Let’s take our Bibles together and turn to the Book of Hebrews. We are continuing our series today, “Christ Supreme in All Things.” And today we have a great example of a “then” and a “now” contrast in the book of Hebrews. The author is going to talk about the “then.” And then he’s going to talk about the “now.” The “then” is verse 1-5, and the “now” is verse 10-14. The “then” was the OT tabernacle, and the “now” is the NT fulfillment of that tabernacle, namely Jesus Christ. 

And in no way is the author disparaging the “then” in this passage. The “then” was good. In fact the presentation of the “then” here is mesmerizing to me. I find the components of the OT tabernacle fascinating. But it has been eclipsed by the “now.” The “then” of the OT tabernacle has been eclipsed by the “now” of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. 

And speaking of the “then,” let me walk you through a visual presentation of the tabernacle, so that you have a better understanding of what the author is describing here in the first five verses of this text. Here’s a helpful video that gives a great overview of the tabernacle, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. This should help a room full of mostly gentiles like us understand what the author is describing in Hebrews 9.

So as we start, you can see the scope and the size of the tabernacle, and this includes what's called the outer court that had these hangings all around. This outer gate was something you could walk through to enter the courtyard, which was roughly the size of a quarter acre. It was 150 feet long and 75 feet wide. 

And this outer court was accessible to all Israelites, both the priests and also the people who were bringing sacrifices. And they would bring their sacrifices to this “altar of sacrifice.” And the book of Leviticus has these provisions for laying your hands on the animals as they were being slain as a covering for your sins—the sins that you knew about anyways. We’ll talk later about the sins that you don't know about. And the priests would daily offer up sacrifices here too and apply the blood to the horns of this altar. 

Now this outer courtyard was accessible to everybody, but as you got closer into the inner courts of the tabernacle, this was the realm of the priests. And this is what the author of Hebrews zeroes in on in chapter 9. The people couldn’t go this far. And the first piece of furniture right outside of the Holy Place was this bronze laver or basin (Ex 30:17-21). The priests would ceremonially cleanse themselves, and then they would pass through this curtain that was made of finely woven fabrics of different colors. And this is what’s called the Holy Place, an area roughly 30 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 15 feet tall. And you can see the furniture that is part of this Holy Place. Only some of the priests had access to this space. 

Inside the Holy Place, you had the menorah to your left, on the south side of the tabernacle. And priests were required to keep those candles lit every day. And then 180 degrees from the menorah, on the north side of the tabernacle, you had the table with the bread of presence. And weekly, on the Sabbath day, the priest would come and replace the bread. And actually the priests got to partake in that bread. That was one of the perks of being a priest. You got to eat the showbread. And there were twelve loaves of bread that represented the twelve tribes of Israel. 

And this is where it gets a little bit controversial, because next we have the altar of incense. This is where priests would offer the incense, and this was especially important on the Day of Atonement. But the author of Hebrews has this altar inside the Holy of Holies. But it’s represented in this video outside in the Holy Place, which is one of the specifications in the Book of Exodus. We’ll talk more about that later.

But now we enter the inner most place of the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies. And this is where the ark of the covenant resided. And this compartment was very small, it was 15 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 15 feet tall. And only the high priest was allowed in here, and only once a year. 

And inside the ark of the covenant there are three components. There’s the jar of manna. There are the two tablets of the covenant. And also there is Aaron’s staff that budded. And you can also see that lid of the ark of the covenant which is called the mercy seat. And it sits in between the cherubim, the two angels that are stretched out towards each other, and the ark. And this mercy seat is where the high priest would once a year sprinkle or smear the blood on the Day of Atonement. 

Hopefully that gives you a clear, visual representation of what the author of Hebrews knew well about the tabernacle… not just because he knew the OT well, but also because he was familiar with the temple, which was a permanent fixture like the tabernacle in Jerusalem. 

And what this author is going to say in this passage is essentially, “Yes, there is an OT tabernacle with important rituals and atonement rites that were important to the people of God. But now there’s something better than that tabernacle of old. There's a true and better tabernacle.”

