April 8

“And this is the strong point on which I have founded myself:  God did not die for us merely to appease himself, but to appease our consciences and to make us know His love.  I believe the atonement means at-one-ment.”  Hannah Whitall Smith, Safe Within Your Love, pg. 156

This appeasing of our consciences is something people seem to overlook in my estimation.  I think that when our emotions have overrun us it’s because they are coming directly from our consciences bypassing the reasoning part of our brains altogether.  We aren’t aware of this at the time, of course, and often later do not care to “revisit” the event because we don’t want to “revisit” the emotional turmoil.  The cycle then becomes a way of life that then gets labeled “normal”.  But Christ said He came to save us from our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.  This cleansing begins in our consciences.  It is there we are made right so that we can now do right.  If our consciences continue to condemn us, we are still lost because we have yet to trust Christ with our whole being and He cannot do His work in us.  

“For Christ also died for sins once for all....that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit;.....in the days of Noah...were saved through water.  Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.”  1 Peter 3:18-22