The Great Work of the Gospel | John Ensor

John Ensor. The Great Work of the Gospel: How We Experience God’s Grace. Crossway, 2006. 192 pp.

The washing away of shame and guilt is properly the experience of God’s Great Work that accompanies our faith in Christ. . . .

Experiencing Forgiveness

The punishment that Christ bore on our behalf—a complete punishment for all our sins and a just punishment for each of them—cleared the way for the free flow of God’s mercy. In terms of our human experience, putting our faith in Christ and his Great Work on the cross means that we experience this mercy as a clean conscience and a bold, expectant confidence in drawing near to God. That too is part of the Great Work. The cross and our trust in the cross are akin to a gate being opened and a gate being entered. . . .

Christ Bore Our Shame

Christ died to remove our shame as well as God’s anger. By shame I mean simply the emotional pain we feel over past sinful behavior. Shame can be imposed on us, too. We can be put to shame when our sin is known by others. Their contempt can cause us shame. All of this Christ bore on the cross. He was humiliated in the events leading up to the cross. He suffered humiliation on the cross. He “endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). . . .

Christ Earned Us Peace of Mind

Still another way the Bible expresses the human experience of God’s forgiveness is to speak of our peace with God. Romans 5:1-2 says, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Though we were once enemies, God has made his peace with us through Christ. His peace with us has been ratified by blood and signed by our repentance and faith. We enjoy this peace as peace of mind. We are at peace with God. . . .

Instructing Our Conscience About the Cross

Not that this sense of liberty is always there and never flags. It surely does. One problem is that our conscience is not sufficiently informed about the gospel. It needs training in righteousness. In terms of human experience, we must often “reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:19-20). I take this to mean that we need to bring the work of God in Christ to bear on our stubborn conscience. We must grasp the truth of the cross and wrestle our conscience into alignment and conformity. We must instruct our conscience about the cross until our conviction of guilt gives way to joy and confidence. Hebrews 10:22 calls this having “our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil [burdened] conscience.”

When my conscience condemns and blocks the way to God, I must be ready to stand on the truth of the gospel and contend for my faith.

By faith, I look to the heavens and shout, “Oh happy day!”

Conscience shouts back, “I object.”

I reply, “On what basis?”

Conscience says, “You did such-and-such. How can you possibly think God does not see it?”

I admit, “I will not deny the facts, and God knows the tears that have been shed over it. But I ask, ‘Was it or was it not a sin for which Christ died?”‘

Conscience demurs, “Well, yes.”

My faith takes the offensive, “If yes, was it or was it not paid in full?”

Conscience pauses, “I withdraw the objection.”

Faith presses further, “And should you not also rejoice with me?”

Conscience is awestruck by the all-sufficiency of the cross. And faith says, then let us draw near to God and say, “Thank You, Father, for paying for that awful sin my conscience has just brought to mind. I rejoice all the more deeply in your loving-kindness.”

We can truly say, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Such is the cleansing power of the cross, when grasped by faith, on a stained conscience.

Fighting for a Clean Conscience

Some things, such as dandelions, never seem to go away for good. Shame and guilt can be like that. They constantly reassert themselves and keep us from experiencing the joy of a “good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21, NIV). What makes persistent shame a serious problem is that it belies a persistent unbelief in the sufficiency of Christ to atone for our guilt. It calls the truth of the gospel into question. And that is a serious matter.

Disconnect the Dots

One way that shame calls the gospel into question is by constantly interpreting life’s hardships as a sign of God’s continuing anger for our past evil behavior. Persistent shame whispers, “God is punishing me.” . . .

One reason for this is obvious. . . . Perhaps we have never come clean. We have never repented. We merely lop off our guilt feelings like we mow down dandelions. As soon as we do not see it, we think it is not there. After a season, the thing pops up again and we lop it off again. In this mode, we will never get relief because we are really back at the starting point of admitting our guilt.

