How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God? —Hebrews 9:14
Make it Personal
“Jim is gone.” The woman’s voice on the other end of the telephone was desperate. “I came home from work, and his closet was empty. I have no idea where he is.”
Jim and Suzanne were members of our Sunday school class in Texas. They seemed like a normal, all-American couple—three kids, two jobs, a nice dog, and a station wagon with imitation wood sides. (Remember those?)
As the weeks unfolded, we discovered that Jim had had a “friend” in Dallas for years. Apparently, he had thought he could sustain the hypocrisy, and for a long time he had been successful. But eventually he folded. I guess his conscience got the best of him.
Is there anything more harrowing than walking around with unconfessed sin that no one knows about? I don’t think so. Few men can survive a dirty conscience over a long period of time.
In the Old Testament, men suffering from the malady of dirty conscience came to the temple. They carried with them something precious: an unblemished animal from their own flock. The priest slit the animal’s throat with a razor-sharp knife and sprinkled the blood on the altar and on them. Imagine how it would have felt for the man, holding one of his prized animals as its life melted into a pool of blood at his feet? Dying because of his sin. The men were then declared “forgiven”: their humble deed had symbolically represented their repentance. The animal’s bloodstain on his tunic was a reminder until it went through the laundry. Then he forgot, and it was back to the priest with the house pet again.
These people were “[sanctified] for the purification of the flesh”—that is, outwardly clean—the writer to the Hebrews tells us in 9:13, forgiven through something they saw right before their eyes.
“How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God?” (v. 14). Now, because of the blood of Christ, we are forgiven through something we experience—something we can feel—something that changes us forever: a clean conscience.
I never saw Jim again. He disappeared to start a new life, free from the obligations of his family and his faith—free from oughts and accountabilities.
“We’re not Jim,” you and I might be saying. “We’re still here. We’re hanging in there. We’re toughing it out.”
Ah, but we are Jim. You and I struggle every moment with the disparity between who we are and who we know we ought to be. We wrestle with past failure and sin, desperately agonizing over a conscience that is, more often than not, dirty. This struggle is a quiet one, invisible to our wives, our children, and our friends, but we know it’s there.
This story needs to get our attention. We cannot let any more time pass without letting its truth be seared deeply into our hearts. Through Christ and His sacrificial blood for our sins, we can know forgiveness. We can feel His presence. Our past, regardless of its circumstances and its outcomes, is covered.
We are clean through and through—no need to suffer in silence any more, no need to hide. This is the best news you and I could hear. It may save our lives.
You and I know this is true. We’ve seen it for ourselves. We’re no exception to the rule. Few men have the brashness—the panache—to survive a dirty conscience for long.