Although the limit on what man may eat is extended, a further limit is put in place. Mankind must not behave like savage wild beasts, and drink raw blood.
Does this prohibition still apply to us today? Calvin says ‘yet we must remember that the restriction was part of the old law.’ In line with this, he assumes that the prohibition on eating blood in Acts 15 was temporary only – a requirement on the Gentiles to avoid offending the Jewish conscience. But if Noah was forbidden to eat the blood not for this reason, but to guard against cruelty and callousness, why would man be allowed to eat blood today? Cruelty and callousness are still to be avoided. When the eating of blood was forbidden later by the Law, it was forbidden for a different reason - the blood makes atonement for the soul (Leviticus 17:11). The same verse however echoes Genesis 9:4 – ‘for the life of the flesh is in the blood.’ Leupold sums up, ‘Keil no doubt is correct when he claims these restrictions are given in view of the ordinances that are later to govern the use of blood sacrifices. This provision, then, of Noah’s time prepares for the sacrificial use of blood, and that which is … the heart and essence of the sacrifice, should hardly be employed that a man may glut his appetite with it.’ Now that that practice of offering up blood sacrifices has ended, this rule is no longer binding. The New Testament is very clear that not only has the system of animal sacrifices ended, but so too have the food laws. Christ declared all foods clean when he said, ‘Whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats’ (Mark 7:18-19), and Paul repeats the same doctrine when he says, ‘I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself’ (Romans 14:14). Cruelty and callousness are not longer warned against in this way.