'If you were allowed to take just one reason for Christ's death away to your desert island, which would it be?'*
Without question for me, this would be the one. Why?
Without a clear conscience, I remain fundamentally unsure about God's good intentions towards me - however many truths I hear and believe about them. As Piper describes, none of us can shake off a sense of personal guilt. Even if I can convince myself I am 'doing everything right' now, I can't change my past and undo the effect of things I may bitterly regret saying or doing. When I have talked about this with Muslim friends, they stress God's mercy, compassion and readiness to forgive; and their words greatly honour God and encourage any sinner. But they don't reach the very wounded heart of my being.
As I meditate across the whole testimony of the scriptures, it seems to me that this purification of our conscience is the one thing that had never been experienced by mankind until Christ rose from the dead. Our Hebrew forefathers experienced God's unconditional love and choice: "The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept his oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharoah king of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). They experienced God's forgiveness and restoration: "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits - who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's" (Psalm 103:2-5). God was offering everything to them, with only one condition - their love, attachment and obedience in response. And so He always has and always will. Nothing prevents reconciliation and complete shalom and salvation from God's side.
All the difficulty lies on our side. These amazing, kind, utterly true words from God best express, for me, what is our problem and what He would do about it: "I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19). A 'divided heart' is a perfect description of an uneasy conscience. St Paul accurately describes what it feels like: "[Gentiles] ... show that the requirements of the Law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them" (Romans 2:15). This struggle leaves us in that state of uncertainty and doubt about God's good intentions towards us: "... he who doubts is like the wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord" (James 1:6-8). So God offers everything - but we cannot receive it because our consciences will not allow us to.
I don't think we can ever explain how this purification of our conscience happens, once we "eat and drink" the death and resurrection of God in Christ for us. Yet every believer knows it has happened. Never mind what we've done. What a scandal! God breaking all His 'rules'! Now He and I can truly delight in each other without a shadow falling between us.
* My foreign readers will need to ask a British friend about our radio programme 'Desert Island Discs'
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