The title of our message today is “A True and Better Tabernacle.” And I want to detail three things from the text this morning. I want to show you today the furnishings of the OT tabernacle, the shortcomings of the OT tabernacle, and the foreshadowing of the OT tabernacle. The furnishings, the shortcomings, and the foreshadowing. Let’s start with the furnishings. 

1) The furnishings of the Old Testament tabernacle (9:1-5)

The author of Hebrews says this in verse 1.

1 Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. 

The author has just argued extensively in chapter 8 that the new covenant is better than the first covenant. The new covenant, prophesied by Jeremiah six-hundred years before Christ, is better than the first covenant, what we call the Mosaic covenant or the Sinaitic covenant. And he says in 8:13 that this new covenant makes the first one obsolete. It is ready to vanish away. The temple itself is about to be destroyed, which doesn’t really matter anyway because the new covenant has surpassed the trappings of the old one.

And speaking of the regulations for worship, he says in verse 2,  

2 For a tent was prepared, 

The word tent is the Greek σκηνή which can also be translated “tabernacle.” I’m going to use those words interchangeably in this passage, because the obvious reference to this tent is the “tabernacle” in the desert, this portable place of worship for the Israelites. 

the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence. It is called the Holy Place.

So in terms of the furnishings of the tabernacle, the first place the author describes is what’s found in the Holy Place. 

a. The Holy Place (v.2)

He skips the outer court. And he avoids some of the general activities that take place outside of the Holy Place. He goes right into the most significant part of the tabernacle. 

And inside the Holy Place, there is the lampstand (the menorah), the table, and the bread of the Presence. The lampstand was serviced by the Levitical priests every day. And fresh bread was placed on the table of the bread of the Presence every week by the priests. We know in our NT era, that Christ is both the Light of the World and the Bread of Life (John 6:35; 8:12). He’s the true and better Menorah, and he’s the true and better bread of the Presence.

Every week priests were selected to daily go into the Holy Place and care for the Menorah and fill it with oil so that it would stay lit (cf. Exod 25:31-40; 27:20-21; Luke 1:8). And every week, on the Sabbath, a priest would take the old bread off of the bread of Presence and replace it with fresh loaves (cf. Exod 25:23-30; 26:35; 40:23; 24:9-19). And it was a great honor for a priest to be able to do that. 

Keep in mind that of the hundreds and hundreds of Levites, even thousands of Levites—The book of Numbers states that there were 22,000 Levites during the wilderness wanderings (3:39)—only one Levite at a time got the privilege of going into the Holy Place to do this. I’m not even talking yet about the one high priest who got to go into the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement! So keep that in mind as the author develops his argument. One of the limitations of the OT tabernacle was limited access to God. The Lord was inaccessible to the average Israelite, even the average Levite! Let’s keep reading. 

Now the author is going to take us into the Most Holy Place, otherwise known as the Holy of Holies. 

b. The Most Holy Place (v.3-5)

In Hebrew when you wanted to talk in a superlative fashion, you didn’t say “the most holy,” you would say the “holy of the holies” (קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים‎). 

3 Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place, 4 having the golden altar of incense 

Now there’s debate as to whether this golden altar of incense was part of the Holy of Holies or instead in the Most Holy Place. And the best evidence suggests that originally it was part of the Holy Place and not the Holy of Holies (cf. Exod 30:6). But it may have been moved later, in the temple, to the Holy of Holies. And that’s why the author of Hebrews describes it as in the Most Holy Place. Whatever the case, this author sees this altar inside of the Most Holy Place. And that makes sense, because that altar was significant for the Day of Atonement ceremony that is central to this author’s argument later. 

But the most important piece of furniture in the Holy of Holies is without a doubt the ark of the covenant, which included the mercy seat. 

3 Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place, 4 having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. 

