Lord is intended for life. God has given us an easy enough guideline to follow for worthy partaking that even a child can do it. One who eats of the Church’s covenant food need not be sinless or especially knowledgeable. They must simply eat in faith and in fellowship, waiting for and upon one another in love. This is no forbidden fruit to bring us death. The covenant food is intended to bring life to those who eat it in covenant.  It must be taken in faith, yes, but also God strengthens faith through it.  Surely even faith so small as a mustard seed.

Many times we simply assume that this means in remembrance of Jesus’ death on the cross.  After all, that commandment was given “on the night on which he was betrayed,” the evening before he went to the cross.  But at the same time, we should not turn the Lord’s Table into the commemoration of an event, for it is given to us to be the remembrance of a person.

Communion is given to us to remember Christ and all that he is.  Of course this includes remembering his primary earthly mission to die on the cross for the atonement of sin.  But in remembering the event we must not lose sight of the whole person.  There is a historical and eschatological aspect to what we do at the Table.  We must remember Jesus Christ—who he was, what he became, what he did, who he is and what he is doing now, and what he has yet promised to do.  Every time we eat and drink, we declare (in the present) Christ’s death (in the past) until he comes (in the future).  What Paul says here has a scope as broad as all of history, which requires the remembering of Christ’s whole person and work.

Therefore, we should not have an unhealthy preoccupation with Jesus’ suffering when we approach the table.  Yes, we remember it as an essential part of who he is and what he did on our behalf.  But that is not all he is.  When we remember Jesus, let us remember him as very God the Son, sent from the Father, who took on our human nature, who was sinless, who died for sin and rose again, who ascended to the right hand of the Father, who makes intercession, who meets with us in worship, who will come again to judge the living and the dead, and who will claim his bride, the Church, to close the final chapter of history.  If we neglect any of these things in communion and instead turn the Table into the memorial of a single event, then I think we do not properly remember Jesus Christ, the person.

Historically, the Eucharistic prayer has been specifically worded to remember Christ in this way.  In a full prayer, rather than reducing the remembrance only to Jesus’ betrayal and death, we remember Jesus the person and all he has done, is doing and will yet do.  This is not to say that we must have a written prayer that follows a strict wording preapproved by some hierarchical oversight (not to say there is anything inherently wrong with precomposed prayers either).  Justin Martyr describes the early Eucharistic prayers as extemporaneous.  But whether extemporaneous or precomposed, the prayer should be framed to deliberately remember and offer thanksgiving for and to Jesus Christ the person.

I was reading the Exodus story in the past couple days, and was struck by a few things that I want to share here.

The story of the deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh is a type for the deliverance of the Church from sin and death.  God comes to redeem His people, his chosen ones, and to bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey.  But as we read Exodus, we find that God early on gives a specific purpose for Israel to leave Egypt.

Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” But Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to to the LORD our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.”

~Exodus 5:1-3

There are a couple times before Israel’s final deliverance that Moses and Aaron make this less drastic request of Pharaoh.  And of course, as God had told Moses He would, He hardened Pharaoh’s heart against this request.  But I want to point out that there is a particular purpose in the request itself.  YHWH tells Pharaoh to let Israel go in order that they might hold a feast to Him.

Now, as we continue reading through the Pentateuch we find that a feast has a specific purpose.  It is not just a grand ol’ time where the people of God gorge themselves and get drunk like the pagans at their feasts.  Rather, it is a solemn occasion of remembrance.  Yes, the feasts are joyous celebrations, but they are held for one purpose: worship of the One True God.  So essentially, God is telling Pharaoh to let Israel go out into the wilderness to worship, and the means by which they are to worship is the feast.

When Moses restates YHWH’s demand, he makes this even clearer.  Now  rather than call it merely a feast, he says that they must go to sacrifice to YHWH.  The feast and the sacrifice are inextricably linked.

In the same way, God has redeemed us from the power of sin and death . . . for what?  To worship.  It is the expressly given purpose of our deliverance.  It is the chief goal of man’s existence, which we can only fulfill in Christ.  And when we gather as the Church to worship, we offer the sacrifice of our songs and praises, our acclamations, and of our very selves.  And we partake in a feast to the LORD our God, which Christ gave us at his last supper before going to the cross.

