How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

We are not saved by our service, but we are saved for service.

There is an illustration of this in the beautiful, economical story of Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law in Mark 9:29-31. We read: ”So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them” (31, emphasis mine).

There it is: saved to serve.

 Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God.