The ark was really just a box covered in gold. That’s what the word “ark” indicates. Both Hebrew words for ark (תֵּבָה and אֲרוֹן) in the OT indicate “rectangular box.” Noah didn’t build a modern-day ship with all the bells and whistles of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. He built an ark. It was a box, and it floated. If you go to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, they’ll tell you honestly that their replica isn’t exactly what Noah built. The size is similar, but they’ve made a few additions that make it look like a modern-day floating vessel. 

Well the ark of the covenant was similarly a rectangular box, that was ornately covered in gold and contained three items: 1) a jar holding manna from the wilderness that fed the Israelites, 2) Aaron’s staff that budded and produced almonds in Numbers 17:8 that confirmed Aaron’s high-priesthood, and 3) the tablets of the covenant that Moses brought down from Sinai. 

And it’s hard to overemphasize the importance that the ark of the covenant played in the life of the Israelites. It became a kind of talisman for the Israelites. They brought it out before the army once to lead it into battle. And the Lord was so angry with the Israelites for breaking protocol and for their sinful behavior, that he allowed it to be taken captive by the Philistines (1 Sam 4:1-11). When the high priest Eli heard about it, he fell to his death (1 Sam 4:12-18).

And part of the reason the ark was so significant, was the mercy seat. Look at verse 5.

5 Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. 

The mercy seat was the lid of the ark. The Greek word for “mercy seat” is a word that is used for propitiation. This goes back to the Hebrew term כַּפֹּרֶת which simply means “covering.” And that’s because this is where the blood was applied in the Day of Atonement ceremony as a covering (i.e. atonement) for sin. 

And those two cherubim above the “mercy seat” indicate that this is the place where this Lord’s manifest presence was found in the tabernacle. This was his throne, so to speak. So it’s appropriate to refer to it as a “seat.” And nobody was allowed to get near the Holy of Holies or the ark of the covenant or the mercy seat, accept for the High Priest who once a year entered this place and placed the blood of a bull and the blood of the scapegoat on the mercy seat (Lev 16:1-34). 

And the author says at the end of verse 5.

Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. 

And this is one of those places where I want to say, “No, no, no, author of Hebrews! Please tell me more. I want to know more about what all these furnishings of the tabernacle symbolize. Because there is a mountain of speculation on what these furnishings represent that I want to authorize or debunk!” If you read medieval commentators on these chapters or some of the rabbinical traditions, there is wild speculation about what all these things represent. But the author doesn’t go into that. The one part of the tabernacle that he expounds on is the mercy seat and the blood. I think we should take that to heart. 

So what we have here in the OT tabernacle is the following. Let me synthesize. We have God’s presence among his people. We have atonement by blood. We have, to use the language of verse 1, “worship and an earthly place of holiness.” This is all good, good, good, this OT tabernacle. But it’s not perfect. It’s not the better way, because in terms of worship and relationship it’s inaccessible outside of the priests. Kent Hughes writes, “Average Joes, like most of us, were several ecclesiastical layers removed from access to God’s presence—and their consciences never rested easy.” And it terms of atonement, that’s limited too. It’s temporal. It’s inadequate for what the human conscience really needs. 

Speaking of what we need, let’s transition now. We’ve talked about the furnishings of the OT tabernacle. Let’s talk about the shortcomings.

2) The shortcomings of the Old Testament tabernacle (9:6-10)

The author of Hebrews says this in verse 6.

6 These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, 

Replace the oil. Replace the bread. Every day. Every week. Again and again and again. 

7 but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentionalsins of the people. 

Now that’s a key statement right there in verse 7: “the unintentional sins of the people.” The people would regularly offer up sacrifices for their sins. They weren’t allowed into the Holy Place or the Most Holy Place. But they could come into the courtyard. And they could offer up sacrifices. And there were specific sacrifices that could be offered for specific sins. But what about the unintentional sins? What about the sins you didn’t know about or forgot about or hadn’t yet learned about?