There is another interesting point we can glean from the various encounters with Pharaoh.  Initially, the demand is simply that he let God’s chosen people go out into the wilderness for three days to observe the feast and the sacrifice.  But we know, of course, that Pharaoh will not comply with these demands.  Not until his nation has been destroyed by plagues and he himself lies drowned in the Red Sea.  At that point the deliverance promised by God to Israel is complete.  It is not only for a short time that He delivers Israel to observe the feast, but it is a permanent deliverance.

Just so, when God commands us to worship, we cannot do so until He has ultimately delivered us.  There is no going to worship God and then returning to Egypt.  That is an impossibility.  Sin and death as principalities are cruel and unyielding masters that will not allow us to leave for a time, worship God and then return to them.  In order to engage in true worship, we must be freed in a permanent and ultimate way with no thought of going back to the place from which we came.

I think there is some significance to the three days journey into the wilderness even though the journey never happened as first asked of Pharaoh.  It is perhaps enough that Moses stated the three days as the original demand.  Israel must go into the wilderness for three days to make sacrifice.  Christ as the ultimate representative of Israel is the final fulfillment of this.  For on behalf of His chosen people, after instituting the feast of the Lord’s Supper He journeyed into the wilderness of death for three days, Himself being the final sacrifice to atone for sin.

There is one more thing I want to bring out from this part of the Exodus story.  Sometimes Pharaoh seems to be on the verge of complying with the demand of YHWH, but he always seems to put limits on his obedience.  At one point, Pharaoh even tells Moses that he will let the people go . . . but there’s a catch:

Then Pharaoh’s servants said to him, “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. And he said to them, “Go, serve the LORD your God. But which ones are to go?” Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the LORD.”

But he said to them, “The LORD be with you, if ever I let you and your little ones go! Look, you have some evil purpose in mind. No! Go, the men among you, and serve the LORD, for that is what you are asking.” And they were driven out from Pharaoh’s presence.

~Exodus 10:7-11

Pharaoh will allow Israel to go . . . but only the men.  It is as if Pharaoh says, “Isn’t that enough?  Your covenant heads may go and worship and sacrifice.  The children need not.”

No doubt some will point out that he simply wished to keep the children behind as a guarantee that his slaves would actually return.  And as far as Pharaoh is concerned this is probably true.  But I think there is more than just that going on here.  Moses will not concede these limits put on God’s demands, and he gives the reason.  The whole family unit must be allowed to go.  The men, the young and old, their sons and daughters must go . . . why?  For we must hold a feast to the LORD.

What does this tell us about how God regards the children of believers in relation to worship?  Simply this: they must be included in the worship of God’s people, and in the feast.  It is not right for the parents to worship and leave the children aside.  God wants even the little ones to observe the feast and the sacrifice.  The old and young, our sons and daughters alike must be taught to worship.  It is for this reason that He redeems the little ones as much as the men (the covenant heads) from sin and death, just as He would not accept that Israel’s little ones should be left in the hands of Pharaoh.

Those who are strictly for credo baptism will no doubt point out that while the passage does speak the believing spouse’s children as sanctified, it also speaks of the unbelieving spouse as sanctified.  So to say that since Paul calls the children holy they ought to be baptized is to prove too much, since he also calls the unbelieving spouse holy, and surely he is not suggesting they ought to be baptized as well!  I think this is a reasonable point, given how the passage is often presented.

Which brings me to the question of how proponents of infant baptism use the passage.  I think we are often guilty of reversing Paul’s logic in here, if not in our own reading of the passage, then in how we represent his line of reasoning.  I know I am guilty of having done so in the past.  Just so we’re totally clear on what he says, here’s verse 14:

For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

What I want to point out in this post is that Paul’s burden here is not about the status of the believing parents’ children!  It is rather the status of a believing person’s unbelieving spouse that is in question.  Paul is not making an argument here for the holiness of a believing parent’s children.  Instead, he is doing something much more powerful:

He is assuming it.

