Serve
God with a clear conscience (v. 3)
Maintaining a
clear conscience ought to be a high priority for us. The Father has such a great love for us, that
His desire is to lavish us with the riches of His grace that was bought with
the sacrifice of Jesus. Ephesians 1:7-8
says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.” Surely there is nothing greater than having
the love of God being poured out into our hearts (Romans 5:5). No amount of earthly wealth or carnal
pleasure can be compared to that internal consolation, whereby the Holy Spirit
speaks to our spirit and says, “you are Mine.”
When God shines the light of the glory of Jesus Christ everything else
in all creation becomes dull and boring. This is what we were created for; to bath in
the love of God; to behold His glory, and to find all our pleasure in the
person Jesus Christ who is “the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact
representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power”
(Heb. 1:3).
God is holy. He
calls us to be pure—“you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is
perfect”; “but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all
your behavior; because it is written, ‘you shall be holy, for I am holy” (Matt.
5:48, 1Pet. 1:15-16). Engaging in wrong
behavior that is contrary to how God has told us how to live and entertaining
evil thoughts will certainly give us an evil conscience. Sin defiles us. We cannot simultaneously experience the pleasure
and delight of the Lord, and entertain any form of evildoing. For the sake of the satisfaction of our souls
and the glory of God, maintaining a clear conscience is infinitely vital. May we as God’s dearly beloved children,
forsake all carnal thoughts that only entertain the flesh. May we forsake all deeds that would make
Jesus look undesirable. If once we know
the goodness of God and His amazing love, our lives can never be the same. For the child of the king nothing on Earth
can satisfy him. That is why unconfesed
sin affects are whole being. The heart
becomes anxious and loses peace; the mind becomes restless and in desperation
does one of two things. (1)The mind shall
either in desperation for pleasure become deceived and pursue carnal pleasure
to a much deeper end, and then the state of his being becomes even more dire,
or (2)the mind shall remember the Lord and flee at once to cross of Christ, and in
that moment he shall find comfort and cleansing. David knew all too well of the burden of unconfessed
sin. He declares in Psalm 32, “when I
kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day
long. For day and night Your hand was
heavy upon me; my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer”
(vv. 3-4). Repentance is necessary for
salvation. It happens at the beginning
of one’s conversion, and it continues on through the rest of that person’s
life, if they have been truly regenerated.
If you have repented in times past, and have known sin in your life,
then may you with rejuvenated urgency repent of your sin once again. The motivation that caused you to initially trust in Jesus is the same motivation to keep living for Him and obeying His commandments. When I read the NT, whenever there is a
gospel call it is associated with repentance.
Men and woman are to forsake their sin, stop trusting their own
righteousness, and embrace with the fullness of their heart the accomplishment
of Jesus, and the glory of who He is. On
the flip side, whenever there is a warning in the NT, the warning is to stop
engaging in wilful sin. Of course, after
a person tastes something of the riches of Christ and turns back to what the
world offers them, they "crucify again to themselves the Son of God and
put Him to open shame"; they "regard as unclean the blood of the
covenant by which [they were] sanctified" (Heb. 6:6, 10:29).
If
repentance seems difficult to you; if it seems like something you must do to
inherit eternal life, then you do not understand the grace of God, and you are
in fact still thinking “works salvation”.
Your sin does in fact invoke the holy wrath of God, and hell is the
punishment; but think upon the gracious words of Jesus when He says, “It is not
the healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick… for I did not come to
call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12-13). Your sin also makes you a possible
beneficiary of the grace of God.
However, you must realize your lost state, and that you are utterly
helpless in changing yourself. Also
nothing can justify your sins except the blood of Jesus Christ. But, be warned, for after your mind becomes
enlightened to what the grace of God is and your helpless state, and your heart
is given an opportunity to cast all trust and affection upon Jesus, and if you
repose and stall and choose to delight yourself instead with the fleeting
pleasures of this world, then know that “it would have been better for [you] to
have never known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away
from the holy commandment handed to [you]” (2Pet. 2:21). Indeed sin makes you a possible candidate for
the grace of God, but if after tasting God’s grace, you become lethargic in
putting your sin to death, then be warned—for the scripture says, “if, after
they have escaped the defilements of this world by the knowledge of the Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last
state has become worse for them than the first” (2Peter 2:20).
I
would like to focus now on blessing have having a cleansed conscience, and just
how that becomes possible. First of all
I would like to say that there no better, no sweeter state of being for a person
to possess than to have one’s conscience cleansed.
That is why David says in Psalm 32, “how blessed is he whose
transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom
the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit!” When the Holy Spirit speaks tenderly to the
conscience and says, “clean and forgiven” the sinner would not trade that inner
testimony for anything in all creation.
When the love of Christ is poured out into a person’s heart, all things
on earth seem dry, dull, and boring; and the sin that so ravished and enflamed
their desires seems so absurd to the person’s mind, and they say, “how did that
enigmatic thing ever seem like pleasure?”
So,
how to have your conscience cleansed?
Have you ever read the book Hebrews?
It is exalts the supremacy of Jesus Christ. It exalts His deity and the
efficacy of His sacrifice. For now, may
we dwell on His efficacious blood, which can wash sin away and cleanse the
conscience. Hebrews 10:21af says, “since
we have such a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a
sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean
from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” So in light of how absolutely amazing and
powerful Jesus is, let us… He did the
work that we could not do. He alone
lived righteously, and He died for you.
He offers a perfect righteousness that pleases the Father. Jesus Christ’s substitutional death on the
cross actually takes away yours and my sin.
So that God no longer counts our sin against us; it’s as if we have
never sinned, but it goes even further—God looks down on us and says, “you are
perfectly righteous.” How does He do
this? Because of the life and death of Christ.
Nothing else can cleanse your conscience. Nothing else can take away your sin. Look upon Christ! Meditate on Him; on His
death and resurrection. If the Holy
Spirit is opening your heart to the glory of His grace, then with all your
heart take hold of Jesus. His grace if
sufficient to heal and cleanse your heart and conscience. Fix your eyes on Jesus, and let Him be the
motivation to confidently draw near to God.
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