Heb 9:14, what does it mean?

Verse 13 - The sacrifices of the animals made under the first covenant only made people ceremonially clean....clean on the outside. It possibly changed their behavior, but only briefly. And they had to sacrifice again and again and again because their was no place for instrinsic change.

Verse 14 - The sacrifice of Jesus and His blood makes us clean on the inside when we become saved. It purges not our behavior, but our desires and heart, which in turn change our behaviors. We don't have to do anything ourselves, such as perform animal sacrifices or participate in works for the sole purpose of making ourselves outwardly clean. Those works are dead works. In other words, we don't work to be saved (dead works), we work because we are saved and to serve the Living God because we love Him, not appease Him in hopes that we might gain His favor.

 

The words I have in red are from either the Message or the NIV. I can't remember which one I was looking at online. Sometimes I like to read scripture from variety of translations and/or paraphrases on biblegateway.com.

The rest of the words are my commentary, but the main thing is God's Word.