In John’s Gospel, we see the Lord coming forth to sinners. He is not so much the Healer of Israel; it is rather the soul He seeks, and therefore it is the conscience He deals with. This gives us to know what He is, and what His purpose and His business are in every scene. It may be a happy conscience, an awakened, uneasy conscience, a sleepy, unbroken conscience, or a bad conscience. He deals with all this variety, but in it all, we see conscience in some condition or another before Him.
In Andrew, we have a simple picture of a happy conscience, or a happy sinner. He had gone to Jesus as a sinner, as “the Lamb of God”; he had been therefore accepted and welcomed by Jesus, and he leaves Him happy. His heart is free, and he can therefore think of others; he tells the first fellow-sinner he meets — his brother Simon—that he has found “the Christ.” Then, in full, consistent benevolence, he invites Simon to come and share the Christ of God with him. Here we see a conscience at liberty, because the sinner has found Jesus.
An Awakened Conscience
In Nathanael, the conscience has been already awakened. Under the fig tree, he has been confessing himself a sinner, for it is the spirit of confession which makes us “guileless.” The Lord recognizes this character in Nathanael, for he was a broken-hearted man. The Lord, therefore, had been in spirit already in company with him, before Philip called him, for the yearnings of an awakened soul are ever dear to Him.
And on His gracious salutation and letting him know that He had thus known him, Nathanael’s soul is amazed. “Rabbi,” he says, “Thou art the Son of God, Thou art the king of Israel.” This was revival to his heart.
This case then shows us the Lord’s blessed dealings with an awakened conscience, reviving and gladdening it, or making it a relieved, delivered conscience. In the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar, the conscience was still asleep. It had to be roused — brought into God’s presence—and the Lord accordingly forces her to discover herself. All the guilty secrets of her soul were dragged forth to the light. Though overwhelmed in the light that had detected and exposed her, she stands in His presence, for the Lord quickly fills that place with the tokens of His grace and no longer allows it to be merely the witness of her guilt. The Savior reveals Himself; the Stranger proves to be the Messiah she had named, and she is both blest and satisfied.
Here we see what the Lord will do with a conscience that needs to be aroused, if the sinner, in spite of shame and exposure, will still abide His presence, for it is surely the way of blessedness to value Christ more than character. We may say, in a sense, that all depends on that. She no longer hid herself, but told her neighbors that she had been thoroughly exposed.
A Bad Conscience
In the case of the Pharisees who accused the adulteress in John 8, the conscience is bad. A wicked purpose was filling their hearts all the time they were in the presence of Christ. What must He do with such a people? His presence shall be found intolerable to them. “Being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last.”
What less could be done with such a shocking material? And so will it be by and by. All the wicked must perish from the presence of the Lord. This was not the common way of Jesus, for He came to save, not to judge. But when these accusers of the sinner would gladly deal in law with her, then the Lord can give in them a sample of the day of doom, when the wicked shall perish from the presence of the Lord.
Unlike the poor Samaritan, they valued their character. Being exposed, they would rather hide their sin than have it published and then taken away. For such Christ has died in vain.
Thus, the Lord Jesus is seen to deal with the conscience in different conditions. With the awakened conscience He deals in all grace. With the sinner who will still abide with Him, though being exposed to his shame, He will deal till He relieves and satisfies him. With the wicked who practice their wickedness and when exposed will leave Him, He shows that presence to be intolerable.
In these simple, unpretending narratives, we get these precious secrets of the ways of God in Christ, thus discovered to us. There remains, however, another which I must not pass over — the blind beggar of John 9.
An Honest Conscience
In him we see an honest conscience. It is not a happy or an awakened or a sleepy or a bad conscience. We do not see in him any uneasiness about his soul, nor has the arrow of conviction entered him, but he is honest. He is true to the light he has, and he suffers rather than yield his integrity. The Pharisees cast him out, for religiousness persecutes truthfulness—a common case.
Could Jesus leave such a one alone or be indifferent to him? We know He could not. He heard that they had cast him out, and He at once sought him out. He made him His object, and the sight of Jesus and this beggar meeting for the second time is full of blessing and comfort.
As yet, this poor man knew Him only in His power to heal him. There had been no exercise of soul as a sinner, though there was an honest conscience. But on seeing Jesus now the second time, outside the camp, his soul is exercised. Jesus calls him into this exercise. “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” And the poor man is at once made ready to take anything from Jesus. “Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him?” And Jesus reveals Himself to him as the One who had given him sight when he was blind, and now takes him up when all were casting him out. “Thou hast both seen Him,” says the Lord, “and it is He that talketh with thee.” The soul then discovers Jesus. Love and power thus combined and, acting in divine virtue, were enough. “Lord, I believe,” he answered, and then “he worshipped Him.”
Thus Jesus reached his soul and dealt with him. And we are conscious that while he was only an honest man before, he is now a quickened soul, for an honest conscience is not a saved soul.
A Purged Conscience
But in addition to all this, let us notice Paul’s dealing with the conscience in his epistles. He sees none of these varieties. He sees the sinner just as he is, a sinner. He instructs the conscience as to how it should deal with God and His gospel, rather than showing us, as in John’s Gospel, how Christ deals with it. He tells the conscience that it may enjoy a purged condition—not merely an awakened, convicted or honest condition, but a purged condition.
This argument is found in Hebrews 9-10. The Apostle there teaches that by faith in Christ, we may have a good or a purged conscience, because after Christ had made His one offering, He entered the holiest place, never more to leave it. His offering was effectual to put away sins, because it was such a sacrifice as rendered “without spot” and was “through the eternal Spirit.” The Holy Spirit Himself, in revealing the new covenant, has also established the fact that sins and iniquities are remembered no more.
Thus, under the teaching of the Apostle, the conscience is taught to deal with God. The sinner is exhorted to be happy in His love, having entered the kingdom as a little child, not reasoning but receiving.
In John, we see living cases in which the Lord was dealing with the conscience; in Hebrews, we are taught in what way the conscience is to deal with the Lord and how it is to reach the condition in which the conscience of Andrew, Nathanael, the Samaritan, the adulteress and the beggar were left by Jesus.
J. G. Bellett (adapted)