The way we relate to God is determined by our perception of His acceptance of us. Our perception of acceptance is determined by our understanding of how God views us. Our understanding of how God views us is determined by the completeness of our knowledge and revelation of how God has dealt with our sin. When knowledge is combined with a revelation from the Holy Spirit of the comprehensiveness, the all encompassing totality of the work of the cross on our behalf, we will come to understand that our sin has been eliminated from the mind of God and we can now “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of our faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” (Heb. 10:22)

Too often we are hindered in our relationship to God by our own conscience. We think that because of our past sins we are unworthy of God’s complete acceptance, that it isn’t possible to experience Him on this level of “full assurance” because we carry with us the guilt of past sin.

We have a conscience and we experience guilt in order to identify what is right and wrong, once the wrong has been righted we should no longer have guilt except that we have an enemy that is an “accuser” and he will accuse us to God and to ourselves. He uses guilt to interfere with our relationship to God. The law is Satan’s weapon of choice because if he can get us focused on rules and regulations and the guilt that goes with them we are no longer a threat. We become more sin conscious than God conscious!

What is our conscience? The Holy Spirit is not our conscience, although they can work together, the Holy Spirit always knows what is right. Our conscience is like a built in judge that considers what we understand to be right or wrong and makes a decision accordingly. Our conscience doesn’t make the rules, it only interprets them and urges us to do what is right. Sadly, our conscience is not the final decision maker, our God given self will does that. Our will can choose to override the conscience and decide to do something totally contrary to what we know to be right. That’s where the problem lies because when we go against our own conscience, not only are we probably acting against our overall best self interest but our conscience then kicks in the quilt feelings to cause us to rectify the situation. Guilt, if not dealt with, is a very powerful emotion that can to cause problems with our feelings of self worth and our value as a human being. This in turn leads to problems with relationships, especially our relationship to God.

Thank God that he has provided a solution to this problem of a guilty or “evil” conscience! Under the Old covenant the Jews were required to offer animal sacrifices to atone for their sins. God gave Moses exact guidelines as to what animals were to be used and how the sacrifice was to be carried out. There were different sacrifices for different offenses but once each year, on what the Jews call the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies to offer a sacrifice for himself and all of Israel for the sins committed the past year. In chapter nine the writer of Hebrews illustrates how this special sacrifice was symbolic of the sacrifice that Jesus made of His own body, not only for Israel, but for the whole human race. Just as any symbol doesn’t carry the same effectiveness of the thing it symbolizes, the sacrifices under the old covenant didn’t have the same effectiveness as the one sacrifice they symbolized.

Hebrews 9:13-14
13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Wow! Does that mean that not only does the sin get taken care of but even the guilty feelings should go away? Absolutely! The sacrifice that Jesus made is so complete that it even takes away the guilt from our conscience, but only if we have a full knowledge of what he has done. That’s how good God is, not only does he want to have a relationship with you but he has removed every barrier to that relationship.

If there is any doubt about Jesus getting rid of our guilty feelings the writer of Hebrews says it again just a few verses later.

Hebrews 10:1-2
1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. 2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.

No more consciousness of sin? Do we really fully grasp what that means? To be conscious means to be awake and aware, this is saying that not only does the guilt go away but we should not even be aware that the sin was there. The law, legalism, continually reminds us of how depraved we are and as long as we use rules and regulations to guide our behavior we will continuously be reminded of our lack of ability to keep the law. We will live under the guilt of the law all the time and even things we haven’t done yet will hinder us because we are so sin conscious that we are afraid of what we might do next!

Am I saying that we should just do what we want and not worry about it? Absolutely not! Sin is devastating to our lives and to those around us, it brings us to ruin and nullifies the purposes of God in our lives. So, if we shouldn’t be guided by the law but we shouldn’t sin, what are we supposed to do? Good question, I’m glad I asked! God has given us his Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into what is right, he will never lead us astray and while the law has no power to change us, the Holy Spirit fills us with power.

Romans 8:13-14
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

We have to address the issue of sin in our lives through the Holy Spirit and not by keeping rules. Paul says that only by the Spirit are we able to deal with the problems caused by our flesh! When our conscience is freed up from having to constantly make determinations of right and wrong based on the law we can focus on the goodness of God and our relationship to him without having to wonder if we are in good standing with him today. At this point, even how we deal with sin becomes a part of our worship because we are interacting with the Holy Spirit of God!

When we allow guilt from our past or future to interfere with our present lives were are in effect saying that what Jesus did wasn’t enough to do the job. His sacrifice wasn’t enough and I have to still feel guilty for what I’ve done and if I’m still guilty then God and others won’t accept me. That’s why His sacrifice under the new covenant went way past the external observances under the old and wiped out our sin totally, even cleansing our consciences from sin!

Blessings,
Jeff Martin