Every man has a conscience. He has knowledge of good and evil. Many are not troubled in conscience; not a few are. Some will not allow themselves to dwell on such solemn subjects as sin, guilt, death, judgment, and eternity. There are others who have been distressed about their sins, who have trembled at the thought of death, and after death the judgment; but they are not so now, and perhaps can scarcely tell us why, further than they are quieter in mind now. But a quiet conscience is not a purged conscience. The great deceiver of souls knows how to sear the conscience as with a hot iron. He can use the habit of even hearing the truth to harden the heart. One chief use Satan makes of idolatry, and all the false and soul-destroying doctrines circulated in Christendom at this time, is to quiet conscience, give tranquility of mind, and, if possible, keep it from being again disturbed. That wicked one, who blinds the eye, lulls the conscience, and deceives the world, has manifold ways of alluring souls, so as to keep them from knowing the blessedness of a purged conscience. If the iron chains of the slavery of the grosser lusts of the flesh are unsuitable, because the mind is more refined than others, he may secure them in his fatal grasp by the golden chains of earthly prosperity. Or, if such seem inadequate, he can hold them with the silken cord of elegance and fashion; or rock them to drowsiness, if not to sleep, in the cradle of pleasurable associations. There are many who aim at nothing more than quietness of mind, as they call it, by a little religious occupation, because they know not the sweetness and power of present and eternal peace which God proclaims in His testimony to the sin-cleansing power of the blood of Jesus. When such have attended to their accustomed routine of religious exercises, they are so self-satisfied as to flatter themselves it will be all right in the end. But peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, a conscience purged by the blood of Christ, and God’s assurance in His written word, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more,” is a very different state.
Those who are holding such a definition of sin, as greatly to exclude themselves from its guilt, or are excusing sin, or covering up, or trying to forget, their sins; or, when they cannot forget their sins, putting them off mainly to the blame of others; such are trying to procure a quiet conscience, and are often decoyed into some respectable-looking religious system, because they are promised by it that their consciences shall be quieted; which, alas, is too often true! We can understand how eagerly such will value priestly mediatorship, the keeping of days and ordinances, benevolent habits of giving and doing, when men promise them by these very things a quiet state of mind, and perhaps heaven at last. How many are caught in this net! But a “heart sprinkled from an evil conscience” is something widely different. Not a few are found in Christendom who hold that, provided unforgiven, unsaved, men, act conscientiously, and do their best, they will be saved at last; than which nothing can be more opposed to the truth of God. Those who have some misgivings about it may add Christ as a make-weight for their deficiencies. Was not Saul of Tarsus a conscientious man? Has he not told us that he verily thought within himself that he ought to do many things contrary to Jesus of Nazareth? Did he not conscientiously hate and persecute the saints because they were not of the Jews’ religion? And was there any one on earth who could be more truly styled the chief of sinners? Blameless in his walk before men, an estimable member of a religious sect, of pious ancestry and education, and yet the chief of sinners. Let the reader think seriously on these things.
How did man acquire a conscience? Was it not by disobedience? When man fell under the temptation of the serpent, did not the Lord God say, “Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil”? (Gen. 3:2222And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: (Genesis 3:22).) However forcibly conscience may sometimes speak as a monitor of evil—which no doubt it does—yet, to set up the conscience of fallen, sinful man as the standard of what is true touching eternity, is to reject the word of God, and entirely to deny the divine verdict, that “they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:88So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:8)); and, more than this, it refuses the redemption-work of Christ as the only way of salvation, and Christ in glory “for righteousness to every one that believeth.” (Rom. 10:44For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. (Romans 10:4).) Such persons may arrange themselves in religious ranks, and call themselves by fine names, but such names go for nothing, when such are dead against the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, with their backs turned upon the only hope of salvation.
For those who are born of God, who have a conscience purged by the blood of Christ, the state of conscience, as to their practice, is most important; and Paul felt this deeply after he was saved, and became an apostle, for he said, “Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men.” When the written word convicts the conscience of sin and guilt in the sight of God, brings it by grace to the blood of Christ for purging, and to Christ in glory for righteousness, then it is he knows what it is to be reconciled to God, to have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. His heart is now sprinkled from an evil conscience, he draws near with confidence and thanksgiving, and he seeks to so walk and act as to have a good conscience.
Again, there are many in the ranks of Christendom who contend that the natural man is competent to serve and worship God when he likes and how he judges best. This is, perhaps, one of the most soul-destroying doctrines of modern infidelity. Hence people who know themselves to be unconverted are pressed to become ecclesiastical office-bearers, to be partakers of the so-called sacrament, and even to preach. Others, being taught that they can come to God when they wish, deliberately postpone it, in order to have their fling in the world’s lusts and the pleasures of sin, intending to turn to God when laid on a death-bed. But, alas! their death-bed may never be, for how many have been suddenly called from time into eternity, when least expected! Again, there are multitudes who are thus so misled, that, because they say certain prayers on different times of the day, or week, or month, they vainly imagine that they are thus serving God, when they do not even approach God at all in the way He has appointed in His word, consistently with His own nature and our state. Such may say prayers, but to really approach God is another thing. Many have been taught from childhood that to do their best say their prayers, and be good, are enough to be a good Christian. But all this is but the activity of Adam’s sinful stock, and not Christianity at all. It ignores our fall in Adam, refuses the cleansing blood of Christ, denies the need of being born again by the word and Spirit, and rejects the fundamental truth of the gospel, that God can only be approached by the blood of Christ. About this, scripture is most solemn and decided. We read, “Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain!” Now what, in one word, is the way of Cain? Certainly it was daring to approach God without the blood of the sacrifice for sin. He ignored the fall, and so denied that the earth was cursed for man’s sake, that he boldly brought as an offering to God what his unclean hands had gathered of the fruits of a sin-blighted earth. But God is not mocked. “Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.... but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.” And was Cain a happy man, with all his religiousness? How could he be? Let us trace his course. 1. He was wroth, and his countenance fell. 2. He hated Abel, the man of God—“Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” 3. He was a fugitive and vagabond in the earth. 4. He went out from the presence of the Lord, and then he and his posterity became prosperous citizens, useful manufacturers, and diligently cultivated the fine arts, when, be it observed, they were away from the presence of God. What a dark picture of infidelity and its accompaniments does this narrative of the way of Cain strikingly set before us in the closing days of the nineteenth century!
It would have been death to Aaron to approach God, except by blood. Jesus said, “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” “If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” Again, we read, “It is the blood which maketh an atonement for the soul.” “Without the shedding of blood is no remission.” “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” “It was not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” “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,” &c. &c. In the Old Testament, the way of approach to God, from Abel downward, was by the sacrifice of a life, typical of the sacrifice of Christ; and, in the New Testament, the way of approach to God is by the blood of Christ. What a fatal mistake, then, it is for sinful men to judge themselves competent to draw near to God apart from the blood of Christ! Is it any wonder that it is said of such, “Woe unto them! they have gone in the way of Cain!” Thanks be to God for the new and living way which Christ has “consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh,” and that we have liberty at all times to draw near, to “enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus!”