The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"A Clear Conscience"
Part 2 - The Crux of a Clear Conscience
The first prerequisite of a clear conscience involves not ourselves, but rather the Lord Jesus Christ. Only by right relationship with Him and response to Him can we truly know a genuine peace of heart.
"How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:14).
God made us to serve as the living spiritual temple of His Son. Only as the Lord Jesus dwells and walks in us can we be truly righteous in His sight (II Corinthians 6:16). Moreover, only as we are confident of being righteous in His sight can our conscience be clear. This involves grace on God's part and faith on our part. He must justify us as a free gift - a perpetually free gift - and we must must walk by faith in the wonder of being "accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6). Christ serves as the crux of the matter of a clear conscience. He alone can empower a life of obedience whereby we maintain a clear conscience through conformity to God's will, and He alone can cleanse our conscience through confession of sin if we distrust and disobey our Heavenly Father.
"He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32).
It is a false peace that is not a Christ-provided peace. Merely doing the right thing does not maintain a clear conscience if we do so merely as ritual and obligation. Doing the right thing as the fruit of the righteous Lord Jesus leading and enabling us provides the tranquility of spirit our Father desires us to know, and which we must know. This means we seek to live our lives "looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" as our hope for both faithfulness in our walk and restoration if we fall (Hebrews 12:2).
If offered vast riches or a clear conscience, little wisdom is required to opt for the latter. Indeed, without a heart of peace, earthly treasures offer the most fleeting enjoyment (and always with the the nagging realization that the pleasure shall soon pass). "The unsearchable riches of Christ," conversely, promise a deep and eternally abiding peace that transcends circumstance, condition, or situation (Ephesians 3:8). Whether we live in conformity to God's will through the Lord Jesus, or in confession of sin through Him if we fall, peace in the heart always involves the Prince of peace trusted in the heart. Yes, Christ is the crux of a clear conscience. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else.
"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God."
(Romans 5:1-2)
Weekly Memory Verse
"Make me to go in the path of Thy commandments; for therein do I delight."
(Psalm 119:35).
Tomorrow: Conformity (to God's will) and conscience
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