You know if a cop pulls you over for a violation, you can’t use the “I didn’t know that was illegal” excuse to get out of a ticket. You are liable for laws that are broken intentionally or unintentionally. And that was true in the OT world as well. And part of the function of the Day of Atonement was as a catch-all sacrifice. It was meant to deal with all the sins of the people that had accumulated over the previous year and weren’t confessed or acknowledged or sacrificed for in the regular course of events in the Israelite camp. 

And that’s why the Day of Atonement was so important. That’s why the people breathed a sigh of relief every time that Day came around. “Thank goodness! Now all the sins of the past year are taken care of.” 

The problem with that, though, is that as soon as you get to the day after the Day of Atonement, you’ve got more sin to atone for. In fact, the very hour that the priest is done with all the Day of Atonement rituals, they’ve got sin that is unaccounted for—even with the High Priest himself! 

Go ahead write this down as 2a in your notes. I’ll give you two shortcomings with the OT tabernacle. There are more than two. But let me consolidate them into two. 

a. Limited access (v.6-7)

Only the priests had access to the Holy Place. Only the high priests had access to the Holy of Holies. I mentioned that quote a few weeks ago from F.F. Bruce. I think it bears repeating: “The whole apparatus of worship associated with sacrifice and ritual and priesthood was calculated rather to keep men at a distance from God than to bring them near.” “Stay away!” That’s the essence of the worship in the tabernacle. Even if the priests got out of line and stepped where they shouldn’t they could get put to death (cf. Num 18:1-7).

And not only was there “limited access.”

Write this down as 2b. There was also…

b. Limited efficacy (v.8-10)

Day after day. Year after year. Sacrifice after sacrifice. Think about the millions and millions of gallons of blood that were spilled over the years as part of the OT tabernacle and then later the temple. Think about the thousands and thousands of innocent animals that lost their lives. Why not just one animal? Why did they have to keep repeating those rituals? Because people kept sinning! And the sacrifices weren’t efficacious, they weren’t final and conclusive in dealing with human sin. They couldn’t be. The intentional and the unintentional sins of the people kept piling up year after year. 

But look at this. Look at verse 8. Here’s God’s plan in that. 

8 By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing 

God the Holy Spirit used those rituals. God the Holy Spirit indicated those shortcomings. God the Holy Spirit wrote these Scriptures, so that the OT people could anticipate something better, and so that we NT Christians can read about that which was inferior.

9 (which is symbolic for the present age). 

The Holy Spirit wanted us to see the symbolism, because the symbolism is important. 

According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, 10 but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. 

Not the Protestant Reformation, as important as that was. But the reformation that came at the time of Christ when Jesus “reformed” and “replaced” the Mosaic covenant with the new covenant.

Now this is really important. Don’t look past this too quickly. The OT tabernacle was great. It had wonderful regulations for worship. It was a unifying thing for the OT people of God. But here’s the limitation. It couldn’t perfect the conscience. It couldn’t cleanse or purify the conscience of the worshiper. Not permanently! 

The Greek word for “conscience” is this word συνείδησις. It’s your inward faculty that helps you determine right from wrong. This is a God-given faculty, that animals don’t have. And this is a really important concept in the NT. Because we have a conscience that repeatedly tells us, “You’re a sinner, you’re a sinner, you’re a sinner, you’re a sinner.” It’s actually one of those things that differentiates us from the animal kingdom. 

Animals don’t struggle with a guilty conscience. And no animal has a crisis of conscience. Dogs will be dogs. And cats will be cats. And dolphins will be dolphins. They operate by the instinct that God has given them. That’s part of what makes them innocent in terms of their sacrifice. But it’s also what makes them creatures without a conscience. Trust me, no animal will lose sleep at night worried about something that they’ve done. When a mosquito bites you, he never gets a prick of conscience and says, “I feel bad. I really shouldn’t have done that.” No, a guilty conscience is a human phenomenon. Animals lack the metaphysical faculties that produce guilt. 

But we have that, as humans. That’s part of the imago dei that we bear as humans. We are created with a conscience. And that guilt goes all the way back to the sin in the garden and the consequences we brought down on this world. Humans are sinners. And we know we are sinners. 

