No More Guilty Conscience in Christ

When we believe and receive all that Jesus Christ has done for us at the Cross, there must be and of guilt, shame, and upset in our lives.

We are to have a good conscience toward Christ, not an evil conscience.

Unfortunately, I was brought up to believe that a good conscience or a bad conscience meant that I had done something wrong, or that I had been doing things right.

The passage often presented to me was:

"The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:" (1 Peter 3: 21)

Despite the traditional understanding of this passage, the very language itself bears witness that a good conscience has nothing to do with what we do, but with what Jesus has done. Our good conscience is not the "putting way of the flesh", which includes taking a ritual bath in water as well as not doing bad things.

We need only review the wonders of all that Jesus did for us at the Cross to realize that His death and resurrection at the Cross accomplished so much more than just dying for us:

"1There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." (Romans 8: 1-4)

There is no condemnation in Christ -- none. And we are in Christ. We are not outside of Him, or next to Him. We are in Christ, and He lives in us. This is a full new identification, because we are a new creation in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5: 17).



We still walk around in these bodies, in which sinful emotions are present, but they are defanged, condemned, and no longer a part of us.

The AA cult forces its members to keep looking at the failings in our thoughts and minds, that we are alone with our sins, that we have to work hard to maintain a spiritual program.

Is it any surprise that AA members are cursed with an evil conscience and fall into deep depression, or even death?

The guilty conscience is something more than what we think or do, but has everything to do with who we are in Adam.

And because of religious cults like AA, men and women attract a conscience seared:

"1Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 2Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;" (1 Timohty 4:1-2)

Now this business of  conscience seared has confused many, who have initially interpreted this verse to mean that men and women will no longer know right from wrong. Once again, putting away the traditions of men and letting the Bible speak for itself, we find that the passage speaks of an intensified religiosity. The word "seared" carries a connotation of never leaving someone, a stain that is not removed. A stain, a smear, a mark of damage is never a good thing, much like the stigma used in ancient Greek times to signal that someone was guilty of a crime.

To have a seared conscience is to have a feeling that you are always guilty, and that you must keep doing something to maintain some sense of peace and right standing, through your own efforts.

In other words, self-righteousness. Anything that we do cannot grant to us the final peace of a perfect conscience:

"1For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. 2For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. 3But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. 4For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." (Hebrews 10: 1-4)

We need a complete and holy blood to take away our sins -- and keep taking our sins away:

"For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. 15Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,

16This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;

17And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

18Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." (Hebrews 10: 14-18)

 

That last verse bears review: "There is no more offering for sin."

 

All of our confession, contrition, communion, calumniation, condemnation cannot make up for or culminate what Jesus completed for us at the Cross.

 

That includes taking our inventory and working Twelve Steps.

 

In fact, if we insist on working Twelve Steps, or doing something else to grant us peace, we are not walking in faith, we are not resting in His Finished Work, and we have entered back into  unbelief.

 

We have all things by grace through faith in what Jesus has done. There is no more guilty conscience, for because of the blood of Jesus, we are perfected forever, as the blood of Jesus continues to cleanse us from all sin (1 John 1: 7)

 

Screw guilt, as members of the AA cult often say, but know that your guilt, all of it, was screwed at the Cross!