“…let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience…”Hebrews 10:22

(This second week of devotionals from the book of Hebrews was originally published in March 2021 and aligned with the sermon series “Jesus, the Radiance of God’s Glory.”)

From an early age as an earnest, eager to please firstborn kid, I felt the blow any time I failed to live up to expectations or broke a rule. Those easily-triggered feelings of guilt and shame were the earliest expressions of my overactive conscience. This made me easier to parent than my more rebellious brother, for which I think my mother is still grateful! 

But it turned out that an overactive conscience wasn’t yet a healthy or redeemed conscience. Some of us feel bad or guilty even over things we have no control over and shouldn’t feel bad about. Others of us are on the opposite end of the spectrum: we don’t feel guilty about anything, even the things that we probably should.

In our passage today, the author of Hebrews is addressing the feeling of a guilty conscience. The good news is that our feelings are not the final arbiter of truth. Feelings of guilt or a lack thereof may have no correspondence with what we’ve done or our standing before God.  And because there is often a gap between our level of felt guilt and what is actually true of us, all of us who are following Christ are invited into a lifetime of conscience-in-training. 

Feelings of guilt in a fallen world are important and helpful: if no one ever felt guilty about anything, the world would be more of a train wreck than it already is! But for some of us, feelings of guilt overrun their usefulness and trap us under a soul-crushing, joy-stealing weight.  

The author of Hebrews is eager to coach his readers in this conscience-in-training process. Jesus has done something to remove our sin and guilt. Guilt’s only function on the other side of the cross is to bring us to the place of repentance: the place where we own our mistakes, ask forgiveness, and do whatever work of repair and restoration available to us.  

After that, the utility of feelings of guilt is gone. And so the author of Hebrews invites his readers on the other side of repentance into the great exchange: our guilt for God’s grace. 

This is something that the previous priests and the previous sacrificial system could not do. That whole set-up was okay. But what Jesus has done is a once-and-for-all sacrifice that takes care of the problem forever.

On the other side of trusting in Jesus, all of us have consciences-in-training. Some of us are growing in our sensitivity. Others of us are growing in silencing condemning voices. All of us are invited to allow guilt to do its good work: to bring us out of darkness and into the light. As we do that, we can then lean in and allow the blood of Christ to sprinkle and purify our hearts of sin and free us from any guilt that we might carry.

Sometimes we’re carrying burdens around with us that we’re not even aware of. Take a minute to prayerfully open up to God and ask him to show you what weights of sin, guilt or shame you might be carrying—even unknowingly.   

Imagine your conscience is a slightly discolored, moving and active ball that you can hold cupped in your hand. Take a moment to offer that ball to Jesus and ask him to purify it, train it, to make it whole and holy. 

Spend some time in prayerful thanksgiving for what Jesus has done to forgive us of sin and relieve us of guilt.