I have seen loved ones become critically ill—and others even die—because of religious beliefs that treat blood as sacred in connection with biblical verses such as Leviticus 17:11, which says, “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” For some, this verse becomes the foundation of a doctrine that forbids receiving blood in any form. Others stretch the idea further and condemn kidney or other organ transplants, believing that accepting another person’s organ somehow interferes with one’s spiritual identity or purity.

These beliefs are not merely theoretical; they have real and sometimes devastating consequences. Families have been torn between medical advice and religious conviction. Patients have refused life‑saving treatment out of fear that accepting blood or an organ violates God’s law. And in some cases, that refusal has cost them their lives.

I remember a case involving a Jehovah’s Witness patient who was critically ill and urgently needed a blood transfusion. Both he and his family refused, much to the frustration of the medical team. When his condition deteriorated further, he finally consented—but it was too late. He died. Few things illustrate more clearly how dangerous and destructive a misguided belief can be.

Here is the point: Life being “in the blood” (Lev. 17:11) does not mean that the blood itself is life. The verse teaches that blood functions as the carrier or symbol of life—not that life is a physical substance contained inside red cells. Life does not belong to the realm of physical matter—something that can be touched, weighed, stored, or transferred from one person to another like a commodity. Blood is simply the medium through which life operates in the body, much like a copper wire is the medium through which electricity flows.

A copper wire is not electricity; it only conducts it. You can cut out a section of that wire and replace it with another piece of copper, and—so long as the properties are the same—the electricity running through it does not become a “different kind” of electricity. The power remains the same; only the conduit has changed. In the same way, replacing blood or even an organ does not replace a person’s identity, spirit, or life. It merely restores the physical channel through which life continues to operate.

Blood, like copper, is a material substance reducible to particles and chemical components. Life, however, is not reducible to any physical element. It is something deeper—something science can observe in its effects but cannot isolate, bottle, or define. Blood is the pathway; life is the mystery that flows through it.

There is no formula that expresses life in terms of elements, chemicals, or mathematical equations. If life were literally the blood in our bodies, then when a person dies, all we would need to do is transfuse “life” (blood) into them and they would return to life. But the Lord Jesus said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). And John—the man who affirmed that the universe had a beginning long before modern science used Hubble’s expanding‑universe evidence, the cosmic microwave background radiation, or the BGV theorem—wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… In him was life” (Joh. 1:1, 4).