(A little longer today - but very NB!)
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14 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! Hebrews9:14
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews knew something important: We have a hard time forgiving ourselves.
Some people say that our consciences are actually the Holy Spirit whispering His truth into our hearts. This is not entirely accurate. We all have a conscience - a set of values that help us differentiate right and wrong. Our consciences are a place where God can and does speak to us powerfully through the Holy Spirit.
But our consciences can be damaged in two ways:
1. They can be seared or corrupted (1Tim4:2 and Titus1:15). When this happens, we care less and less about the things we have done wrong.
2. But our consciences can also become weak and we doubt our position with God and the reality of our "being-forgiven." Paul describes this in detail when he deals with the Corinthian problem of meat sacrificed to idols.
In Corinth, just about all the meat that was on sale had been slaughtered in one of the many pagan temples in the city. It was believed that whenever you ate this meat, you honoured the deity of that temple.
Paul's take was simple:
1. There is only one true God.
2. So, eating meat that was dedicated to false gods was meaningless and harmless to the Christian who ate in thanksgiving to the One True God.
BUT some people had weak consciences - they still carried with them the superstitions of the past and so they were threatened by the eating of the meat. Paul's _interim_ advice was not to eat meat in front of them until their consciences had been transformed by the truth.
Jesus' death does not only cancel the legal debt of our sins and brokenness, but His blood will also heal our consciences. This means that we can begin to forgive ourselves.
If you are struggling to love yourself and forgive yourself or if you are paralysed by a sense of failure and brokenness to the point that you are unable to freely receive the love and forgiveness offered by Christ, then it may be time to ask Jesus to heal your conscience.
He can, He does and He will!
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
