36 Bible Verses about Innocence, Teaching On

“Listen carefully: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves [have no self-serving agenda].

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute wickedness,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit.

For the report of your obedience has reached everyone, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.

Do everything without murmuring or questioning [the providence of God], so that you may prove yourselves to be blameless and guileless, innocent and uncontaminated, children of God without blemish in the midst of a [morally] crooked and [spiritually] perverted generation, among whom you are seen as bright lights [beacons shining out clearly] in the world [of darkness],

so that He may strengthen and establish your hearts without blame in holiness in the sight of our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints (God’s people).

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you through and through [that is, separate you from profane and vulgar things, make you pure and whole and undamaged—consecrated to Him—set apart for His purpose]; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete and [be found] blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, beloved, since you are looking forward to these things, be diligent and make every effort to be found by Him [at His return] spotless and blameless, in peace [that is, inwardly calm with a sense of spiritual well-being and confidence, having lived a life of obedience to Him].

I am aware of nothing against myself and I feel blameless, but I am not by this acquitted [before God]. It is the Lord who judges me.

And although you were at one time estranged and alienated and hostile-minded [toward Him], participating in evil things, yet Christ has now reconciled you [to God] in His physical body through death, in order to present you before the Father holy and blameless and beyond reproach—

then hear from heaven and act and judge Your servants, condemning the wicked by bringing his guilt on his own head, and justifying the righteous by rewarding him in accordance with his righteousness.

Keep far away from a false charge or action, and do not condemn to death the innocent or the righteous, for I will not justify and acquit the guilty.

‘This is the law of jealousy: when a wife goes astray [while married] and defiles herself, or when a spirit (sense, attitude) of jealousy and suspicion comes on a man and he is jealous of his wife; then he shall have the woman stand before the Lord, and the priest shall apply this law to her. Further, the husband will be free from guilt, but that woman [if guilty] shall bear her guilt.’”

“If there is a controversy between men, and they go to court, and the judges decide [the issue] between them, and they judge in favor of the innocent and condemn the guilty,

He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous
Are both repulsive to the Lord.

To show respect to the wicked person is not good,
Nor to push aside and deprive the righteous of justice.

These also are sayings of the wise:
To show partiality in judgment is not good.

He who says to the wicked, “You are righteous,”
Peoples will curse him, nations will denounce him;

O Lord, who may lodge [as a guest] in Your tent?
Who may dwell [continually] on Your holy hill?

He who walks with integrity and strength of character, and works righteousness,
And speaks and holds truth in his heart.

He does not slander with his tongue,
Nor does evil to his neighbor,
Nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
read more.

In his eyes an evil person is despised,
But he honors those who fear the Lord [and obediently worship Him with awe-inspired reverence and submissive wonder].
He keeps his word even to his own disadvantage and does not change it [for his own benefit];

He does not put out his money at interest [to a fellow Israelite],
And does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things will never be shaken.

Then I looked, and this is what I saw: the Lamb stood [firmly established] on Mount Zion, and with Him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had His name and His Father’s name inscribed on their foreheads [signifying God’s own possession]. And I heard a voice from heaven, like the sound of great waters and like the rumbling of mighty thunder; and the voice that I heard [seemed like music and] was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne [of God] and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased (ransomed, redeemed) from the earth. read more.
These are the ones who have not been defiled [by relations] with women, for they are celibate. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been purchased and redeemed from among men [of Israel] as the first fruits [sanctified and set apart for special service] for God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouth, for they are blameless (spotless, untainted, beyond reproach).

The way of the guilty is [exceedingly] crooked,
But as for the pure, his conduct is upright.

Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].

“If the Lord your God enlarges your border, as He has sworn to your fathers to do, and gives you all the land which He promised to give to your fathers— if you keep and carefully observe all these commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the Lord your God, and to walk [that is, to live each and every day] always in His ways—then you shall add three more cities [of refuge] for yourself, besides these three, so that innocent blood will not be shed [by blood avengers] in your land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and blood guilt will not be on you [for the death of an innocent man].

Thus says the Lord, “Execute justice and righteousness, and rescue the one who has been robbed from the hand of his oppressor. And do no wrong; do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

But know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood on yourselves and on this city and on its inhabitants, for in truth the Lord has sent me to you to speak all these words in your hearing.”

“But if there is a man who hates his neighbor and lies in wait and ambush for him and attacks him and strikes him down so that he dies, and the assailant escapes to one of these cities, then the elders of his own city shall send for him and have him taken back from there and turn him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may be put to death. You shall not pity him [the guilty one], but you shall purge the blood of the innocent from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

Moreover, Manasseh shed a very great quantity of innocent blood, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another; besides his sin with which he made Judah sin, by doing evil in the sight of the Lord.

