#DailyDevotion God Is Greater Than Our Conscience In Jesus
1 John 3:19-24 19This is how we’ll know we’re born of the truth and will reassure ourselves before Him: 20Whenever our conscience condemns us, God is greater than our conscience and knows everything. 21Dear friends, if our conscience doesn’t condemn us, we can talk boldly to God 22and get from Him anything we ask because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him. 23He orders us to believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and to love one another as He has ordered us to do. 24Anyone who keeps His commandments lives in God and God in him. And this is how we know He lives in us: by the Spirit Whom He has given us.
What is this? What is this this which will reassure ourselves before Him? It is “He gave His life for us.” Or is it, “We, too, should give our lives for our fellow Christians.” Is it both? It is an important matter. If it is He gave his life for us then we can have full assurance before God because his work is perfect. If it is our love or both, then we can never have full assurance because we still sin and when we sin we most certainly are not living in love, of God, neighbor or fellow Christian. While can at times gain a little assurance in that we forgive others their sins against us or that we don’t turn away a fellow Christian in need, our assurance is in “He gave his life for us.”
Why do I say this? Because of verse twenty, “Whenever our conscience condemns us, God is greater than our conscience and knows everything.” If our conscience condemns us it is because we have sinned. God knows our weaknesses and he is greater than them. His mercy and kindness is seen in Jesus giving his life for us so his life may overcome our sin and death. We cannot sin so much the blood of Jesus does not cover it and give us a clean conscience before the Father. It is in the name the LORD has given to Moses in Exodus 34, “the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to get angry, rich in love and faithfulness, 7continuing to show mercy to thousands, forgiving wrong, rebellion, and sin, without treating it as innocent, but disciplining children and children’s children to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their fathers.”
Since this is so, we may always confess our sins and our Advocate, Jesus Christ pleads for us before the Father and gives us a clean conscience. In Hebrew 4, the author writes, 16“So let us come boldly to God’s throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help us when we need it.” We can ask for whatever we want and get it because we keep the commandment, “to believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and to love one another,” When we are keeping this commandment we are asking for things according to his will and if we ask anything according to his will we know we shall receive it. (1 John 5:14) What a great and wonderful promise.
Keeping this commandment tells us we are living in God and us in Him. Christ is living his life in and through us. This is God’s work. To believe in Jesus and to love another is the will and work of God. (John 6:26, Eph. 2:10). We should abandon ourselves and our wills and our lives to His care and believe he will take care of us. He will perform for us, in us and through us that which he demands. It is the new covenant he promised in Jeremiah 31:33.
Heavenly Father, continually bestow your grace upon us that we may believe in your Son Jesus Christ and love our fellow Christians. Give us a clear conscience that we may stand before you boldly and pray and receive from you every mercy and grace necessary for our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.