I think we have to ask ourselves this question: is the blood of Jesus enough? If we believe in Jesus and what he's done, and are washed in the blood, is the blood enough to wipe away our sins?
There is a supposition among some Christians that the blood is enough, but only if you come back to it time and again after you've sinned, and only if you try really hard between visits. If you believe this then the truth is that this isn't very powerful blood. If the blood of Jesus is not enough for all of your sins, then it's just not enough. If the blood of Jesus can't make you righteous once you've accepted it, then it can't really do anything.
Let me tell you something about salvation: salvation is a relationship, not a lifestyle. Salvation does not come with a manual, just like marriage doesn't come with a manual. People may talk about the Bible like it's an instruction manual for life, but if that is the case, it's a strangely difficult instruction manual. Looking strictly to the Bible as a manual for how to live your life is like trying to put together your new lawnmower by reading the Chinese portion of the instructions. You could do it if you had a Chinese interpreter. Same goes for the Bible, but you need an interpreter: the Holy Spirit.
To look at the Christian life as something to be lived by the formula God has given us in the Bible is to totally demean the Christian life. The Israelites had an instruction manual; they had a formula for righteous living. The Israelites had instructions for what to do when they fell short, for what to do to get right with God again. But Jesus said, in an instructively difficult way, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Jesus fulfills this desire of God: mercy over sacrifice. There is no formula for a life lived under mercy. Nothing is required by the blood but acceptance of the blood. Mercy is by definition free and undeserved, and so it can never be earned or due.
That is an important point: mercy is not your due. Salvation, forgiveness, grace...these are not your due. Paul, in talking about Abraham and how Abraham did not earn his righteousness, says, "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due." If we have to do something to earn forgiveness, it's no longer a gift. If mercy isn't a gift, it isn't mercy, it's leniency. If grace isn't free, it isn't grace, it's leeway. If the blood of Jesus can't deliver us from all of our sins--past and future--then how can it deliver us from any of our sins? If we can't earn it for our past sins, why would we need to earn it for our future sins?
This is the very heart of the Gospel, this truth that forgiveness is free if we will receive it, and that we only have to receive it once and for all. To believe that we will not continue to walk in the righteousness (and therefore forgiveness) of Jesus Christ if we don't somehow live the right kind of life is to believe that we are half-children of God. It is to believe that we have our own distinct kind of sonship or daughtership. Listen to me: we do not have our own relationships with God, we each have Jesus's relationship with God. God does not see me as Colin, a son; He sees me as Jesus, the son.
This is the Good News of the Gospel. This is the power of the blood. This is salvation: knowing God. Salvation is relationship and nothing else. God did not fathom and execute the complicated and inexplicably difficult plan of salvation in Jesus so that we could prove to him that we're worthy. We are not worthy. He doesn't want, or need, or care about the work of our hands, because He cares about our hearts. He wants to know us first and foremost, and for us to know Him. He wants relationship, and until we have it we will walk around completely clueless about what God is about. Without a relationship with God we are resounding gongs: loud but lifeless.
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