And shed innocent blood,
Even the blood of their sons and of their daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;
And the land was polluted with their blood.

These six things the Lord hates;
Indeed, seven are repulsive to Him:

A proud look [the attitude that makes one overestimate oneself and discount others], a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,

Their feet run to evil,
And they rush to shed innocent blood.
Their thoughts are thoughts of wickedness [of sin, of injustice, of wrongdoing];
Devastation and destruction are in their highways.

“Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house and proclaim there this word and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter by these gates to worship the Lord.’” Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “Change your ways and your behavior, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in the deceptive and lying words [of the false prophets who claim that Jerusalem will be protected by God because of the temple], saying, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ read more.
For if you thoroughly change your ways and your behavior, if you thoroughly and honestly practice justice between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the transient and the foreigner, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood [by oppression and by unjust judicial murders] in Jerusalem, nor follow after other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers [to live in] forever and ever. “Behold, you are trusting in deceptive and useless words that bring no benefit.

The king said to him, “Do as he has said. Strike him down and bury him, so that you may remove from me and from my father’s house the innocent blood which Joab shed. The Lord will return his bloody deeds upon his own head, because he struck down two men more righteous and honorable than he and killed them with the sword, without my father David knowing: Abner the son of Ner, commander of the army of Israel, and Amasa the son of Jether, commander of the army of Judah. So shall their blood return on the head of Joab and the heads of his descendants forever. But for David, his descendants, his house, and his throne, may there be peace from the Lord forever.”

“If someone is found slain, lying in the field, in the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess, and it is not known who has killed him, then your elders and judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the dead person. It shall be that the elders of the city which is nearest to the dead man shall take a heifer of the herd, one which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke; read more.
and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a [river] valley with running water, which has not been plowed or planted, and shall break the heifer’s neck there in the valley. Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall approach, for the Lord your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the Name (Presence) of the Lord; and every dispute and every assault (violent crime) shall be settled by them. All the elders of that city nearest to the dead man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley; and they shall respond, and say, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it. Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O Lord, and do not put the guilt of innocent blood among Your people Israel.’ And the guilt of blood shall be forgiven them. So shall you remove the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord.

David replied to Rechab and Baanah his brother, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, and said to them, “As the Lord lives, who has redeemed my life from every adversity, when a man told me, ‘Behold, Saul is dead,’ thinking that he was bringing good news, I seized and killed him in Ziklag, to reward him for his news. How much more, when wicked men have killed a righteous and just man in his own house on his bed, shall I not require his blood from your hand and remove you from the earth?”

‘But if he struck his victim down [intentionally] with an iron object so that he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall certainly be put to death. If he struck his victim down [intentionally] with a stone in hand, which may cause a person to die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall certainly be put to death. Or if he struck his victim down [intentionally] with a wooden object in hand, which may cause a person to die, and he died, he is a murderer; the murderer shall certainly be put to death. read more.
The blood avenger shall himself put the murderer to death; he shall put him to death when he meets him. But if he pushed his victim out of hatred or threw something at him with malicious intent, and he died, or if, in enmity, he struck the victim down with his hand, and he died, the one that struck the victim shall certainly be put to death; he is a murderer. The blood avenger shall put the murderer to death when he meets him. ‘But if he pushed the victim suddenly, not in enmity, or threw anything at him without malicious intent, or without seeing him hit him [accidentally] with a stone object that could kill him, and he died, and [the offender] was not his enemy nor intending to harm him, then the congregation shall judge between the offender and the blood avenger according to these ordinances. The congregation shall rescue the offender from the hand of the blood avenger and return him to his city of refuge, [the place] to which he had escaped; and he shall live there until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the sacred oil. But if at any time the one guilty of manslaughter comes outside the border of his city of refuge to which he fled, and the blood avenger finds him outside the border of his city of refuge and kills the offender, the blood avenger will not be guilty of murder, because the offender should have remained in his city of refuge until the death of the high priest. But after the high priest’s death the offender shall return to the land of his possession.

When Judas, His betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was gripped with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They replied, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!”

In his days, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years; then he turned and rebelled against him. The Lord sent marauding bands of Chaldeans, Arameans (Syrians), Moabites, and Ammonites against Jehoiakim. And He sent them against Judah to destroy it, in accordance with the word of the Lord which He spoke through His servants the prophets. Surely this came on Judah at the command of the Lord, to remove them from His sight because of the sins of [King] Manasseh, in accordance with everything that he had done, read more.
and also for the innocent blood that he shed, for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; and the Lord would not pardon it.

Then they called on the Lord and said, “Please, O Lord, do not let us perish because of taking this man’s life, and do not make us accountable for innocent blood; for You, O Lord, have done as You pleased.”