A conscience is first cleansed by positional truth; John 15:16.

Title: A conscience is first cleansed by positional truth; John 15:16.

 

John 15:16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you.

 

Now we are given a purpose clause, “so that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain,”.

 

The purpose clause states the purpose of your election and appointment; the beginning of your predestination, is fruit bearing.

 

 “should go” - `upagw[hupago - present active subjunctive] = to go, to go away from, to depart or to leave. In context it refers to being spiritually self sustaining.

 

Spiritually self sustaining - the ability to make good decisions and to produce divine good from your own spiritual strength gained from your own spiritual advancement.

 

Your own wisdom from God’s word will give you the ability to solve your own problems and answer your own questions and this cannot be done if a believer’s conscience is filled with guilt or blind arrogance. These conditions distort the truth and your understanding of it. Therefore the soul must be healthy before a believer can be SSS with the result of fruit production.

 

Illustrate the soul: 5 compartments

 

All five compartments work in unison and each one has an effect on the other. In order to produce fruit the believer has to be SSS and to be SSS he has to have a healthy and spiritual soul.

 

Positional truth cleanses the conscience from human viewpoint, human arrogance, and human good; all of which were rejected at the cross, HEB 9:14.

 

HEB 9:9 which [tabernacle] is a symbol for the present time [present dispensation]. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered [Levitical offerings] which cannot make the worshiper [the one performing the worship - ritual] perfect [mature] in conscience,

 

HEB 9:10 since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.[“until a dispensation of a new order.”]

 

HEB 9:11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come [things that belong to the CA], He entered [not in original but implied from verse 12] through the greater and more perfect tabernacle [heaven], not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;

 

HEB 9:12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place [the third heaven; seated at the right hand of God] once for all [one sacrifice for all mankind and for all time], having obtained eternal redemption.

 

HEB 9:13 For if the blood of goats and bulls [salvation offering as well as a sin offering] and the ashes of a heifer [sin offering] sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,

 

Therefore, once again we have a representative analogy. The Jews were rendered ceremonially unclean or defiled by touching a corpse, by touching a tomb, by entering a house where a dead body was. The person had to be sprinkled with water that was mixed with the ashes of the heifer in order to be ceremonially cleansed.

 

Verse 13 represents is the old sin nature with which we are born. We are born physically alive and spiritually dead because of it.

 

We possess in the soul this old sin nature right from birth. The ashes, again, are dependent upon the cross. The heifer was slaughtered and burned outside of the camp representing Christ on the cross outside of the walls of Jerusalem on Golgotha. The reason that we name our sins and are forgiven is that our sins were judged on the cross, our known sins and our unknown sins are cleansed, and as we will continue to see, so is our conscience.

 

Rituals were used to cleanse ritually. The reality of Christ’s redemption cleanses in reality to anyone who believes on Him.

 

That is the protasis and apotosis.

 

In other words, this ceremony actually worked. Why did it work? Because God the Father anticipated the coming of Christ, bearing our sins, the blood of Christ, the expiatory offering.

 

Expiatory means true atonement, true payment, an actual and real payment for sins.

 

The rest of the sentence is verse 14, the real cleansing.

 

HEB 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ [His spiritual death], who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

 

Some believe this to be the Holy Spirit, but He is not in view here.

 

This actually becomes quite an important argument. Look at John 4:24.

 

John 4:24

"God is spirit [the neuter of the noun pneuma], and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

 

In HEB 9:14 we also have the neuter of the noun pneuma and so here it refers to the eternal spirit that God is, and in this case, the deity of Jesus Christ.

 

Also, in John 4:24 we have an anarthrous construction, which is a fancy way of saying that the noun pneuma (spirit) does not have a definite article. It doesn’t say “the” spirit. The absence of the article in Greek draws attention to the quality of the noun and at the same time not making the noun specific to “the” Holy Spirit. The same is true in HEB 9:14.