Interestingly, the French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau thought that children were born innocent. And the only reason they sinned or did evil was because of the evil influence of their parents. So he thought that if they removed children from their parents after birth, then children would retain their innocence. He actually did some experiments to try to prove this. Do you think those experiments worked? You know what they found out about kids removed from their parents? They found out that those kids are just as sinful as kids with their parents!

So we’ve got this problem as humans. It’s a universal problem. It doesn’t matter the color of your skin. It doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter your gender, your ethnicity, your social-economic status, or which side of the tracks you grew up on. We are all sinners, and we all have this guilty conscience reminding us of that fact. 

And the OT sacrifices for the Israelites did something to alleviate those guilty consciences. But it had limited efficacy. It worked. But only temporarily. So what did God do about that?

Well, He did something amazing. Write this down as #3 in your notes.

3) The foreshadowing of the Old Testament tabernacle (9:11-14)

This is the great climax of this passage. If we just talked about the furnishings and the shortcomings of the tabernacle, that would be a major fail. Because this author desperately wants to connect the tabernacle to Christ. And that’s because our consciences are at stake. Our eternity, even, is at stake! 

Look at verse 11 with me. 

11 But when Christ

Isn’t that good? If that’s all the author of Hebrews said here was these first three words in verse 11, that’d be enough. We’d get the point. 

11 But when Christ appeared 

Aren’t you glad that Christ appeared? The culmination of thousands of years of OT anticipation. The hope of Israelites for centuries. Remember that line from “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It’s one of the greatest lines in the history of songwriting:

O little town of Bethlehem…

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 

Redemption is this Greek word λύτρωσις. It means “deliverance,” “liberation,” “redemption,” or even “ransoming.” We have been “redeemed!” We have been “bought back!” We have been “ransomed” by Christ’s blood! And that eternal redemption, that permanent exchange of Christ’s righteousness for our sin cleanses our consciences permanently. 

13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spiritoffered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 

Wow, that is an amazing sentence! This is what’s called a “how much more” argument, that was so popular in the ancient world. In Hebrew, it’s called a qal wahomer which means “light and heavy.” In Latin, this is called an a fortiori argument. If this is true, then how much more will this be true! Jesus used this kind of argumentation all the time. Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matt 7:11). 

And an argument like this has two parts or two propositions. There’s a light proposition and a heavy proposition. If the light proposition is true, then the heavy proposition has to be true. So “If the blood of goats and bulls sanctifies the flesh”… That’s the light proposition. That’s proposition one. 

This first proposition is a reference, I think, to the Day of Atonement. The blood of the bulls was used when the mercy seat was sprinkled. It was also used in the ceremony that purified the high priest before he offered up a sacrifice for the Israelites. The high priest was a sinner too. So he had to be “sanctified” before he could “sanctify” others. And the blood of the goat was used in the scapegoat ceremony as part of the Day of Atonement. The priests would choose two goats. One goat was released into the wilderness and remained alive. The other goat was slaughtered and offered as a sacrifice. 

And as part of proposition one, you have this reference to the ashes of a heifer. That’s a reference to a similar ceremony in Numbers 19 where the ashes of a heifer (a female cow) were reserved outside the camp and mixed in water as a kind of tincture. Then they were sprinkled upon the people to remove impurity caused by close proximity to a corpse. These are just two of many rituals used by the OT Israelites in tabernacle worship. 

And if those ceremonies had any sanctifying power at all, which they did… If those ceremonies were meaningful and powerful and beneficial, which they were… That’s the proof of the lighter proposition. Then… here comes the heavier proposition, the “how much more” statement… If those ceremonies were meaningful and powerful and beneficial, how much more the sacrifice of Jesus Christ! Proposition one proves and even elevates proposition two. Those OT ceremonies foreshadowed something better!

Look at verse 14 again.

14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, 

He’s not a high priest who has to offer up a sacrifice for himself like the high priests of old. He’s blemish-less! And he doesn’t offer up the blood of bulls and goats, he offers up himself; he offers up his own blood!

