How Much More

We have a Bible reading in my church that comes around once or twice a year. Sometimes when that happens, you forget to pay attention. It's a passage you've heard so many times, it's almost overly familiar.

Well, this time around, God pulled something out for me. First, we'll talk about what the passage is directly saying, then a secondary application that struck me during the reading.

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebrews 9:14 KJV

The verse above this one (and the whole passage really) is talking about how animal sacrifices are a shadow of what was to come and would only give a temporary washing away of sin. And yet, if that imperfect picture could wash away sin for a year, then how much more could Christ's blood--the perfect, sinless Son of God--wipe it out completely?

I mean if God would accept the blood of an innocent animal, then we need nothing more than Jesus's precious, spotless blood for an eternal cleansing.

That's what the passage is talking about, yet what struck me that Sunday was something a little more. Let's read it again.

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Heb. 9:14 KJV

Christ died for us. His amazing sacrifice ought to inspire--even drive--us to remove sin from our lives.

Yet we get so familiar with the story of Jesus' death, we lose the aw of it. We forget to find it amazing that God would die for man. Let us not forget that amazing love. Let it be what drives us to purge sin from our lives.

For how much the more should not the blood of Christ inspire us to live for God?