<p>9:14 <i>How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God- </i>As noted on :13, ritual defilement and legalistic infringements could be cleansed by the Mosaic sacrifices, but the sacrificial system did not address the spirit or conscience. The work of the Lord is on the conscience, on the spirit through His Spirit. His sacrifice is therefore described here as having been one of the Spirit; His Spirit or mind was and is eternal, in that the mind He achieved by the end of His mortal life has been eternally preserved (see on 5:7-9), and is given to His people eternally. The Mosaic sacrifices had to be repeated, and related to the flesh (&quot;the cleansing of the flesh&quot;, :13). The Lord's sacrifice pertained to the Spirit, and was eternal rather than of only temporary consequence. He did not offer an animal, but Himself; as the animal was to be &quot;without blemish&quot; in the flesh (Lev. 1:10), the Lord was &quot;without blemish&quot; morally, in His Spirit. The animal had no choice in being offered; the Lord &quot;offered Himself&quot; as an act of conscious volition. He was <i>spiritually </i>without blemish whereas the animal sacrifices were only unblemished in the <i>flesh</i>. His cleansing of our spirit / conscience was<i> dia</i> or on account ofHis spirit. And His spirit is eternal; for He is now immortalized, His personality, mind, spirit, character lives on eternally, both in Himself and ultimately in us to whom He gives His Spirit. He is a priest who operates now according to the power / spirit of an endless life (7:16).</p><p>The Lord offered Himself on the cross &quot;through the eternal spirit&quot; in that it was the Spirit of God, understanding from His word what God really wanted, what He is really like and thereby demands of us, which led the Lord Jesus to the cross. And why the odd phrase &quot;the eternal spirit&quot;? Surely to show that this same Spirit operates today, and if we follow it, will lead us likewise to the same death of the cross. These things are challenging to the very core of our being, the very fabric of our self-understanding. We who cower in the dentist's chair, who fear and avoid pain, who would sooner die than have a surgery without anasthetic... are called to die with Jesus, the death of the cross. God was manifested in the flesh of Christ, but now Christ is living &quot;in the Spirit&quot;, thus justifying God's righteousness (1 Tim. 3:16). He was &quot;put to death in the flesh, but quickened by (on account of) the Spirit&quot;, the Spirit-man within Him (1 Pet. 3:18). Thus Christ's sacrifice was acceptable by reason of his &quot;eternal Spirit&quot; (Heb. 9:14); his perfect spiritual character was what enabled his physical blood and death to win our salvation. His resurrection was due to his &quot;spirit of holiness&quot; (Rom. 1:4). We can only relate to Him now as a spiritual being. We can not now know Him after the flesh. Now his mortal flesh has been destroyed, He is &quot;the Lord the Spirit&quot; (2 Cor. 3:18 R.V.); He is called &quot;the Spirit&quot; in Revelation because the spiritual character He developed in his mortal life is now what He is.</p><p><i>Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?</i>- The &quot;dead works&quot; are those which can be turned away from by baptism into Christ and forgiven (6:1). The contrast is with how the sprinkling of blood and water cleansed the flesh, getting technical forgiveness for legal infringements, but could not cleanse the conscience or spirit of the offerer. 1 Pet. 1:2 states that the sprinkling of the blood of Christ is to be associated with our sanctification by the Spirit, referring to the internal cleansing of the heart by the gift and operation of the Spirit there. As explained in Romans 1-8, we are &quot;in Christ&quot;, counted as Him, with His righteousness imputed to us; and therefore we can be confident that if He returns today or we die, we shall surely be saved. The bad conscience regarding our previous &quot;dead works&quot; is totally removed; and on this basis we can do priestly service in the Most Holy place. We are not to simply rejoice in our own redemption, but to realize that our cleansing is so that we may serve. The mention of &quot;the living God&quot; would suggest again the function of the Spirit; He is alive and interactive with us, and we are to therefore serve the God who is Spirit in spirit (Jn. 4:24).