The Conscience, and How to Clear it

Goal

• To give us a real clarity about what the conscience is,
  how to cleanse it,
  and how NOT to try and cleanse it

The Conscience, and How to Clear it

1. Understand: How the Bible Describes the Conscience
2. A Huge Danger: Conscience and Mental Illness
3. The Joy of Feeling your Conscience is Cleansed

The law on our hearts: Rom 2

14. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires…
15. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them

Faulty laws

“I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. (Acts 26:9)

“But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years!” (Gal 4:9–10)

Weak Discernment 1 Cor 8

4. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.”
7. 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,
8. is defiled/polluted.

1 Cor 8:10–12

Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

1 Tim 4 —branded by Satan

1. Now the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will desert the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons
2. …through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are branded,
3. who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
4. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,

How to look after your conscience

1. Respect it and don’t go against it
2. Instead, educate it from the Word
3. Give conscience of others, the same respect (and gentle education)
4. Beware of those whose consciences try to control others using false-teachings

The exquisite pain of guilt

• not actually being guilty but feeling guilt
• Psychologists tell us it is one of the most painful emotions we can have

Conscience looks forward and back

• “Prospective conscience” is an important motivator to do what is right
• Paul: “So I always strive to have a conscience without offense toward both God and man.” (Acts 24:16)
• “Retrospective conscience” But it is dangerous to let it try to clear our guilt
• We should tell it to go to the cross and see that we are now as white as snow
• Never go down the rabbit-hole of trying to do something good to make up for the bad!

Dangerous “Christian” Counselling

• Make a list of everything you are guilty of
• Be sure you have made restitution and asked forgiveness (not bad things)
  • but very dangerous if the purpose is to feel less guilty
• Plan how you can remove them from your “list of sins”

Attempts to clear the guilt

• Join a good cause and throw your weight into making the world a better place
• Externalize the blame: parents/society has made me like this—not my fault and I am so angry with them
• Punish yourself—feel guilty about ever doing/having what you really want
  • eating disorders
  • or even cause yourself physical pain: cutting
  • join a “self-punishing” religious group (Luther → monk)
• Numb the pain: alcohol, drugs, food, phones, binges

Even our bodies can try to distract us

• Physical pain
• Anxiety attacks
• Unexplained illness
  • Body trying to defend us against the attacks of conscience: “They don’t need to feel guilty they are not meeting their impossibly high standards—they have a good reason”

There is only ONE answer to give our conscience:
“Jesus has cleansed me”

Colossians 2

13. And you, who were dead in your sins…, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,
14. by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
15. He disarmed the “spiritual powers and authorities” (demonic tempters) and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them by the cross.

Before the Throne of God Above

Charitie Lees Bancroft (1841–1923)

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea
A great High Priest whose name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me
My name is graven on his hands
My name is written on his heart
I know that while in heaven he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
No tongue can bid me thence depart

When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within
Upward I look and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin
Because the sinless Saviour died
My sinful soul is counted free
For God the Just is satisfied
To look on him and pardon me
To look on him and pardon me

Problem with the O.T. animal sacrifices Heb 10

1. The law… is completely unable to perfect those who come to worship.
2. For otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers would have been purified once for all and so have no further consciousness of sin? (feelings of guilt)

Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus

• “keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus,
  the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
  For the joy set out for him he endured the cross,
  disregarding its shame,
  and has taken his seat at the right hand
  of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:2)

Hebrews 10

17. then he says, “Their sins and their lawless acts I will remember no longer.”
18. Now where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
19. Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰by the fresh and living way that he inaugurated for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, ²¹and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22. let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from a bad conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.
23. And let us hold unwaveringly to the hope that we confess, for the one who made the promise is trustworthy.