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"According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness."
(Hebrews 9:22, CSB)
What if there was a way to calculate how many sins were in the world?
If we were to try to figure that out, it might look something like this:
If there are 8 billion (8,000,000,000) people in the world, and we could say that a person sins an average of 20 times a day (a pretty conservative number), that would equal 160 billion (160,000,000,000) sins each day!
That's a pretty big number.
Well, what if there was a way to calculate how many sins 8 billion people would commit in their lifetime (let's say 70 years)? That might look something like this:
8 billion people x 25,567 days (a 70 year life span (yes, that includes leap years)) = 204,536,000,000,000 (two hundred four trillion, five hundred thirty-six billion) days for the people of Earth
Now, let's multiply that really big number by 20 sins a day and you get this =
4,090,720,000,000,000 (four quadrillion, ninety trillion, seven hundred twenty billion) sins for 8 billion people who live for seventy years.
That's a REALLY big number. Now, why are we kicking off a Thursday with math about how many sins 8 billion people will commit in their lifetime? Because Jesus died for at least four quadrillion, ninety trillion, seven hundred twenty billion sins, and we can confidently say that even that large of a number is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual number of sins that Jesus died for.
This whole concept of Jesus paying a high price for a huge amount of sin is Atonement. A simple definition of Atonement is "the act by which God and man are brought together in personal relationship."* Jesus shed His blood because "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." That is what Hebrews 9:22 tells us. When you think about Jesus giving up His life, think about the greatness, incredibleness, and awesomeness of the blood of Jesus that it covers, at a BARE minimum, 204,536,000,000,000 sins. His blood covers even more than those sins, and we in response must think about and be thankful that God loves us enough to do something about it. God didn't just leave us in our sins, but He chose to send His Son to shed His blood for our sins and make a relationship with God possible for us through the work of Jesus Christ.
May this truth drive us to declare the good news of the Gospel with someone today. May we take advantage of the opportunity to tell someone today that atonement is for them, that their sins are forgiven because of what Jesus has done for them.
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