Cleansed Consciences And Changed Lives
If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
1 John 1:7
The blood of Christ cleanses our consciences: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” (Hebrews 9:14 NIV).
Each of us has a conscience which sits as a judge over our every thought, word, and deed. It speaks with a silent voice, accusing or excusing, condemning or acquitting. It can be sensitive, crude, undeveloped, or distorted, depending upon the way we have used or abused it.
The human conscience is defiled by sin, says the Bible. All of us have experienced the backlash of guilt after a transgression. We know the haunting of the heart, the self-reproach of the mind which conscience can bring, the internal suffering that can come from being out of fellowship with God. Sin’s effect may be erased from the body, but it leaves its permanent scar on the conscience. Our consciences are seared and defiled by sin.
The conscience of man is often beyond the reach of the psychiatrist. With all of his psychological techniques, he cannot sound its depravity and depth. Man himself is helpless to detach himself from the gnawing guilt of a heart weighed down with the guilt of sin. But where man has failed, God has succeeded. The Bible says that the blood of Christ has power to cleanse the conscience from dead works to serve the living God. This is not mere theory; it is a fact of Christian experience.
Our Father and our God, please look into the recesses of my conscience and chase away any cobwebs of evil there. Fill my conscience with goodness, fairness, honesty, truth, and purity. When I sin against You, Father, please cause my conscience to move me until I make it right. Fill my conscience with the Holy Spirit and the mind of Christ, through whom I pray. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).