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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/bruce-rodgers/the-conscience-part-3/
Now, I want to look a little bit more at the subject of conscience, and I didn't quite complete what I was taking up yesterday in giving some contrasting pairs, and so I'm going to mention another contrasting pair and then look at two descriptions relating to conscience that are not a contrast, but sadly much the same.
In 1 Peter 2 and verse 9, we have the context of being servants, and the appeal is made to us to serve the interests of God wherever we are, whatever our employment may be. And so he is appealing to them for this, and verse 16 says, as free, not using your liberty, your freedom for a cloak of maliciousness, but as servants of God.
Honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. Servants be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward, or the harsh, the nasty. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience towards God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully.
For what glory is it if when you be buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently? But if when you do well and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even here unto where you called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow his steps.
Now when looking at this conscience towards God, this is a very, very important facet of conscience, and it really is, in one sense, the primary direction. Conscience is looking Godward. You could almost say that conscience is having your eye on God and being aware of his eye on you.
You are more concerned about what God thinks than what anybody else thinks. This attitude of being a servant of God, wherever you are, whoever you are with, this is one of the defining things that makes a godly Christian, a valuable Christian, no matter what your employment situation, your relationships that you are in, if you realize, I am his servant here, and the focus of this passage is that I would seek to fulfill his will, seek to further his purposes, seek to be useful to him in whatever sphere I'm in, even in the case where my personal rights are abused, when I am mistreated.
Now it's normal if you are honest, hardworking, if you have integrity, that you will be appreciated as an employee. But it's also possible if the boss is shady in some way, and he expects you to go along with it, and you won't, that he may react against you, and you may suffer.
And this is what he is saying here, regardless of what others approve or disapprove of, you live for God's approval. Let that decide what is right and wrong for you in your conscience. Now I'm putting this in contrast, it might seem a bit of a strange contrast for you initially, in contrast to a weak conscience, and I'm not going to go into a lot of detail now, but I should look in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, 1 Corinthians 7, I'm sure most of us have puzzled over the language of the strong and weak brother.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 8, did I say 8, 1 Corinthians chapter 8, as well as in Romans chapter 14? And interestingly, as we've been listening to report of India, I found it very interesting personally because in our home area of Sudbury, last summer, a man who had moved from India two years ago professed to be saved.
And we later came into contact with his wife, and we found out that she already is a Christian. But some of the struggles that they are experiencing even here in Canada relate to the culture of where they came from.
And so some of those details that he gave concerning the place of the woman and so on are very familiar to what I'm thinking of. But here we have a situation where there are people whose knowledge about God is confused.
They have been immersed in idolatry, and they've been so immersed in the worship of idols that even though they have professed to be saved, if they go and eat a meal where it is meat that has been offered to an idol, they are so conscious of that idolatry, that area of what was God to them, or their gods, that they are not free, and it has the potential to snare them back into what they came out of.
So it mentions here, after saying that to us, in verse 6, there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him, one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge, for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled.
Then notice in verse 9, he says, but take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak. Verse 10 says, for if any man see thee which has knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols?
And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when you sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Now I'm going to be picking up this theme a little later, hopefully, when I want to raise some questions with you to kind of summarize or to leave you with some things to think about.
And one of those questions is, should I be concerned about the conscience of another person? If you think about the subject of conscience, it looks like it's a full-time job taking care of your own conscience, let alone worrying about somebody else's conscience.
But there's a very important reason why it matters. And this passage touches on it. I didn't mention or read it, but back in verse, beginning of the chapter, now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge.
Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies or builds up. And really, it's the issue of our love. So what is the significance of the weak conscience here? And how is this brother weak? For a long time, I have always thought of it as simply that his conscience is weak because it is defective in knowledge.
And that has created a weakness in its ability to properly discern something that's good or evil. And that is certainly a key element of it. But that isn't where it ends. And I'm just going to give you a contrast.
If this Christian were in himself a strong Christian who was truly living essentially for God, and this is where I'm putting the contrast of a conscience toward God. If he were in himself a strong enough Christian, he would look at that situation and he could say, whatever they do, I am not having any part of it.
Now I'm going to ask you this question. Are you strong enough to live according to what you believe is right before God regardless of what anybody else does? You see, this person, if he were strong in himself, though with a weak conscience, he could have survived this.
But the problem is, there is a susceptibility, and I'm sure many of us discover this over and over again. We very easily become susceptible to what other people think, to what other people are doing, and we end up compromising what we ourselves believe within our hearts.
And so we are weak, not only possibly defective in knowledge, but also weak in our spiritual strength. I'm going to leave that and I'll come back to it when we look at the responsibility to care for the other person's conscience.
Back to 1 Timothy 1, where we have what I would call a spurned conscience. 1 Timothy 1 and verse 19, holding faith and a good conscience, which some, having put away concerning faith, have made shipwreck.
