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Revelation 7:14 "...And he said to me, 'These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'"

 

This is one of my favorite Bible verses. The idea of washing our robes in the blood of the Lamb and thus rendering them clean so perfectly describes for me how we accept Redemption. Our souls are stained, both by original sin and our own. There is absolutely nothing we can do to remove the stain on our own, as hard as we try. I think a lot of dysfunction in the world can be explained by people sensing their stain and trying to deal with it themselves, either by giving into it, going further into sin because "that's who they are", or by trying to cover it up by the endless pursuit of something else, something they can put over it.

 

But all we have to do is admit we are flawed and throw ourselves into the blood that was shed to save us. It's the most freeing thing in the world! We just surrender, and accept our Creator's love. The most difficult part is admitting we can't do anything ourselves. The second is the robe washing, there is a bit of scrubbing we have to endure, to be honest, but that's nothing compared to all we try to do on our own and in vain.

 

And isn't it beautiful that our souls are made white in His blood? His blood is pure, there is no taint of sin in it, and it has been offered for our salvation. It is the one and only thing that can remove our stain.

 

While it seems counterintuitive to our proud and logical earthly selves both to surrender to someone else entirely, and to plunge our stained robes into blood to clean them, when we start seeing things God's way, it makes perfect sense. He created us, He loves us, and He wants to cleanse us from our stain, free us from our corrupted will, and "shelter [us] with his presence ... guide [us] to springs of living water; and ... wipe away every tear from [our] eyes" for all eternity. (Revelation 7:15-17). Why wouldn't we want to accept that?