In order to bolster his main point that an unbelieving spouse of a Christian is in some way sanctified, Paul appeals to what he evidently considers obvious and well accepted by all—that the children of believers are holy.  Paul tosses the point regarding children into his argument as almost an afterthought, and he never brings children up again.  It’s almost an incidental feature of his case, and he expects all his readers to grasp it without further elaboration.  Notice how he phrases things:

Otherwise, Paul says, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

In other words, “Corinthians, you must accept that an unbelieving person is sanctified by a believing spouse, for if you reject this possibility, then by conclusion you must also say that your children are also unclean, but you of course know and understand that they, at least, are holy.”

Paul then goes right back to discussing the relationship between a believer and an unbelieving spouse.  So while the set-apartness of a spouse may be a question of debate here, the holiness of a believer’s children is not.

Does this by itself prove infant baptism?  No, it doesn’t.  But I think it strongly supports the case.  For unless the children of believers are baptized, recognized members of the covenant family, and so definitively sanctified, how else could Paul so readily appeal to their sanctified state as a given (as he here does) in order to argue for the apparently less obvious sanctification of an unbelieving spouse?

In short: if children were not baptized, then Paul would likely need to make a case for their holiness first.

There are basically two ways of translating “anamnesis,” which is the word Christ uses in the institution of the Lord’s Supper when he says “do this in remembrance of me,” or “do this as my memorial.”

They mean basically the same thing, but the emphasis is different.  In any case, tied to the word anamnesis is the issue of remembering.  In a Eucharistic or Old Testament sacrificial context, it is the remembering of what God has done for his people and offering of oneself to him in return.  It is thanksgiving.

But what does it mean to remember?  Is remembrance a mere cognitive exercise, or is there something more to it?  Of course today, when we use the word, we generally mean simply to bring a past event to mind.  But is this a Biblical view of remembrance?

In his milestone work, The Shape of the Liturgy, Dom Gregory Dix modified the Roman Catholic suggestion of re-sacrifice¹ in the Eucharist to something a little less offensive to the Biblical mind.  Or much less so.  He defines remembrance as the act of making present.²

According to Dix, when the church remembers the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist, they are recalling it not only to mind, but also to present effect.  Remembrance brings the effects of a past event to bear on the present.  It identifies one directly with those people for whom that past event was a present reality.

Of course, since the popularization of this view, Roman Catholics have been using it to stump their Protestant friends who accuse them of viewing the Eucharist as a re-sacrifice.  “Why, no we don’t!  We believe it is simply a making present of the past sacrifice.”

Well, yeah, that’s true as far as it goes, but that’s only because they changed their tune.  Of course, they still believe it means to make physically present . . . though not locally, and that is where we go down the rabbit trail of medieval categories.

But aside from the dissonance, what about the basic melody of this new tune?  Is it any more pleasant than the last?  Let’s take a look.

First there is the language of how God himself remembers.

Genesis 9:15
I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

Exodus 2:24
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

There are many other similar examples.  And there is one interesting example that seems to have a very strong relation to God’s presence.

Numbers 10:9
And when you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the LORD your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.

We should realize by now that Biblically speaking, remembrance is more than a cognitive recollection.  God certainly does not need to be cognitively reminded of his people or covenants.  He knows all, and he does not forget.  We should also note that when God remembers, it is always a catalyst to action.  The remembrance and the resulting action are so inseparable as to be one and the same.

So what about human remembrance?  How does God command us to remember?

Deuteronomy 15:15
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today.

Was this command for that generation of the Exodus only?  This is after the forty years wandering in the wilderness.  An entire generation perished because of unbelief.  Most of those to whom Deuteronomy was given never saw slavery in Egypt.  How can they then rightly remember that God delivered them?  This is a question made all the more stark when we consider that the memorial sacrifices and feasts were to be observed by Israel continually.  Was the celebration of Passover by succeeding generations a mere cognitive exercise or was it an act of identification with God’s deliverance?

I read this passage a couple weeks ago, and found it quite interesting.  Pay attention especially to the pronouns.

Deuteronomy 26:3-10
“And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him, ‘I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our fathers to give us.’ Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the LORD your God.

“And you shall make response before the LORD your God, ‘a wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which you, O LORD, have given me.’

Notice how the perspective shifts in the act of remembrance.  The one offering thanksgiving here moves from a sort of separation between himself and his fathers to the point where speaks of himself and his fathers as one identity.  “A wandering Aramean was my father . . . he went down into Egypt” becomes “the Egyptians treated us harshly . . . the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand . . . and gave us this land.”

