A tormentor and murderer of believers. A man so fixated on his own, false religious zeal that he despised God’s own people and threw them into prison. This was the apostle Paul in his early days. So, if anyone had reason to bear a guilty conscience and be left in the misery of regret, it was Paul.
I think about the real man, Paul, as he sat chained in an underground Roman prison. The tables are turned, and the redeemed Paul is now the one being persecuted for his faith. He knows his execution is near, and he is left with his thoughts and his God in the dark, damp, disgusting dungeon.
If Paul was a human like you and me – and HE WAS – then his mind had to have drifted back a few years to Stephen, the first martyr of the Church. After Stephen witnessed to the crowds of God’s love in Jesus, the crowd rushed at Stephen and stoned him to death. And guess what leader was there approving of Stephen’s execution? Paul! In fact, as Acts 8:3 (ESV) details, “But Saul [Paul] was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.” With all this in mind, we can only surmise that Paul had to be pondering the irony of his situation. The persecutor has become the persecuted. The murderer is about to be murdered.
Now we might conclude that Paul’s psychological position at this point would be one of weakness. Feeling sorry for himself, he might have thought, “Well, I deserve this.” If I were Paul, I would have been tempted to believe the worst – that because of all my sin, I was finally going to get what I had coming to me. God’s care of me might have been seriously clouded by my own guilt. Could I even call on Jesus now to help me … after all I’ve done? Why should God deliver me from circumstances exactly like those to which I had sinfully committed other people? Why should God help me, when I had been so evil?
Miraculously – and I mean by the actual miracle of God’s grace – Paul’s psychological bent at this point in his life was one of strength … and a confident conscience. Against all odds of human tendency, Paul penned the following words from his dungeon soon before he was beheaded, “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18, ESV).
Can you believe it? Paul was not drowning in guilt or pity. He believed God would rescue him from every evil deed – despite the evil he had done. Paul was fully convinced that Jesus had already taken the hit for his sin when He died on the Cross. Paul – even in his last days – lived by the truth of the full forgiveness we find through Jesus Christ. The blood Jesus shed was truly a healing salve for Paul’s guilty conscience, broken heart, and haunted mind.
Jesus gave to Paul not only a clean conscience, but a confident conscience. Jesus enabled Paul to live above both the physical and psychological circumstances that would seem to hold him down. History upholds the execution of Paul under Emperor Nero. He did not recant. His head was placed on the chopping block, but his conscience was unbroken. At the moment of his death, I wonder if Paul was recalling the words he had written in Romans 5:1 (ESV), “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”?
Personal Reflection Questions:
1) For what sins should your conscience be broken and guilty?
2) Have you really trusted that the substitution of Jesus enduring the wrath of God on your behalf has cleared your guilt before God?
3) Will you, as Paul, trust God today for a clean conscience through Jesus AND a CONFIDENT conscience for all the future holds?