Culture: Verse 7’s mention of Jesus bleeding at every pore provides the framework for verse 11, in which blood is the agent of atonement. From our modern perspective, such an association underscores the significance of Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane. For Benjamin’s audience, however, a powerful cultural meaning linked blood and efficacy. According to Maya scholars Schele and Miller:
Blood was the mortar of ancient Maya ritual life. The Maya let blood on every important occasion in the life of the individual and in the life of the community. It was the substance offered by kings and other nobility to seal ceremonial events.… After the birth of an heir, the king performed a blood sacrifice, drawing his own substance as a[n] offering to his ancestors. Human sacrifice, offered to sanctify the installation of a king in office, was in some cases recorded as a vital part of accession imagery.… At death, Maya kings were placed in richly furnished tombs that often displayed the imagery of the watery Underworld, their walls painted the color of blood or in blood symbols. In the Maya view, none of these behaviors was bizarre or exotic but necessary to sustain the world.
While they are here discussing the evidence from the post-Book of Mormon period, evidence for the conceptual power of blood dates back to Olmec time (at least to 900 B.C.). We have already seen what seem to be the beginning of many practices that are articulated more fully in later Maya culture, and we will see more. The Mesoamerican concept of auto-sacrifice required that blood drawn from different and specific parts of the body, depending on the ritual. For Mesoamericans, the Messiah’s bleeding from every pore would indicate the measure of his self-sacrifice, involving, as it was, his entire body. The Messiah was the self-sacrifice for his people.
Benjamin stresses the atoning power of the Messiah’s blood. While his people would have been culturally disposed to attribute other-worldly power to blood, atonement was not part of their understanding. Thus, Benjamin is singling out this aspect of the Messiah’s mission from other possible associations with blood. It would be easy for his people to assume that the Messiah’s sacrifice was simply another of the kingly blood sacrifices they were already familiar with; but that would be a grave mistake. Benjamin articulates the theology of the Messiah’s atoning power in association with his blood—the medium that made the atonement effective.
Scripture: Benjamin notes that the Messiah’s sacrifice is universal. It covers even those who know nothing of it—those who might be described as “without law.” They sin in ignorance, committing acts that are violations of the law, but they may be forgiven such transgressions because they do not know the law. While some sins may be so heinous as to be universally accepted as sin, Benjamin is here not talking about that category of behavior but rather about sin as related to the will of the person who commits the act. Where the law is known, not making the correct choice is sin. Where the law is not known, an individual who makes an incorrect choice may not be considered as sinning. Therefore, according to Benjamin, the nature of sin cannot deal with the action alone but rather with the intent and will of the actor. This emphasis on intent is the focus of the Savior’s discourse on the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5, 3 Ne. 12).