 

 “how much more will the blood of Christ who through eternal spirit [His own divine essence] offered Himself without blemish to God…”

 

However, God cannot die and nor can God be a Mediator between God and men. God can judge sin, but God cannot come under judgment for it. God had to become a man. So we see here the decision of TLJC in eternity past to offer Himself, impeccable, as a human being.

 

We have studied many scriptures proving the deity of Jesus Christ and since it is not our study, and since all of you should be able to defend that doctrine scripturally, I will suffice with one passage.

 

ROM 9:1 I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit,

 

ROM 9:2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.

 

ROM 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,

 

ROM 9:4 who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises,

 

ROM 9:5 whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever.

 

ROM 9:6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel [racial Jews] who are descended from Israel [spiritual heritage of faith in the Messiah - maw-shee-ack in Hebrew];

 

There is One who has redeemed the human race and has at the same time fulfilled the promises to Abraham as the anointed one, the maw-shee-ack.  

 

God the Son in eternity past made the Sovereign decision to take humanity upon Himself and offer Himself to God the Father as a real sin offering on behalf of the entire human race.

 

HEB 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit [eternal spirit] offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

 

soul illustration

 

The atonement of Christ, believed and understood, cleanses the evaluator in the soul from determining that any human gimmicks or plans will provide true soul prosperity.

 

A soul that has been cleansed through this wisdom sees human attempts at prosperity that are antithetical to the plan of God as a flat out waste of time.

 

The result of a conscience cleansed from human plans that intrude on God’s plan [dead works] is that the believer is now free to serve God under the policy of grace.

 

These human works were given their final eulogy when Christ died for the sins of the world and also rejected human good as having any problem solving capacity. This is what it means to cleanse your conscience from dead works. The cross determined once and for all that human viewpoint, human power, human merit, human innovation, human abilities, human dynamics, human personality, human intelligence or human works are incompetent, causing more problems than they try to solve, and that they destroy the integrity of the Plan of God.

 

 

A continued diet of Bible doctrine continues to cleanse the conscience from OSN and cosmic influence, HEB 10:22.

 

HEB 10:19 Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,

 

The Holy of Holies was forbidden to all in the OT save for the high priest and he was only allowed in once a year.

 

Therefore, the confidence spoken of here is greater than any confidence anyone could have in the age of Israel.

 

The Church-age believer, through BD, has far greater confidence to enter into a deep relationship with God than anyone in the OT.

 

1 Cor 2:9 "Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,

And which have not entered the heart of man,

All that God has prepared for those who love Him."

 

1 Cor 2:10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

 

Believers in the body of Christ have confidence to enter places that no one in the past ever dreamed of.

 

 "holy place" = the Holy of Holies to the Church that refers to the third heaven of which every believer is a citizen. It is the believer's true home forever.

Phil 3:17 Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us.

 

Phil 3:18 For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ [dead works instead of grace],

 

Phil 3:19 whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

 

Phil 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;

 

Phil 3:21 who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

 

When you die or the Rapture happens then that's where you're going forever. Before that time you have access to the beauties, virtues, and blessings of heaven through the word of God under the FHS.

 

COL 3:1 If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

 

COL 3:2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.

 

COL 3:3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

 

COL 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

 

HEB 10:19 Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,

 

The reason we have confidence to access the true Holy of Holies is revealed in the next phrase "by the blood of Jesus."

 

The high priest could only enter the H of H on the Day of Atonement with animal blood. This was a picture of Christ entering heaven after His substitutionary spiritual death (blood of Christ).

 

And while some of the priests and Pharisees were on Cavalry mocking Christ others were in the temple and in the holy place and in the great humor of God as well as the great typology of God a veil that took 300 priests to carry was torn from top to bottom.

 

The Talmud describes the veil of that time. It was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide, and approximately a foot thick. When it was constructed it was divided up into 72 squares and a different person made each one of the squares. It took 300 priests to lift the veil (only a priest could touch the veil). The Talmud describes the veil which covered the holy of holies. It was too tough and too thick to be split by an earthquake. There was just one way it could be ripped from top to bottom. Our Lord did it Himself.