The Gift of a Clear Conscience
Christians believe that the cross of Christ stands at the very center of human history – at the heart of God’s plans of redemption and at the core of our existence as a people of God. But what exactly did the cross achieve? What are the benefits given to us through the death of Jesus and the shedding of his blood at Calvary? Those crucial questions are addressed by the writer of Hebrews and the answers are relevant today.
Unlike the priests of old who ministered in the temple, the risen Jesus entered the true holy place – heaven itself. He entered, not on the basis of the sacrifice of an animal, but on the basis of His own death. And because of this, He was able to do what the priests of old never could: He provided cleansing for the human conscience. As the writer of Hebrews explains, “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience…” (Hebrews 9:13-14).
The rituals at the temple all dealt with external matters – with ceremonial cleanliness. That is as far as the blood of the animal sacrifices could go. But the blood of the One who is both God and man is able to cleanse us within by purifying the conscience itself. The human conscience is vital. It can be misaligned, of course, so that it is too sensitive or not sensitive enough. But it has a crucial purpose: just as the nervous system (the pain mechanism) works in the physical sphere to alert us to danger, the conscience works for us in the moral sphere to tell us when we have violated the moral standards of God Himself. The reality is that we all have a deep need for the burden of our conscience to be lifted. We try to drown out the voice of our conscience in all kinds of ways. We seek to self-justify, to minimize our wrongdoing, to deflect our guilt. But our conscience will not will not be silenced entirely.
How does the shedding of Jesus’ blood 2000 years ago interact with our conscience today? The answer is found in the fact that our conscience is a God-given thing. The conscience is not simply about our feelings or our psychology. God gave us a conscience to alert us to situations when we violate His standards. The conscience is essentially God’s alarm system in the human heart. It points us beyond ourselves to our Maker and reveals that we have a problem with God Himself. It points to an objective reality: the reality of our sinful standing before a holy God. The reason that the blood of Jesus can address the problem of our conscience is that His perfect, blemish-free sacrifice pays our debt before God the Judge. The death of Jesus satisfies the death sentence that we deserve for our sin.
Perhaps the alarm of your conscience has been ringing of late. Perhaps your guilt has been troubling you and sounding so loudly that it keeps you up at night. You may have tried to silence it through distraction or busyness or indulgence. Come to Jesus in a spirit of repentance, turning away from your sin. Come to Jesus in faith, believing that His perfect, blemish-free sacrifice has paid the price for your sin. He will clear your record before God—and give you the gift of a clear conscience today.