Blood-purged Conscience (II)

[WordSword]

It is not the work of the Holy Spirit to purify (the Spirit during His work of rebirth applies the Blood and the life of Christ (Col 3:4—NC), but to testify to the Blood of the Lord Jesus as having purified. The Spirit comes to the saints as the witness of their cleanness, not as the producer of it. That the Lord Jesus has already forever effected, which is the work of the Spirit’s testimony to the believer’s conscience. In this He delights to declare the honor of the Lord Jesus. Just therefore, as we simply receive His testimony, will we know our conscience to be really purged. “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb 9:14).

It is not to the great doctrines of election and the like, or to the unfailing of God’s purpose, that the Holy Spirit specifically points the conscience in order to its purging, but expressly to the Father’s estimate of the shed Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. For other precious purposes the Spirit does discourse to the saint on these blessed doctrines; but for the special purpose of giving and maintaining a purged conscience, He invariably directs the soul to the Lord Jesus’ Blood, as provided by the Father’s infinite love for that very end.

The present portion therefore of the saint is to be ever in the “true tabernacle” (Heb 8:2—NC) in the presence of the Father, and to be there with a purged conscience. He is never an outside worshipper, nor and uncleansed one. Man’s best efforts at worship only keep him at a distance from the living God: ordinances, however precious in their place, have the like tendency, just as they are used to bring nigh. This accounts for the ceaseless and restless labor of those who trust to them; for they heap burdens on the conscience in the vain effort to relieve it, and entangle themselves the more in the trammels from which they struggle to be free. It is the Blood of the Lord Jesus alone which gives liberty and an everlasting home in the happy presence of the Father.

Here, then, we have two marvelous blessings connected with the priesthood of the Lord Jesus: the first true access into the holies, and abiding there as our true place of fellowship and worship; the other, perpetual purification of conscience through the Blood of the Lord Jesus, even on the mercy-seat itself. It is on these two established privileges of the believer that our fellowship and worship depend.

Our Father is not only jealous of his own personal holiness, and so provides for the personal cleanness of those whom He brings into His presence; but He is also jealous of the purity of heaven, his dwelling place; and hence heaven also is purified by the Blood, and the entrance of sinners into it may in no wise defile it. And it greatly assures the priestly worshippers to find that they themselves are purified by that same Blood, which thus preserves the purity of God’s own home and throne. One purification avails for all—God’s throne, temple, High Priest and God’s priests!

For can we really think of heaven itself being our proper place of fellowship and worship, without fearing that we may carry defilement into it? Do we not feel that we should tarnish and soil those pure and heavenly courts? Well, our Father has met this fear too: the true holies cannot be defiled, for they have been purified forever by the Blood of the Lord Jesus. Thus has the Father prepared us for His presence, and His presence for us. All is done. Every plea that unbelief can put forth for shrinking into the darkness which it loves is disposed of forever by the effectual Blood!

“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which He has consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; And having a High Priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb 10:19-22).

- J L Harris

 

“Son-ship represents growth unto fullness and maturity. It is quite a good thing to be a babe while babyhood lasts, but it is a very bad thing to be a babe when that period is past. While son-ship is inherent in birth, in the New Testament sense son-ship is growth to maturity. With this growth comes the greater fullness of the Lord Jesus and the abundant spiritual wealth unto which we were saved. It is a matter not so much of that from which we were saved, as of that unto which we were saved. The grand conclusion of the new creation is ‘the revealing of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19).”

- T A S

 

“It is one thing to drop off or renounce certain things, and quite another to be engrossed with the right thing. Monks renounce much, but they are not occupied with the glorified Lord Jesus Christ. It must be not only ‘forgetting those things which are behind,’ but also reaching out unto the things that are before. It is that which you give yourself to, not what you have abandoned, that colors you and which imparts character to you.”

-J B S