GOD HAS SPOKEN BY HIS SON
Meditations in Hebrews
Hebrews 9:14b
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THE second half of this verse leads us to the blessed result of this perfect sacrifice which Jesus offered. The offering of Jesus was and is a perfect sacrifice because it was an offering to God of one who was sinless and one who was divine, and so of infinite worth. It achieved what no other sacrifice has or could achieve, and has achieved what no sinful human action could ever possibly achieve.

The first phrase that meets our attention is the phrase "cleanse our conscience". It is the conscience where we have some experience and feeling of the awfulness of the wrath of God against sin. In the conscience we have a sense of guilt before God, and a sense of the vileness of all that falls short of the glory of God. It is in the conscience that we begin to feel the misery of separation from God and all that is good, because it makes us feel the attitude of God towards our sin, and the turning away of God from our sin. In this experience of our conscience we have a foretaste of the horrors of hell, where there is nothing that is good, and we are severed from God for ever. It because of this that we feel two things. One is that we are defiled by our sin, and the second is we feel the fear of God and his anger against us. In these two feelings we have a troubled and unhappy spirit.

The cleansing of our conscience is achieved by the removal of these feelings. Our conscience is cleansed when the displeasure of God towards us is removed and when the guilt and defilement of our conscience is cleansed. Our conscience is furthered troubled, when there is conviction of our sin, by the fact that all that we do or try to do to assuage the trouble in our conscience, is totally ineffective to ease our pain, or remove our guilt, or cleanse our defilement.

Then the apostle goes on to say that our conscience is cleansed from "acts that lead to death". This translation in the NIV version of the Bible is an effort to make the original Greek a little more understandable, but it is an interpretation. The literal translation from the Greek is "will cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God". Although the general meaning of this verse is perfectly clear, the detail here is far from clear. The phrase "dead works" is difficult to understand. It has appeared before in chapter 6:1. We have to assume that the apostle is using the phrase in the same way in both places, but this does not really help, except to indicate the more likely interpretation, but here again opinions differ according to how the context is understood by different people.

There are two possible ways of understanding the words "dead works". Dead works could mean works that produce death, and here the meaning is that dead works are referring to our sins. The other meaning is that dead works mean works that can't achieve life, and here the meaning is that dead works are all those ineffective works which the troubled conscience does in order to achieve the smile and favour of God. In the end it could be said that both meanings are held in the phrase.

For the support of the meaning that "dead works" refer to our sins, which are acts that lead to death we see the reference to dead works in terms of the purpose of the death of Christ, which is to atone for sin, and cleanse and purge that sin away, and in this way our conscience is cleansed from these sins, which are these dead works.

This is good theology and an expression of real truth about the wonderful blessing of Christ's death for us, but I find myself leaning more to the other interpretation where dead works are those works which can't produce life, and so are dead works. Because these works can't produce life, they are works which are unable to cleanse the conscience burdened and defiled by sin.

This was the case with the Old Testament sacrifices. Although they were ordained by God for the cleansing from sin, the apostle tells us in verse 13 that they only achieved cleansing from outward religious pollution, and had no effect on the soul, and so the conscience was not cleansed and the sense of condemnation and guilt remained. They were dead works because they were ineffective to cleanse the conscience. They had to be repeated again and again. In the mercy of God these sacrifices for the time of the Old Testament caused him to be merciful and withhold his judgement, and also pointed towards the perfect sacrifice to come which the Messiah would make, but they did not cleanse the conscience. In the same way every human effort in good works and religious duties are dead works, however good in themselves, because they are not sufficient to atone for sin, and so cleanse the conscience defiled by sin, and so bring peace. The blood of Christ, when we believe in Jesus, does cleanse the conscience and removes the fear of God and his wrath that sins produce in the conscience. This is the great blessing of Christ, whose death is so precious and valuable that it fully atones for our sin.

The result is that we can serve the living God. Through Christ God becomes living to us - that is we do not fear him, but love him as our gracious and loving Father, and now we can serve him out of love, and not do dead works out of fear in the vain attempt to assuage his wrath. Christ assuaged the wrath of God, and put out the fire of his judgement, and so we are in the favour of God and with a quite and purified conscience we serve him and live for him.

Let us cling to Christ with all our hearts, never going back to these dead works of our own imperfect efforts and trust in them, for Christ truly cleanses our conscience and brings peace to our inner being.