By the way, that’s one of the things that differentiates Christ’s sacrifice from the blood of bulls and goats. If you had stopped and asked those bulls and goats just before they were sacrificed, “Are you willing to offer up your life for us?” They would have said, “Heck no, man! Why do I have to die? Kill that other bull instead!” They weren’t willing sacrifices. They were brute and silent beasts forced onto the altar. 

But Christ willingly gave up his life. Jesus said, “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).  

Back to the “how much more” argument. If the blood of beasts can purify the flesh, then how much more will the blood of Christ… look at the end of verse 14…

purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 

I want that! I want a clear conscience. I want to serve the living God with a purified conscience. I want to have a relationship with God. And only Jesus Christ makes that possible. The blood of slain animals produces ceremonial purification. The blood of Christ produces conscience purification. I don’t want ceremonial purification for just my flesh. I want conscience purification.  

I heard Al Mohler say about this passage that the OT sacrifices could atone for what we do. But only Christ Jesus atones for what we are. He doesn’t just atone for sin, he purifies sinners. He can cleanse us down to the deepest part of our being, so that even our consciences can be purified. I want that. I want that kind of cleansing.

How do we do that, Pastor Tony? How do we have our consciences cleansed? How do we have our sin atoned? Do we have to bring a bull or a goat to you to sacrifice? No, you don’t. Praise God, you don’t. If you want to go kill a bull or goat and eat it, go right ahead. If you want to kill a pig and eat it, go right ahead. We don’t live by those OT regulations anymore. 

But if you want your sins atoned… if you want your conscience cleansed… you don’t kill anything. Jesus has already willingly and sacrificially given his life as a payment for sin. All you do is believe. All you do is put your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ, our savior, our messiah, our Great High Priest. 

The Bible says this. “[I]f you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom 10:9). The Bible also says this, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). 

Isn’t that good? Do you know how good it is to have a cleansed conscience? You know, the following story is told about Martin Luther. When he was a monk before he got saved, he used to agonize over the state of his soul. And one of the things he would do to assuage his guilty conscience is he would go to his “father confessor” in his monastery, and he would confess his sins to him for hours and hours. And he was so conscience-stricken that he would panic if he didn’t confess everything. So he would go over and over his sins of commission and his sins of omission and anything else he could muster up. And his great fear was that he would miss something or forget something. How could God forgive something that he had forgotten to confess? That was all part of the Catholic theology in his day, and part of the error of it. You would have to keep offering up your sins before the Lord, or else you could lose your soul. 

And Luther’s father confessor, a man named Johann von Staupitz, got so sick of listening to Luther’s sins that he said, “Don’t come to me again until you have something serious to confess.” I mean, how much trouble can you really get into in a monastery! And this guy, Staupitz, he would hide from Luther whenever Luther was coming to confess his sins. 

And the problem is that Luther didn’t understand Hebrews 9. He didn’t understand the essence of the gospel. Luther said sarcastically later in life, “If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I.” And of course, you don’t get saved by monkery. And you don’t get saved by your good works. And you don’t get your conscience cleansed by good works, even if those include OT animal sacrifices. 

It wasn’t until later that Luther said so provocatively, “sin boldly!” And by that, he didn’t mean that we should embrace sin like an antinomian. He meant, “Don’t be afraid when you sin that you’ll lose your salvation. Your sin is paid for. You can’t possibly confess or address all of your sins anyway. You have unintentional sins galore that you could never adequately confess anyway. Christ covers those. Christ paid for those!” Luther said this. He said, “A good, pure, quiet, and joyful conscience is nothing else than faith in the remission of sins, which nobody can have save in the Word of God, which proclaims to us that the blood of Christ is shed for the remission of sins.”

Are we going to continue sinning as believers? Yes. Hopefully a little less every day. Is Christ’s sacrifice sufficient and efficacious and permanent enough to pay for our sins (past, present, and future) and cleanse our conscience? Yes, it is. Believe it.