A Purged Conscience

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 6
A purged conscience makes all simple. I do not discuss with a bad conscience; I can principles with my reason. With a bad conscience I want cleansing; and, because I have offended a loving Father and God, forgiveness too; and, thank God, I have it in Christ. There is no personal having to do with God without this. I may theorize, and honestly enjoy my ideas; but theorizing is not the knowledge of God. A truly upright soul, a divinely taught soul, has a moral need that the love of God, the favor which is its light and its joy, should be a righteous favor (as scripture speaks, grace reigns through righteousness)—hence, that God should righteously not see sin upon it: it has need, therefore, that the conscience should be purged. And this it has through the truth that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses from all sin. Without it, God's love would be an unholy love—would not be God or love at all. We walk in the light, as God is in the light; and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Hence comes that bright and blessed testimony, though there in outward figures, “He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor beheld perverseness in Israel.”