The Forgotten conscience.
The conscience is a topic you don’t hear much about these days. It’s becoming a lost asset in our culture. The conscience is what makes the difference between doing the right thing and the wrong thing. It’s what makes the difference between being exposed to danger and avoiding danger. It’s what makes the difference between finishing well and not finishing. It’s what makes the difference between preserving your integrity and experiencing moral failure. It’s what makes the difference between being a faithful follower of Christ and dishonouring Christ. It’s what makes the difference between making wise decisions and experiencing a moral blowout
We use the word “conscience” a fair bit in everyday conversation. We talk about having a good conscience, and a clear conscience. We talk about having a guilty conscience. Guilt is one of the functions of the conscience. In John 8: 9, in the story of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest.” The eldest had the heaviest guilt because their consciences had accumulated the most guilt.
You may have heard about the fella that sent money to the income tax people with a note that said, ”I am sending you some money that I owe for back taxes because my conscience is bothering me.” “P.S. If my conscience continues to bother me, I’ll send the rest.”
So let’s talk about the conscience. First, let’s consider
The purpose of your conscience
Your conscience is what enables you to live a life of godly conduct. .
2 Corinthians 1:12, reads, “For our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you.”
Similarly, 1 Timothy 1:19, says, “Keeping faith and a good conscience.”
And in 2 Timothy 1:3, at the end of Paul’s life, (he’ll be executed a few days after he writes this),. he says, “I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience.” Now that’s a godly man. There’s a man who never shed tears of regret at a funeral. He had a clear conscience.
The purpose of the conscience is to produce a life of godly conduct. Your conscience is your navigational GPS which steers u through the swamp of the cultural moral minefield, and keeps you off the mines, and ensures that you’ll live a life of godly conduct.
Now let’s talk about
The value of your conscience
Your conscience is so important that you need to be careful never to damage anybody else’s conscience. In the city of Corinth, they were selling discounted meat that had been offered to idols. Some Christians took advantage of the firesale prices. Other Christians thought it was wrong to buy or eat the meat, and this was causing a problem in the church. Some Christians were being invited to an unbelievers house for dinner and they would serve this idol meat. Some Christians saw nothing wrong with it and enjoyed it. But other Christians were invited to the same house, and sat at the same table, and were offended by the same idol meat. Then they would look at their fellow Christians and when the host would go out to the kitchen, they would whisper, “Psssstt. this is idol meat.” So the Christian who likes the idol meat has a dilemma. Does he do ahead and eat the meat and offend his brother’s conscience? Or does he support his Christian brother and not eat the meat, and run the risk of offending the unbeliever. Well, let’s read it and see what the scripture says..
1 Corinthians 10: 27 “If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, (that means if a believer, a fellow guest, says to you), “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— 29 I do not mean your conscience, but his.”
Don’t violate the conscience of another believer because the conscience is valuable and needs to be protected.
Now let’s talk about
The necessity of the conscience
Some people think you don’t need a conscience. We just need accountability. Accountability is the big word these days. In fact, accountability seems to have replaced the conscience. You get in a group, and you hold each other accountable. For example, let’s say you all want to become more honest. So you meet and ask each other, “Have you been honest this week.” And you hold each other accountable. Here’s the problem with accountability.. You can lie about honesty. Like the actor who said, “The key to being a great actor is authenticity. If you can fake that you got it made.”
See, if.you really like the people you’re accountable to, and dont.want.to disappoint them, and if you don’t have a functioning conscience, you can lie about your honesty.
The greatest accountability is a working conscience. Accountability’s a good thing, but conscience trumps accountabili5y. Conscience is your onboard, accountability. Now we need to consider
The function of your conscience
So how does your conscience function? How does it work? Your conscience functions like the sonar equipment on a ship. Sonar is radar in the water.
In 1 Timothy 1:18 Paul writes this to Timothy, ”wage the good warfare, 19 holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, by rejecting faith and conscience, some have made shipwreck of their faith.”
On January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship, with 4000 passengers and crew, left an Italian port. As it made its way north-west along the Italian coastline, Captain Francesco Schettino ordered the ship to sail by the island of Giglio, as a "salute".to a retired naval captain who lived on the island. .
Two hours after leaving port, the ship hit submerged rocks. The impact tore a 160-foot gash in the port side the size of an Olympic-size swimming pool, flooding three of the ship's seven watertight compartments. Unbelievably, the captain abandoned ship before the passengers. He would later say he tripped and, by accident, fell into a lifeboat. One of the late night comics quipped, “when the captain got out of the lifeboat, he tripped again and fell into a taxi which took him home.”
The Concordia was shipwrecked. And 32 people died.
It’s hard to imagine how a ship carrying state of the art navigational and technological navigational and sonar equipment on a calm night with calm seas, could become shipwrecked. GPS, using space sattelites, tells them where they are to within a couple of feet. This equipment tells them how much depth they have between the bottom of the ship and the sea bed.
The moment the ship deviates from its prescribed course, or is in any proximity to danger, all kinds of alarms go off. . So what happened. I read an article in popular mechanics on this, and discovered two possibilities. One expert said, , "It is possible that the captain disabled the alarm." That would do it. Unplug the alarm system. Or second, they weren’t paying attention to the alarms. One expert said, "Ships are equipped with fathometers that let you know how much water is under the hull.” If you unplug the alarm, or ignore the alarm, you render the alarm useless..
Your conscience is like sonar. Sonar equipment gathers data, information about the conditions around the ship. How deep the water is. How close the rocks are. And when the conditions become dangerous, alarms go off. That’s exactly what the conscience does. It gathers information, and detects dangerous conditions and it triggers alarm bells, warning bells that alert you to the danger.
