What Motivates us to Live as we Should? (Conscience pt.2)

Goal

• To summarize what we learned last week about the conscience, and answer questions that came up, and address the important question of how we can be motivated to change.

What Motivates us to Live as we Should? (Conscience pt.2)

1. Understand: How the Bible Describes the Conscience
2. Motivation: Good and Bad
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

• e.g. steal, lie, kill, unfaithful to spouse etc

The Judge is badly informed about the law

“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)

Problems with the Judge

• Weak: Allows other people’s conscience to override
  Can be over-cautious, going beyond the law
    E.g. not eating food offered to idols
• Wounded: You ignored it, so it had given up speaking
  In the end, you can do it without feeling guilty
  Can be the fault of another Christian who damages our conscience

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,

False Guilt

• Satan can pretend to be our conscience and make us blame ourselves
• Dad is not a Christian
  —what kind of a witness you are!
  • If he dies unsaved it’s your fault
• I’m not yet married
  —Nobody wants you because you are such a jerk
• She is so angry right now
  —it must be something I said, why do I always mess up? Such a loser!

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 and beat people down—demonic takeover

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

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”

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!

Acts 3 Peter after Pentecost

23. …You crucified Jesus and had him killed by the hands of lawless men.
32. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.
37. Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
38. And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins,

2 Corinthians 7

10. “For godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret,
    whereas worldly sorry produces death.”

• godly sorrow: I have offended God
• worldly sorry: I wish I hadn’t done that because I might get caught

Motivation in Hebrews

Hebrews 3

1. Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, partners in a heavenly calling, Fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we follow,
2. who is faithful…

Hebrews 12

1. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us,
2. keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…

Hebrews 12 - when we mess up:

6. For the Lord trains the one he loves and reprimands every son and daughter he accepts.”
7. Endure your suffering as training; God is treating you as sons and daughters…

• Motivation for running the race is our relationship with our loving Father and with Jesus
• not getting rid of the pain of conscience
• But it is vital that we feel a full assurance that our sin is completely cleansed for us to have confidence and joy in that relationship.

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

Scene 1: Hebrews 9

1. Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness.
2. For a tent was prepared, the first section, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence. It is called the Holy Place.
3. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place,
4. having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant.
5. Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
6. These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties,
7. but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people.

Scene 2: Hebrews 9

11. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation)
12. he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
13. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh,
14. 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.

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.