Soul-Cleansing Blood

I opened my Bible to 2 Timothy this morning – and didn’t get beyond verse three before the Lord stopped me:

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved son: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience . . .”

Now here is an amazing thing – amazing and, at the same time, what ought to be instructive and encouraging.

There was a time – not too long before Paul penned these words to Timothy – there was a time when Paul was a monstrous anti-Christian terrorist. He tells us that himself. For example:

“So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And this is just what I did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death I cast my vote against them. And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.” (Acts 26:9-11)

And yet, in his letter to his young protégé, he writes, “I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience.”

How could he write such a thing?

That’s easy. It’s because he knew God had completely, totally, irrevocably forgiven him. He knew, when he confessed his multiple and egregious sins to God, when he repented and mourned for his evil, Paul received God’s merciful and most generous gift of forgiveness.

And although to the day of his death he never forgot what he had done, he ALSO never lost confidence in God’s promise of complete and absolute forgiveness – merciful forgiveness even of his most vicious and unspeakable sins.

It was THAT confidence that enabled him to fully devote himself to the service of Christ, and to do so with a “clear conscience.”

And that, my fellow Christian, is God’s word of encouragement to you and to me.

Do your past sins – the ones you’ve confessed to God and are now covered under the blood of Jesus – do those memories and what is now the unnecessary guilt still haunt you? Do they prevent you from entering fully, and with a ‘clear conscience’, into service for Jesus?

Your guilt is unnecessary because God has already cast those sins into the deepest part of the ocean. He has irreversibly cleansed you soul of every one of your confessed sins.

Every single sin. Washed forever in the blood of Jesus.

CS Lewis said it better than I can: “I think that if God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as higher tribunal than Him.”

The devil will always seek to deceive you, to confuse you about God’s precious promises.

Oh, Christian! May today be your day to finally tell your enemy, “Get behind me, Satan. You are lying about my beloved Heavenly Father.”

May today be the day that you begin serving Christ with a clear conscience, knowing with utter confidence that all your sins have been washed in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb.

Amen.