But you can do what the captain did. You can ignore your conscience, and if you sin over and over, the conscious will shut down and won’t convict anymore. That’s when you’ve unplugged your conscience.. And you ignore the alert at your peril. You end up on the rocks. Shipwrecked.
The bible describes an unplugged conscience as a seared conscience. Desensitized. 1 Timothy 4:2 reads, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.”
Titus 1:15 says, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. The conscience is unplugged..
But something else happens before the conscience is unplugged. Sonar works by gathering data. Information. Reading distances. The conscience works by gathering data and accumulating information. We call it truth. The conscience is informed by the truth of scripture.
Before the conscience is unplugged, the conscience becomes starved of truth. The way to sear the conscience is by cutting of the truth supply lines. Stop reading the bible. Stop listening to sermons. Stop reading truth based books and magazines. Stop listening to truth based worship music. Stop listening to the Spirit’s promptings.
That’s what happens in a culture that abandons God. Romans 1:18 says, “by their unrighteousness they suppress the truth. they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie.”
When the conscience is starved of truth that leads to a lost conscience. That’s what Romans 1:32 says. “Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” Their conscience is informed. They know. but it’s been overridden. And the conscience is lost. Starve the conscience of truth, and you can override the conscience.
That’s what Satan did to Eve in the Garden of Eden. His first question planted the seeds of doubt about the veracity- the truthfulness-of God’s word. Did god really say? Then the second question flat out contradicted and rejected the truthfulness of God’s word. “You will not die.” Once truth is doubted, and then disbelieved, conscience is lost, and the third step of disobedience is easy.
That leads to the next stage of Romans 1. Unleashed evil. Verse 28 and forwards reads, “ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to aa debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”
A culture that experiences unleashed evil is a culture that is very concerned about safety and security. And it starts with a lost conscience that’s been starved of truth. So now let’s see
The strength of the conscience
The strength of the conscience lies in its exposure to truth. A highly functioning conscience is a truth informed conscience. Sonar is informed by truth. It sends out a sound wave and measures the distance between the bottom of the boat and the bottom of the ocean.
If sonar got false information, it would be unreliable. If your conscience gets wrong information or believes untruths then it won’t be reliable.
1 Corinthians 8:6-7 says “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, or uninformed, is defiled.”
A weak conscience believes things that are not true. If the conscience is not rightly informed, two things happen. Number one, you misunderstand true holiness. You think holiness is about things that really have nothing to do with holiness. And second, you judge and become critical of other people who don’t share the same perspective.
The conscience must be rightly informed by scripture. 2 Corinthians 4 2 says, “But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning, or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.”
A strong conscience is fed by scripture.
2 Corinthians 5:11 says, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience.” Notice, the knowledge of the fear of the Lord found in scripture, informs the conscience.
There’s a wonderful illustration of this in Psalm 19. Listen to all the descriptions and benefits of scripture here.
“The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.”
Then listen to how much the psalmist loves the scripture in verse 10. “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”
Now watch the two aspects of scripture.
Verse 11 “Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” Warning and obeying. Those are the two aspects of the sonar on a boat. It sends out a warning signal, and the warning signal needs to be heeded. Warning and keeping.
What does the scriptures warn you about? Sin. And he describes four kinds of sin in the next verse.
An informed conscience will identify
Unknown sin Verse 12 “Who can discern his errors?”
Sometimes there is sin in our life that we’re not even aware of. That’s why God says, “Be still and know that I am God,” so that he can reveal anything he wants to bring to your attention. That’s why David prays in Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” And see if there be any grievous way in me.” An informed conscience will illuminate unknown sin, and alert you to things you’re doing that are hurting you, or people in your life.
Second. an informed conscience will identify hidden sin V12 “Declare me innocent from hidden faults.”
These are sins that you, and no one else, are aware of. That’s why they’re hidden. And if your conscience isn’t setting off an alarm, it’s because you’re ignoring it, or you’ve seared it. Your conscience has been unplugged.
Third the conscience will identify presumptuous sin
v. 13 “Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;”
Presumptuous sins are those sins that your conscience has deemed to be socially acceptable sins. There’s two lists of sins in church. There are the socially reprehensible sins that preachers love to list. Then there’s the socially acceptable sins. Yet scripture makes no such distinction between the two. James says, “if you break one law, you’ve broken them all.”
Fourth. the conscience will identify parasidic sins
V13 “let them not have dominion over me!”
These are addictive sins. Like parasites. They get their teeth into you and won’t let go. They’re like the snake wrapping itself around the old snake charmer, when it rests its head on the turban of the old man, until one day it doesn’t unravel. It squeezes tighter and won’t let go.
Addictive sin preys on a weak conscience. The first step in getting free from parasidic sin, is to admit its power over you. That’s an informed conscience. An informed conscience will convict you of all these sins.
And look at the reward for a fully informed conscience “Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.”
And finally look at the focus of a fully informed conscience
V 14 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.”
The focus of a functioning conscience is the Lord Jesus Christ. and Hebrews 9:14 explains why. “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”
A healthy conscience is captivated by the Lord Jesus Christ, because He cleanses it, and forgives us. Therefore we long to be acceptable to him and desire to please him.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank You for our morning together. We thank You that You have given us this gift of a conscience and the gift of truth to inform it. O God, help us to know the truth, to love the truth, to have a passion for the truth, a desire for the truth, to search the truth and keep that conscience clear by Your Holy Spirit through confession and repentance. Wash it so it’s always revealing to us the full light of the truth that we might do that which pleases you and live to your eternal glory, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.
