Let’s say I’m standing in waist-deep water off Chicago’s Foster Beach with a box of strike anywhere matches in my hand. If I light a match and dip it into the water, what will happen? Yes, it will go out. And if I did the same with a second match, it would also go out. Even if I lit and dipped all 300 matches, or 3,000 matches, or even a million matches, all would go out — because water extinguishes matches.

In the same way, Jesus Christ’s blood forgives sin. It has nothing to do with whether I’ve sinned once or countless times. We sin because we’re born sinful — we inherit it from our parents. The point of Jesus Christ’s death was not to forgive this or that offense, it was to cleanse (or “extinguish”) our sinfulness.

This is what it means to become a “Christian.” It’s to ask God to “extinguish”  or cleanse my sin with Jesus Christ’s blood, and to learn from Jesus how to love God and others. It’s the most important decision to make in all of life.