Now, the which there refers back to the good conscience. And so this is a very strong expression, which some having put away, this is literally to thrust away, to push away. So here is a deliberate choice that someone may make.
You know what is right, and when your conscience alerts you that you are about to do something wrong, you make a choice that you're going to go ahead and do it. You're going to reject what your conscience is telling you.
And this is warning about the danger of this. The one thing that has impressed me so much in studying this subject of the conscience is to recognize that God has given to us the conscience so that we might be protected, that we might have a safe area in which to live our lives, where we are not sinning against him and we are not being dragged into evil.
But here is a tragic choice to thrust away, deliberately take your hand off the steering wheel and let it go. I'm sure possibly many of you heard back in, was it January, when that cruise ship over off the coast of Italy, the Concordia, ran aground, 26 people died.
What happened? Well, the captain chose to either shut off the computerized control or just totally disregard it. He got Coast Guard messages warning him, he disregarded them. He thought he could go closer and he made a shipwreck, a tremendous disaster that he brought, not only upon himself, but upon many other people.
This passage is talking about the spiritual tragedy of shipwreck in a person's life. I've already mentioned, I'm just going to repeat it here, faith and conscience need to be kept together. What we believe about God, what we believe to be true, our hold upon God and our hold on morality must be kept together.
Faith is foundational to the spiritual realm of relationship to God, of truth, of knowledge. The conscience is foundational to the moral realm of behavior, and 1 Timothy is emphasizing the absolute necessity of our belief and our behavior being consistent.
Let's go to 1 Timothy chapter 4, and we will look at what is very tragically connected to this, and we have a seared conscience. 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 1, now the spirit speaks expressly that in the latter time some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons.
Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. And then there's a number of teachings that are false teachings that are spoken of. What is a seared conscience? Well the word seared literally means to cauterize, like when you burn something, you scar it, so it is no longer sensitive.
I don't drink very many hot drinks, and I always wait a little while before I swallow because I don't know how people can just take it off the stove and drink it down. I can't do it without getting a stung tongue.
What brings this on? Deliberate, persistent defiance of conscience. Pursuing evil despite knowing it's wrong. And the thing that is so frightening about this is that these are religious people. These are people claiming to know God, people claiming to represent God, people claiming to teach the word of God, claiming to lead the people of God, and yet somehow something has deteriorated.
Whether these people were ever saved, I would be inclined to think that these are not believers, true believers, but I am not sure about that. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a believer who has deliberately disregarded conscience for a period of time and someone who may have been merely religious.
But I think of many ministers who stand up in pulpits and teach things that they themselves know are lies, and they are doing it deliberately, aware of what they're doing. That is what this is telling us.
Not someone who is simply mistaken, confused about some doctrine of God, but someone who has come to the spiritual place where he has cut off this sensitivity to what is right, what is wrong, what is true, and what is false.
And so again, this emphasizes the fact that if my conscience does not control me and I pursue evil, eventually it will change what I believe. It will enable me to become a deliberate deceiver, someone who is no longer troubled, either in the practice of wickedness in his own life, nor by the deliberate deception of other people.
That is what our religious world has tragically been characterized by, and neither God nor the average person has any stomach for it. That is what has corrupted the testimony of Christianity. And so a seared conscience is the tragedy, and I would just again express it this way that error enters easily upon a defiled conscience.
So, guard your conscience. Now let's try to think then about some questions that we need to ask ourselves, and I'm just going to entitle this Decisions of Conscience. Can you trust your conscience? How reliable a guide is it?
I'm sure you've heard the proverb, let conscience be your guide. Well, that is generally a true statement, but it is actually only as valid as the condition of your conscience. Now there's a couple of verses I would refer to, but Proverbs, the second chapter of Proverbs is good to meditate in, talking about the knowledge of God, the wisdom of God that will give to us a wisdom that contains true morality, that will shield us from the influence of evil.
Proverbs 28 and 26 warns us that the man that trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he that walks wisely shall be delivered. We need to face the challenge that there is a deceptiveness, an ability to deceive ourselves, and we need to be guided by what we know is true.
And so the reality is that we need to be constantly, our conscience needs to be constantly adjusted and purified by the teaching of the word of God upon our hearts. So I'm just going to say to you that a flippant attitude towards sin is very grieving to the Holy Spirit, and it is very damaging to your conscience, so don't let yourself get into that idea of just flippancy, carelessness about sin.
There is no free sin. So what will develop and maintain a reliable conscience? I'm going to give you some suggestions that shouldn't be strange to you because it's the basic principles of our relationship to God.
The emphasis that we have seen from 1 Timothy, spiritual truth comes into our being through the conscience. The truth of God is more than just facts. Now obviously truth must be factual, but truth is more than just a set of facts that happen to be true.
