Only an ever-increasing trust in Christ’s work on the cross can fill this ever-widening gap and keep us from despair. God’s solution for us to have a clean conscience throughout our lives is simple and profound: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The sentences before and after this solution capture the world’s solutions for a defiled conscience, namely, to deny that we have any sin at all and to defend our sin (vv. 8, 10). These solutions are still popular today in secular counseling.
