The blood is for atonement. It’s not for consumption.
God expressly forbids the eating of blood throughout Scripture. No way is He going to demand practicing something He’s declared sin.
Of course, it had always been forbidden. This is precisely why so many departed when Jesus DID demand that we drink his blood.
I don’t see how you can possibly say that “no way” would Jesus demand that we drink his blood, when, in John 6, Jesus DOES demand that we drink his blood.
And if you say that his words were merely symbolic, why would Jesus even speak SYMBOLICALLY about doing something that was forbidden?
Unless, of course, Jesus was God, in which case he had the authority to establish a new law, a new covenant, and a new sacrament.
The question has to be asked: Did the REASON for the OT prohibition on drinking the blood of the victim continue to exist after Jesus had sacrificed himself?
These connections [between the action and the words of Jesus on the one hand and the Passover celebration and sacrificial thought in the Old Testament on the other] could not have been introduced only later in the Lord’s Supper tradition. This is proved by the great difficulty that the idea of the blood of Christ causes in this connection. That the body of Christ is eaten, in fact must be eaten, as the body of the true Passover lamb is understandable if the parallel between the Passover in the Lord’s Supper is really to be valid. But the idea of partaking of blood had to cause most serious offense for those whose thinking was schooled in the Old Testament. For partaking of blood was strictly forbidden in the Old Testament, and even the parallel between the covenant blood in Exodus 24:8 and the covenant blood in the Words of Institution is seriously distorted when the latter is given to the disciples to drink. The difficulty is so great that one can credit no one, least of all Paul or John, with having burdened the idea of the Lord’s Supper with it after the event. There is really no other possibility than the assumption that Jesus himself is the originator of the idea that not only is His body taken as that of the “Lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet. 1:19) but also His blood... But if Jesus did express this idea that was so offensive to Jewish and perhaps all human thought, then His meaning could only have been the following: Partaking of blood is forbidden in the old covenant because according to Lev. 17:11 the body’s life is in the blood and because the life belongs to God. But the life of Jesus has been offered up for men. It should be for their benefit. For here men do not bring a sacrifice to God through a priest, but the High Priest offers Himself as a sacrifice to God for the sake of men. That Christ gives His blood to those redeemed by Him to drink is the strongest expression of the fact that He sacrifices Himself for men entirely, unreservedly, and completely. (Sasse 1985, 89-90)
http://dawningrealm.org/papers/passover.pdf
In short, the REASON for the ancient prohibition no longer existed after Jesus sacrificed himself, because: Under the Old Law, the life (blood) of the victim belonged to God.
Christ, on the other hand, in sacrificing himself, gave his life TO US as a gift. He tells us to drink his blood precisely in order to tell us that he is GIVING US HIS LIFE.
Again:
"Partaking of blood is forbidden in the old covenant because according to Lev. 17:11 the body’s life is in the blood and because the life belongs to God. But the life of Jesus has been offered up for men. It should be for their benefit. For here men do not bring a sacrifice to God through a priest, but the High Priest offers Himself as a sacrifice to God for the sake of men. That Christ gives His blood to those redeemed by Him to drink is the strongest expression of the fact that He sacrifices Himself for men entirely, unreservedly, and completely."
In other words, to REJECT drinking Christ's blood is to say that, in his sacrifice, Christ did NOT give his life TO US as a gift.
To refuse to drink the blood of Jesus is to CLING TO THE OLD COVENANT AND THE OLD SACRIFICES, refusing to accept the life Jesus has given to us.