Truth is the ultimate reality of what is, and that has to be based upon God and His character. God is the ultimate truth, and 1 Timothy chapter 3 reveals to us the ultimate truth of what is Christ. He is the revelation of God, and everything that Christ is forms the reality that we must exist in, and so honesty, faithfulness, love, holiness, justice, all of these moral characteristics are all part of truth, and so truth as it comes to our beings, and we embrace the truth, it comes in and through conscience.
Now 1 Peter chapter 1 that we read yesterday also emphasizes that, seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unhypocritical love of the brethren. And so the first thing that we need is to get to know God, get to know God in His character, in all His love, His faithfulness, and maybe I should just take the time to turn to James chapter 3, I may have read this before with you, I'm sure you have heard and realized that the wisdom that is spoken of so often in the Proverbs is really a person.
Wisdom doesn't exist outside of people or beings who are personal beings, and wisdom is of God. He is the only wise God. And so in James chapter 3 verse 13 says, Who is a wise man, and endued or clothed with knowledge among you?
Let him show out of a good conversation, that is of a good behavior, his works in the meekness of wisdom. Now a contrast is given to warn us, but if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, lie not against the truth.
This wisdom descends not from above, but is earthly, sensual or soulish, and devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. So this is asking us to check our hearts, to check our attitudes.
But then the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy, and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
Now could I ask you something? Does that describe you? Does that describe your attitude, your way of handling other people, your way of living? This is the wisdom that is from above, and if Christ is in us, this wisdom in all its beautiful moral character is within us.
And so getting to know God, getting to enjoy God in all these beauties of His character, will create within us the enjoyment and the experience of these qualities in our own hearts, and our consciences will be formed so that anything contrary to this will trouble us.
We should be developing in the sensitivity of our conscience, not only to the very base wicked things of this world, but to the more subtle things of being harsh with somebody, critical, of being belittling to someone, of treating somebody with contempt.
How do we represent the wisdom that is from above? Our conscience will be formed by this character if we allow it. And then, linked with this, let's go to Romans chapter 14. Much of the rest of what I have to say will be in Romans 14 anyway.
Romans 14, this again is about liberty, freedom, and conscience, and the Lordship of Christ. Now there's, the whole chapter is worth meditating in and thinking about, but basically it's looking at areas of life in which different believers have a conscience that other believers may not have a conscience about.
And the details themselves are neither here nor there. And some of this we would read and we could immediately agree with, we don't have any trouble with it. Then there are other areas where we would say, yeah, I don't like that.
I wouldn't go along with that. You know, just an example that's in the passages, Sunday, Sabbath. When I was growing up, it was very typical for there to be many, many restrictions upon what was suitable to do on Sunday.
And basically what was happening is that Sabbath day restrictiveness from the Old Testament was simply transferred into Sunday or the Lord's Day. And many of us grew up with that. That forms your conscience.
I learned at some stage in my growing up years that the actual reality for the Christian life is that he is Lord of every day. I am His servant all the time. Every day belongs to Him. And so I still appreciate the Lord's Day as we speak of it and as the Scriptures speak of it, but not in the context of a restrictiveness of what things I shouldn't do because it is the Lord's Day, but rather the privileges that I'm able to enjoy in the service of the Lord on the Lord's Day.
That's in this chapter. But at the same time, I have no interest in ridiculing the conscience of another believer who simply will not do certain things on the Lord's Day as opposed to doing it any other day of the week.
And I am not here to try to sort out those things. The chapter is actually emphasizing something higher than just correcting people's opinions. It is to get us, first of all, to live in submission to the Lordship of Christ.
And it teaches us this in verse 7. He says, For none of us lives to himself, and no man dies to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord. Whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live there for or die, we are the Lord's.
For to this end, Christ both died and rose and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living. But why dost thou judge thy brother? Now it's like he's looking at one side and then he's looking at the other.
And why dost thou set it not thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me. Every tongue shall confess to God.
So then, every one of us shall give account of or concerning himself to God. Let us not therefore judge one another any more, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.
Could I just emphasize this for a moment? Each one of us are going to have our opportunity and our responsibility to explain ourselves to the Lord himself. There are different aspects of the judgment seat of Christ.
The overwhelming emphasis of the judgment seat of Christ is revelation, manifestation. I am going to be revealed at the judgment seat of Christ in the presence of the Lord, and I personally believe in the presence of all my brethren and sisters.
Because the character of the day is truth, absolute truth. It's going to be in his grace that I am at the judgment seat of Christ and not at the great white throne. I am going to be looking into the eyes of the one who died for my sins, who redeemed me from judgment, and I became his servant.
My whole Christian life is a response to his love to me. That I am accountable for. So this passage is teaching us, I'm not accountable to you. You're not accountable to me. I'm accountable to the Lord.
