The blood part 5

1 John 1:7 NIV‬‬
[7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we walk in the light.
That word IF makes a big difference. If. We have heard it said that Jesus died so we are all saved. But that is almost too broad of a statement. What the fact is, we have the chance to be saved by coming to Him and turning our lives over to Him. We are not simply saved because Jesus died. That sounds wrong, I know, but people talk as though they are saved but have never accepted Jesus as their savior. They have never taken the time to say, “Jesus. I know I am a sinner, but I know that through your death on the cross I have been set free. Please come into my life and change me to be like you. Forgive me for my sins and set me free from them. I want you Jesus. Thank you for loving me.”
Something similar. We have to ask Jesus to come into our lives. It’s not an, “ya, I believe in Jesus so I’m saved” thing. We need to ask Him to come and forgive us for our sins and to come into our hearts and minds. Only then are we saved. After that we must work to live in the light. You may say, “we don’t get to Heaven through works, only through grace.”
Okay. Let us open that one up.
No works will ever be enough to make us worthy of God, only His grace us enough for us to be pardoned unto Him. However, once we are reconciled to God we need to live accordingly. You say, “that sounds a lot like the Law instead of Jesus.” Yes. Because Jesus Himself said that He did not come to demolish the Law. The rituals and the things that were cultural instead of Biblical He did speak against, yet the rules pf the Bible still apply. If anything, Jesus made things even more strict, please reference the sermon on the mount where now holding hatred to your brother is the same as killing him. Ya, that’s definitely easier than simply not killing him no matter how you feel. It’s a narrow path that leads to Heaven. Living in sync with the scripture is hard and sometimes is certainly not fun. Please recall that in the OT we were permitted to hate our enemies and now we can’t. Jesus didn’t throw away the Law, but He also knew that we couldn’t make it on the Law alone, we needed a savior. We were going to screw up. We do everyday. That’s why we need God’s grace. But once we are accepted into Jesus’s family through His blood, then we need to live as children of the light. You can’t reach Heaven by simply being a good person, you need to have accepted Jesus. But you also can’t be truly part of God’s family if you live as a bad person.
If we walk in the light, as He is in the light. But we only get to the light through the blood of Christ.