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Practically Living in a Relationship with God, Others, and Myself
Our ability to
enjoy fellowship with God today is due to the
offering the Lord made for us two thousand years ago
(Hebrews 10:19). When He died on the cross His blood was
poured out, and the efficacy of that blood reaches us
even today, and shall have its effect throughout
eternity!
The main point we must realize is that the blood of
Christ was shed so that we might have fellowship with
God. A relationship with man is what God desired from
the very beginning, and His intention and desire have
never changed. We may not be able to comprehend this,
but God's love is so vast and immense that it reached
out even after man offended Him in the greatest manner
possible. Not a person who has lived, other than Christ,
can say he or she has never offended God, and yet God
sent us Jesus for this very reason: to tear down the
wall that sin had brought in and to restore man to God
and God to man.
Under the new covenant, the conditions required for this
relationship are totally fulfilled by what Christ has
already done. Our part is simply to receive it! In the
old covenant much was required, and everyone who lived
under it failed. In fact, anyone who is a Christian, or
even anyone who knows a Christian well, knows he or she
still experiences failure. If we as believers say
otherwise, our own conscience will rise up to challenge
us.
It is worthwhile at this point to consider the matter of
the conscience, for it plays an important role in God's
way of working with man today and there is a direct tie
between the blood of Christ and man's conscience. Man's
conscience is a proof of man's uniqueness to God. Even a
dog, which may feel shame or fear, does not experience
guilt when its master is not around. He sleeps well when
he is up on the couch, for instance, thus breaking
his master's command, but many nights we cannot sleep
well because of this thing called a conscience. How
keenly aware we are so often of our sin! No other
creature other than man experiences this.
The conscience is a function of our human spirit. While
we may be biologically much the same as other creatures,
inwardly we possess a human spirit which includes the
functions of conscience, fellowship (the ability to
commune with God) and intuition (the ability to sense
things directly from God). Every human being possesses
such a wonderful part in them, and because of this every
human being seeks to worship and know God, regardless
whether they have heard about Him or not.
Adam walked with God in the cool of the day before the
fall. During this time of innocence there was no need
for the conscience, for man experienced cloudless
fellowship with God and knew God directly. After the
fall, however, fellowship and intuition went "dead,"
while conscience came alive! Just as the serpent said,
after they ate of the tree God had commanded them not to
eat, mankind came to know good and evil. From birth
every human being has a conscience, which is the
"backup" function of the human spirit which God now uses
to reach out to man, because God still desires a
relationship with man.
In Romans 2:15, we are told, "They show the work of the
law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing
witness, and their thoughts alternatively defending or
excusing them." Paul was very clear about the human
condition. Paul tells us that, even though we may not
have the law of God outwardly, we have something within
us that God is using to reach out to us. As we hear this
voice of the conscience accusing us, we try to defend
and excuse ourselves. We may even justify our behavior
with reasoning such as, "That person deserved what I did
to him!" The conscience may not be something in the
physical realm, but it is very real! It is speaking all
the time. Until we find God, we spend most of our lives
trying to find a way to escape its accusations. Praise
God that in the Bible we find that the blood of Christ
is the "conscience cleanser" (Hebrews 9:14)!
In Acts 24 we read of the time Paul was kept imprisoned
before he was sent to Rome. During this time he would
often speak to King Felix concerning "righteousness,
self-control, and the judgment to come" (v. 24). History
tells us that this Felix had convinced his wife, the
lovely Drusilla, to leave her husband and come away with
him. Therefore, as he was holding onto
Paul in hopes of receiving a good bribe, his conscience
became very active as Paul probed him with the very
things he knew he had to answer for when he stood before
God. As Paul was on trial for his life, he was putting
his judge on trial instead! He could say "I have lived
my life in a perfectly good conscience unto this day
before God..." (Acts 23:1). What a bold statement, for
surely God knew all of Paul's deeds, as did Paul! Yet he
was not able to say this because he did nothing wrong,
but rather because of what Christ had done for him. He
had discovered faith in Christ, and the blood of Christ
as his "conscience cleanser"!
In Acts 24:24-25, Paul preached to Felix first on the
matter of righteousness, which is God's unique standard.
The Ten Commandments portray that standard, which we all
come short of. The second matter Paul spoke of was
self-control. Can you control your sinful nature
sufficiently so as to never fail God's high standard?
Neither could Felix and Drusilla! Finally, Paul topped
it off with the judgment to come. Surely Felix's
conscience was screaming at him by this time, for
besides stealing another man's wife, he surely had many
other crimes under his belt. As with all of us, there
was lust, greed, power, and many other ugly things
present in his heart. Yet Paul's goal was to speak to
them about faith in Christ Jesus, for that alone
silences the "screaming" of the conscience.
Once the blood of Jesus is applied, the conscience is
quieted and the functions of fellowship and intuition
are enlivened and restored. Due to the separation caused
by the fall, the conscience became the primary way God
had to work with us. Once we acknowledge our failure and
our need of salvation, however, we are able to receive
what God has done for us in Jesus Christ to bring us
back to Him! Therefore people either experience the
function of conscience in a negative sense, or they
experience the function of fellowship and intuition in a
positive sense. This is why God has designed us the way
He has—so that we might come to Him according to what He
has provided for us through the blood of His Son.
Thus, even as we who believe surely appreciate that we
will be with God in the future, we may also know God
today! First John 1:7-9 tells us clearly that we may
walk in the light as the Lord is in the light, and that
we can maintain our daily fellowship with the Lord as we
confess our sins. (When our conscience is "screaming" at
us, we know all we have towards God are "dead works" as
mentioned in Hebrews 9:14. Dead works are the things we
think we are doing for God or according to God when we
are not in fellowship with God. At such times, instead
of walking in the light, we are in darkness. As we walk
in the light as He is in the light, however, our
fellowship with both God and man is real! Our fellowship
with God is restored, and the fellowship with our
brothers and sisters is also restored.
(Of course, if we have offended someone and it is
something that has come between us, we need to pursue
whatever must be done until our fellowship with God and
man is restored. I hope many among us might memorize the
first chapter of First John!)
If we hear the voice of our conscience screaming within
us, we should not deceive ourselves into thinking we
have fellowship with God and man. We should not be as
those who are self-deceived. If there is someone we
cannot look in the eye and praise God with, then there
may be a problem that needs to be dealt with. If we
neglect this, our church life can be hindered. Instead,
as we know the cleansing of the blood, we experience a
"stimulating" church life (Hebrews 9:19-25)! How good,
that we may be together here, knowing God under the shed
blood of His Son Jesus Christ.
In Hebrews 10:22 and 24 we read, "Since we have
confidence to enter the holiest place by the blood of
Jesus, let us draw near with a heart full of assurance,
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil
conscience...and let us consider one another, how to
stimulate (or incite) one another to love and good
works." Amen!
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