</p><p>The Greek word translated &ldquo;conscience&rdquo;, <i>sun-eidesis</i>, means literally a co-perception. It implies that there are two types of perception within the believer- human perception, and spiritual self perception. The conscience that is cleansed in Christ, that is at peace, will be a conscience that keeps those two perceptions, of the real self and of the persona, in harmony. What we know and perceive humanly, is in harmony with we spiritually perceive. Our conscience, our co-perception, our real self, makes sense of the human perceptions and interprets them in a spiritual way. So, a young man sees an attractive girl. His human perception signals certain things to his brain- to lust, covet, etc. But his co-perception, his conscience, his real self, handles all that, and sees the girl&rsquo;s beauty for just simply what it is- beauty. Job before his &lsquo;conversion&rsquo; paralleled his eye and his ear: &ldquo;My eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it&rdquo; (Job 13:1). He was so sure that what he heard was what he saw; he was sure that his perceptions were operating correctly. But later, he comes to see a difference between his eye and his ear. He says that he had only heard of God by the ear; but only now, he says, &ldquo;my eye sees You&rdquo; (Job 42:5). He had heard words, but, he realized, he&rsquo;d not properly &lsquo;seen&rsquo; or perceived. Finally, he had a properly functioning &lsquo;conscience&rsquo;, a co-perception. What he saw, was what he really heard.</p><p>Our conscience is not going to jump out of us and stand and judge us at the day of judgment. There is one thing that will judge us, the word of the Lord (Jn. 12:48), not how far we have lived according to our conscience. It&rsquo;s therefore unreliable (1 Cor. 4:4). And yet there is Bible teaching concerning the need to live in accordance with our 'conscience', and the joy which is possible for the believer who has a clear conscience (e.g. Acts 24:16; Rom. 14:18-22; 2 Cor. 1:12; 1 Jn. 3:21). This must mean, in the context, the conscience which God's word has developed in us- it cannot refer to 'conscience' in the sense of our natural, inbuilt sense of right and wrong; because according to the Bible, this is hopelessly flawed. The fact the &quot;conscience&quot; is &quot;cleansed&quot; by Christ's sacrifice (Heb. 9:14; 10:22) proves that the Biblical 'conscience' is not the natural sense of right and wrong within our nature; for our nature can never be 'purged' or 'cleansed', the believer will always have those promptings within him to do wrong. The cleansed, purged conscience refers to the new man that is created within the believer at baptism. This new 'conscience' is not just a sense of guilt which is invoked on account of not living an obedient life; it is also a conscience which positively compels us <i>to do</i> something, not just threatens us with a pang of guilt if we commit a sin.</p><p>We have a conscience which in God's eyes is cleansed of sin, knowing that our sin has been overcome once and for all, and that we have access to this through baptism. Our hearts were purified by that faith (Acts 15:9); we were cleansed from the conscience of sins (Heb. 9:14); all things became pure to us (Tit. 1:15; Rom. 14:20). This is a good conscience, Biblically defined. When Paul said he had a pure conscience before God, they smote him for blasphemy (Acts 23:1,2); there is an association between a clear conscience and perfection (Heb. 9:9; 10:14). A clear conscience therefore means an awareness that in God's eyes, we have no sin. Thus Paul's conscience could tell him that he was living a life which was a response to his experience of God's grace / forgiveness (2 Cor. 1:12). The conscience works not only negatively; it insists that we <i>do</i> certain things. It may even be that the goads against which Paul was kicking before his conversion were not the pricks of bad conscience, but rather the <i>positive</i> directions from God that he <i>ought</i> to be giving his life to the service of His Son. Whilst we may still have twinges of guilt, and sins to confess, from God's viewpoint the slate is clean, and has been since our baptism. It is impossible to believe this without some kind of response. We are purged in our conscience so that we might serve the living God (Heb. 9:14).</p>