However, sometimes the problem is due to an oversensitive conscience and a serious fault in our understanding of God—in other words, weak theology! A friend who suffered a house fire confided to me once, “I think God is punishing me for not doing the things I should be doing as a Christian.” I was so grieved to hear this. God does discipline those he loves, but he punishes those he loves not by burning their house down but by sending his Son into the world to suffer our due punishment on the cross. My friend’s comment reflected a serious defect in her faith. She will never experience the full assurance of God’s loving-kindness if she thinks God burned her house down for poor devotional habits. God is grieved that we should think him so quick-tempered and irrational.

The Medicinal value of Shame

Does this mean I should never feel ashamed? It is good to make a distinction between things that happened long ago that have been set right, as far as is possible, and things that we do in the ongoing struggle against sin that we have persistently refused to admit responsibility for. In the first, we honor God by accepting the cleansing of our consciences. In the latter, we honor God by being ashamed of ourselves and turning from our present sins by the grace of God. . . .

Until I permit myself the short-term painful experience of shame or self-loathing, until I hate what demeans God’s glory and hurts others, my heart will never be converted and I will never have the strength to change.

Tending the Garden of Conscience

A peaceful conscience makes for bold prayers, passionate praise, confident service, courageous suffering for the sake of righteousness. It makes for healthier long-term relationships and sound sleeping. But when we lose our peace—and we all do—then we must be prepared to humble ourselves before our gracious God. The loss of peace signals the need for self-inspection and action. In striving to live by a clear conscience, we must learn to do a little weeding and watering. I have found the following to be basic in tending to the garden of our conscience.

Allow a season of sorrow for sin. When I feel bad for being bad, I feel good. It means my conscience is working. It means God’s Spirit is at work in me. It is painful and shameful, but it is godly sorrow and it leads to repentance.

Rest in the truth of the gospel. A good conscience weeps for a short time, then comes to rest again in the gift of God in Jesus Christ. Where else am I to go but back to the cross? In this way shame spurs change but does not become persistent or disabling or demeaning to the work of Christ. We must trust Christ as both “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

Restore what is restorable. Part of what it means to repent is to restore what is restorable. Sin, after all, does provide fleeting pleasures. In renouncing it, it is important that we not continue to benefit from it. Therefore restoration is part of repentance (see Luke 19:1-10). For example, if I have embezzled, repentance, faith, and my desire for a clean conscience will compel me to return the money. It may also ask me to pay a fine to ensure that the pain of sin consciously outweighs the pleasure of sin. If I am afraid of the consequences, I will still return the money; it is just that now I will learn the discipline of daily prayer. I will learn how much Christ can be trusted with my life. Making restitution where possible cleanses the conscience. It goes a long way in restoring relationships, too.

Remember that God forgets. In striving for a good conscience, there is a place to let things go. In Jeremiah 31:34, the Lord instituted a covenant with his people: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” The word remember is not used in a cognitive sense. God is omniscient, after all. It is used in a relational sense. He will not hold our sins up to us as a barrier to our ongoing fellowship with him. In this sense he renders them forgotten. He removes our sin and shame and deposits them into the deepest part of the sea. . . .

Endure hardship as God’s discipline, not damnation. As God’s children, we experience the ongoing work of God’s conviction but there is no condemnation. Here is one of the places that the truth must be used as a shield and wielded as a sword. Hebrews 12:7, 10-11 reminds us of the distinction. . . .

Bear scars graciously. It is no small lesson that the risen Lord, utterly transformed in his glorified body, still maintained his nail scars. Our scars remain as a testimony to the outworking grace of God. Scars offer a reminder of a wound. They also testify to having been healed. We may choose to hide the scars of our past sin in shame and guilt, or bear them graciously as a testimony to the grace of God. The ongoing consequences of some of our sins are not reminders of our sin, they are reminders of the Great Work on our behalf. In this way, our triumph over shame is completed. What guilt and shame once used to blackmail us into silence, God now uses to make our testimony ring authentic and glad of heart. “Let me tell you about the Great Work of God in my life. . . .”

From The Great Work of the Gospel by John Ensor copyright © 2006, pp. 107-19. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.

For more information, see our PastorBookshelf Overview.

Read our PastorBookshelf Review for others’ thoughts.

Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .