Length: 8 minutes

When Christians feel rotten inside after they sin, if they don’t call it the conviction of the Holy Spirit (which is incorrect), they will at least feel that it is a sign of a healthy conscience. After all, if we do something wrong, shouldn’t we feel grief and hurt as a repercussion?

I know that it would seem to make sense for you to feel poorly after you do something wrong. I understand it may seem to make sense that if you sin, you should feel rotten inside for what you did. And I’m not telling you that grief, hurt, and feeling rotten wouldn’t be a correct response to sin. It would be a perfectly correct response to sin. The problem is someone has already felt all of those things for your sin. Someone has already felt the grief, hurt, and rottenness that all sin deserves. And it’s for that reason, and that reason only, that there is none of it left for you.

What Jesus did, in feeling the hurt and grief that our sin deserves, not only cleansed us of sin, but also was intended to cleanse our conscience. Your conscience is the part of your mind that condemns you when you do wrong and commends you when you do right. It accuses you or excuses you. 

Romans 2:15 (NKJV) …their conscience also bearing witness …their thoughts accusing or else excusing them…

Your conscience condemns you or commends you, depending on what you do, but here’s the problem: your conscience doesn’t know everything. Your conscience needs to be trained. Your conscience, like any part of your mind, needs to be renewed. If you perceive that you’ve done something wrong, your conscience will go to condemning you. The Bible calls that your heart condemning you or striking you (1 Samuel 24:5, 2 Samuel 24:10). But if we train our conscience, to know that Jesus was already condemned and struck for the very wrong it is perceiving, then your conscience will stop condemning you.

1 John 3:20 (NKJV) For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.

Did you notice how that verse spoke about our heart condemning us, and then contrasted it with God, who it says, “Knows all things”? That’s because when your heart is condemning you, it is clearly ignorant, not knowing all things. When your heart condemns you, it’s clearly not taking everything into account. Anytime your conscience is condemning you, it is certainly taking your sin into account, but it’s clearly not taking Jesus into account! Although God, on the other hand, knows all things. God knows all things and is fully aware of the hurt and emotional pain that Jesus went through for your sin. That’s why God will never condemn you, because He knows all things. While your conscience, many times does not. 

So don’t let your conscience be your guide. Your conscience needs to be trained. Instead, let God teach your conscience a thing or two about Jesus.

Jesus Cleanses Our Conscience

We usually use the term “clean conscience” for when we haven’t done anything wrong. But that is very self-dependent and self-righteous. If you can only have a clean conscience when you’re doing everything right, then why do you need Jesus? The truth is, because Jesus took all the grief, hurt, and condemnation for you at the cross, you can maintain a clean conscience regardless of what you do.

Hebrews 10:21-22 (NKJV) and having a High Priest over the house of God [since we have Jesus], let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience…

It is because of Jesus, our High Priest, that we can have a cleansed conscience, free of the burden of sin, not only when we are doing the right thing. In fact, the Bible calls our salvation the day that we requested a good conscience toward God (1 Peter 3:21).  

I’m not saying that we should approve of sin. We should certainly disapprove of it. We should disapprove of everything God disapproves of. A good conscience still acknowledges the difference between right and wrong. Anyone who says that there is no such thing as sin, or downplays it, does not have a healthy conscience. A cleansed, good conscience understands the difference between right and wrong, and yet does not condemn you for sin, because it also recognizes that someone has already completely and utterly fulfilled the condemnation for all sin forever. 

You can disapprove of sin, while still feeling no condemnation over it. You can still hold the opinion that sin is wrong, while not feeling any grief in your conscience over it, because you know that Jesus already took the grief for it. So, when you sin, you know it’s wrong, and yet what you feel is thanksgiving to God for having put all the grief for it on His son! That’s what having a cleansed conscience is like. It’s not that you don’t know what sin is, but it doesn’t bother your conscience anymore because you know the grief for sin has been fulfilled at the cross, and you’re purified!

Hebrews 10:2 (NKJV) For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.

Jesus did not take all that grief, and hurt, and emotional pain for your sin just so that you could repeat it again as if what He did was not enough. There would be no point in Him feeling such emotional anguish for your sin if He just expected us to carry it all over again. In that case, He could have just stayed in Heaven.

But you say, if we don’t feel rotten after we sin, people will go on sinning. This is simply untrue. It’s not that rotten feeling that keeps you from sinning again. Just read what Paul went through in Romans 7. He felt terrible over his covetousness, and yet he continued to do it (Romans 7:19). Look at Judas. He felt terrible for betraying Jesus, and that did not produce repentance, but he committed suicide. Jesus also prophesying of Judas that he would be destroyed and not saved (John 17:12). And as far as the “godly sorrow” the Bible speaks of, that’s something that an unbeliever feels about the state that they are in (absent of Christ) that drives them to salvation, not for a believer. No believer, who has been cleansed of their sin, has any more reason to feel sorrow, but rather to rejoice in the Lord always.

It’s not grief and hurt over sin that keeps us from repeating our wrong actions. The thing that keeps us from sinning is the Holy Spirit. As we renew our minds, the Holy Spirit changes our desires and works the right thing through us (Philippians 2:13).

You can disapprove of sin and yet let go of the grief that would usually come with it because you know Jesus already felt that for you. You can do both. That rotten feeling in your stomach when you realize you did something wrong, it’s not the conviction of the Holy Spirit. It is your unrenewed conscience which is forgetting what Jesus did for you. And when you let go of an evil conscience, when you let go of a consciousness of taking care of your sin, when you let go of a conscience that condemns you for dead works, it does not result in more sin. When you are conscious of Jesus, and have your conscience washed of condemnation, it results in a service to God!

Hebrews 9:14 (NKJV) …how much more shall the blood of Christ… cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

So, in summary, you go ahead and feel whatever grief for sin that you believe Jesus didn’t carry. For those of us that believe Jesus only carried partial grief for sin, you go ahead and bear the rest of it! For those of us that believe Jesus took ALL the grief and pain that sin deserves, we will live free of it!

There’s been enough condemnation around here for one age. You can let it go now, and enjoy an eternally clean conscience, which is a gift through the sacrifice of Jesus.

If this blessed you. share this with someone else. More people need to understand this awesome truth.