You are accountable to the Lord. But what I am accountable for about you is my influence upon you. What has my example been for you? Has it helped you serve the Lord? Has it encouraged you to walk with God?
Or has it led you to violate your own spiritual life, compromise your own conscience, and possibly destroy your spirituality? For that I will be accountable. And that is what this passage is emphasizing.
Let's not waste our time looking at everybody else now, judging everybody else's motivations. Rather, let us examine ourselves before God and recognize we shall give account. But this passage also goes on to speak about a further outcome, which I'm going to try to mention after I suggest a few other principles.
Obedience. Obedience is the defining characteristic of spirituality. It is always right to be obedient, whether you understand everything about it or not. If you understand some principle of God, if it has been taught to you, you recognize this is God's Word.
Obey it, and there will be blessing within your being. There is a joy in obedience. So obedience to the truth is a very vital thing. When the truth comes to you, don't ignore it. There have been times, and I'm sure if every one of us are honest here today, there have been times when I have sat or stood and almost in such turmoil, almost trembling with a struggle between what I know is right and what I'm being tempted to do.
In those moments, we must respond to what we know is right. God is faithful. He has assured us He will never allow us to be tempted above what we are able. He will enable us to be protected, to be preserved from evil.
But we must be willing to obey the warning that is given to us. If we do sin, 1 John 1 emphasizes this, we must confess our sin. Don't just ignore it, go on, and then sort of take up your relationship with God again.
Acknowledge it in His presence, because God is in His faithfulness to us. He is committed to our well-being. He is committed even to our restoration, and He is faithful as well as righteous to not only forgive that sin, but also to cleanse us from the guilt, the unrighteousness of it.
And that's a wonderful thing, to be restored to God, and we need it over and over again. And there's a couple of other verses I'm not going to read, but desire and seek His will to be done in your life.
Now just come back to Romans chapter 14, at the end of the chapter, and into chapter 15. At the end of the chapter, verse 19, he says, let us therefore follow after, or pursue the things which make for peace, and the things wherewith one may edify another.
For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for that man who eats with offense. It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbles, or is offended, or is made weak.
Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemns not himself in that thing which he allows, and he that doubts is damned or condemned if he eat, because he eats not of faith, for whatever is not of faith is sin.
That's a very important principle at the very end of the chapter. Whatever is not of faith is sin. Whatever we permit in our lives, whatever we involve ourselves in, if we are going to avoid sinning against God, we need to have the confidence that God approves.
That's what he's saying. If we act and do something that we do not have a conscience that will allow us to do it before God, he recognizes that we are sinning against him. Now, I don't have time to go into that in any more detail, but it's a very important principle.
But when we come into chapter 15, he then places a responsibility upon those who will take the position of being strong. Verse 1, we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.
Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification, for even Christ pleased not himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me. This is probably one of the key principles.
Are you living to please yourself? If that is what is motivating you, you are going to be running into problems over and over and over again within yourself, in your own personal life, and as well as you think about other Christians.
You're going to be resentful of any restriction that others in their conscience may put upon you. But what is the encouragement that is given here is that we would long to so live in relation to our brethren and sisters in the Lord that we will never be a discouraging influence to them.
That as they look at us, they will be strengthened in their faith. They will be strengthened in their spiritual life. And so if I am aware of someone else's difficulty in an area of life, I will avoid doing anything that will stumble or cause them to become weakened or ensnared.
And so it's interesting that it mentions in verse 4 and 5 that the things written beforehand, that is the Old Testament Scriptures, were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
Patience is the ability to endure, and comfort is the encouragement, the strength. And then he says, verse 5, now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus.
Now what is he saying? He is saying very simply that God cares about you, and God has written a marvelous book filled with the record of his faithfulness, of his patience, of his encouragement, of his commitment to his people.
Think of how much God put up with, with the nation of Israel through the Old Testament history. Think of how often he comforted them, and he strengthened them, and he promised them, and offered them hope for the future.
And he says, now I want you to take the very same attitude to your brothers and your sisters. I want you to be like-minded. I want you to love your brother and your sister. I want you to have a patience with them in all their weaknesses, and in all their quibbles of conscience, and all the things that you might find so petty.
I want you to be patient with them as they are struggling in their spiritual life to live before God. And I want you to be an encouragement to them, because the outcome is ahead, and that outcome is unity and harmony in the glory of the kingdom of Christ.
Christ is going to bring together the Jews in all of their background, the Gentiles from all of their background. He's going to bring them together and unite them in himself in a kingdom of glory, a hope that is set out before the world.
God is committed to us. He loves us deeply, faithfully, eternally, and he wants us to live our lives. And if our consciences would be governed by the attitude of love towards others, with the same love that he has for us, then we will do very well.