See how the identity of Israel as a people converge into one identity.  What God did for the fathers he did for the one who offers thanksgiving.  The suffering of the fathers is to be remembered as the suffering of the one who makes sacrifice, so that the deliverance of God might be known for all generations.

How does this apply to us?  Well, if Abraham is our father, we must do the same.  The deliverance of Israel we must recognize as our own.  The word of the prophets called us to repentance.  And finally, Jesus died and rose again for us.  When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we make present that reality in the sense that we identify ourselves with the sacrifice of Christ.  In remembrance, the Holy Spirit really (spiritual realities are real no less than the physical) applies to us the effects of the sacrifice.

Benjamin Warfield, in speaking of the Lord’s Supper, wrote this:

Assuredly, for example, the sacrificial feast is not a repetition of the sacrifice; and equally certainly it is something more than a mere commemoration of the sacrifice: it is specifically a part of the sacrifice, and more particularly this part—the application of it. . . . Precisely what our Lord did therefore . . . he, the true Passover, the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world—was to establish a perpetual sacrificial feast, under universal forms, capable of observation everywhere and at all times . . . All who partake of this bread and wine, the appointed symbols of his body and blood, therefore, are symbolically partaking of the victim offered on the altar of the cross, and are by this act professing themselves offerers of the sacrifice and seeking to become beneficiaries of it. That is the fundamental significance of the Lord’s Supper.  Whenever the Lord’s Supper is spread before us we are invited to take our place at the sacrificial feast, the substance of which is the flesh and blood of the victim which has been sacrificed once for all at Calvary . . . ³

So then, with Dix, we might affirm that remembrance is indeed a making present to us the reality of Christ’s one sacrifice, and with Warfield, who it appears would agree with that, we say that it is the application of the sacrifice to the one who partakes.

Anamnesis, then, is the recollection to us the realities of the past in such a way that they may no longer be thought of to be a mere past reality brought to mind, but a present one as well.

There are more things to look at in this.  For instance, how our celebration of the Supper brings us to God’s remembrance, and so into his presence.  I don’t want anyone to think I overlooked that.  Dix deals with this at length, and to properly address Dix, we have to consider that sense of the word.  But this is enough for one post.  I’ll probably look at this again.

And we know how the story goes from there.  God is displeased with Cain’s offering, but accepts the sacrifice of Abel.  Cain, jealous of his brother, kills him and becomes the first murderer.

It’s a simple and tragic story.  But there’s something going on beneath the surface.  Something that we likely did not get in Sunday school, at least in relation to this story.

For the question remains: why did God not accept the offering of Cain?  When Cain is jealous, what does God mean when he admonishes him with the words: “If you do well, will you not be accepted?” So what was the problem?  What did Cain do that was not “well”?  We aren’t even really told how God indicated that he accepted one offering and not the other.

At least when I was a child, we were told that Cain’s heart was not right when he made his sacrifice, and so God was not pleased.  And this is certainly the case.  God makes clear in many places that he desires the obedience of the heart, and not only outward sacrifice.

However, there is something more fundamentally wrong with Cain: while Abel brought blood atonement, Cain brought a grain offering.  He should have known that blood was required to atone for sin before harvest could be brought in thanksgiving.  Hebrews 9:22 tells us that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

But this is before the law, is it not?  That is, the Mosaic Torah, with it’s Levitical system.  So it is.  But God sets the example of sacrifice for Adam and Eve from the beginning with he sheds the blood of animals to clothe them.  All are in sin.  All require the shedding of blood.  Whether God then gave them specifics of what and how to sacrifice, we aren’t told.

He didn’t have to.  The pattern was set.  Abel understood this, and so brought a spotless lamb as sacrifice, prefiguring Christ.  Cain also should have known.  He did know, and so God exhorted him to “do well.”  But Cain’s rebellious pride was too great.  And so the blood he shed, instead of atoning for sin, cried out from the ground to accuse him.

And so we must find ourselves in Christ, covered by His blood, if we hope for the atonement of our sin.

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Hebrews 12:22-24

For if we are found in the blood of the Lamb as Abel was, then the blood that covers us atones for our sin, and does not cry out from the ground to accuse us, as it did for Cain.