The Conscience, Part 1

Let's read together first of all in the Gospel of John chapter 8. The Gospel of John chapter 8. Now this is a fairly well-known story of the scribes and Pharisees bringing a woman into the presence of the Lord Jesus who has been taken in the act of adultery and they they want to trap the Lord in how he is going to handle this person and deal with her and so it says in verse 6 this they said that is the command of the law that such should be stoned tempting him that they might have to accuse him but Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them not so when they continued asking him he lifted up himself and said unto them he that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her and again he stooped down and wrote on the ground and they which heard it being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one beginning at the eldest even under the last and Jesus was left alone and the woman standing in the midst. Now I'm not going to particularly take up this incident and the truth that is important for us to learn from it but I basically want to speak to you this morning about the subject of conscience. I've been studying this subject quite a bit lately and a number of times as I have touched on it people have expressed that they've hardly ever heard teaching about the conscience and that's unfortunate because the conscience is vital to our spiritual well-being.

It is vital in our relationship with God and how we handle our conscience, how we respond to our conscience and the condition of our conscience within us determines basically our spirituality and so it is extremely important for us to have an appreciation and a sensitivity to its value for us. So I want to take up the subject and I'm planning to take it up in the messages that I will be giving this weekend so if you don't like conscience you'll know when to go and have a sleep. In this verse it says, they which heard it being convicted by their own conscience.

So this gives us a clear indication of what conscience does. It is a witness and a judge and I would call conscience my inner witness and judge. Let's go to a verse, Acts chapter 23 verse 1. Now the Apostle Paul has been arrested, he has been almost killed by the mob and now he's given an opportunity to try to speak before the Jewish council or Sanhedrin.

They think he's an apostate, a deceiver. Acts 23 and verse 1, and Paul earnestly beholding the council said, men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. And that got their attention.

In fact there was an order given to slap him across the face to shut him up. That it was a blasphemous thing to suggest that he of all people had lived with a good conscience before God. Let's go to Romans chapter 2. Romans chapter 2, this is looking forward into the day of judgment and speaking about the fact that God will judge according to the standard that we knew.

Those who were given the law will be judged by the law. Those who sinned without the law will perish without the law in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. But in between he gives an explanation of that difference.

He says in verse 14, for when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another. One more passage in 2nd Corinthians chapter 1. 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 verse 12. For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation or our way of life in the world and more abundantly to you word.

Now conscience is mentioned about 30 times in the New Testament. Interestingly it's not mentioned in the Old Testament and the passage that we read in John chapter 8 is the first reference, as far as I know, to the word conscience in our Bible. But the idea of it is certainly universal.

So I want to just give you a few questions. First of all to ask what is conscience? Is it truly universal? Is it infallible? Those are some initial questions to think about. But what is conscience? Well if you look at the word itself, conscience is con-science.

Science means knowledge. This comes from Latin. Con is with.

With knowledge or literally knowing with. It actually implies that two people know the same thing. That's why the idea of a witness is always there and the idea of judge is always there because it's not just that it records but it's like it is bearing witness and evaluating and judging whether good or bad.

Someone has called it God's window on the soul and there is this uncomfortable feeling that the other part of this knowledge or knowing is God himself. So conscience is actually a very important aspect of our self-awareness. You know we don't just have instinctive life where we just do things and exist and do things by instinct, although some evolutionists would try to assert that that's all we are, just programmed instinct and that's all there is.

No, we are self-aware. As we do things, as we make decisions, as we live our lives, we are aware of what we are doing and we cannot avoid making judgments about it. That is part of the capacity, that is part of the way God has designed us because it corresponds to what he is.

We were designed according to his likeness in his image and part of that image is God is a moral being and he is a God who has wisdom. He is a God who judges and we carry that capacity and we cannot escape from it. And conscience is what integrates my soul with God, who I am with what God is and it's that awareness of God being aware of me.

Now I, a long time ago, read an interesting little book. It's an old book called Conscience and its Work and I'm just going to give you part of a quotation of a definition that the author Thomas Baird gave to it. He says conscience is a compound faculty.

It implies a mutual knowledge between two persons regarding one thing. Knowledge held in conjunction with another and especially the knowledge of wrongdoing. I am conscious that I have sinned and another is conscious that I have sinned and that other is none other than God.

Now here's the part that if you want to just remember it, I know and God knows and I know that God knows and God knows that I know that he knows. And so when we violate our conscience, it says that knowledge generates unutterable mental anguish over sin committed. In other words, I would like to suggest that conscience is one of your most important protections against evil.

But if you violate it, it's going to do God's work in your soul to make you guilty and miserable. So we have a choice whether we want to live in inner tranquility and wholeness and happiness or whether we want to spend our life in inner tension and conflict and our conscience is very much involved in that. Now is conscience universal? Well, I have a list of over a hundred quotations of quotes about conscience from all over the world.

I'm not going to give them all to you but just know this, in every culture there is an awareness of conscience. It exists among all peoples. It is universal.

It is actually pre-programmed into our beings. Conscience is a soft pillow. That's a German proverb.

Conscience is the voice of the soul. That's a Polish proverb. And there's a Chinese proverb that says a guilty conscience feels continual fear and in contrast a clear conscience is the greatest armor.

And so universally there is this recognition of something within us that is constantly monitoring our moral being and evaluating and judging it. Now the other question I wanted to just raise with you before we get into a little bit of the development of conscience, is conscience infallible? Is it always accurate? And unfortunately the answer is no. It comes pre-programmed with a moral sensitivity to right and wrong, with an awareness of God according to, as it says, the work of the law written upon the heart.

That is universal. Even an atheist has, despite himself, a moral sense that he cannot escape from. But conscience in its evaluation depends upon knowledge and that knowledge can become distorted.

I think we all recognize that a misguided conscience can be a very dangerous thing. Paul himself, while maintaining that he had always lived before God with a good conscience, yet he also makes a confession and this is in Acts 26 when he says, I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And he goes on to speak about persecuting the Christians and actually having them put to death.

He thought he ought to. His conscience was propelling him to try to blot out what he thought was an apostasy against the knowledge of God. We only have to think today of the Muslim world and most of us can see it as plain as day that they've got an extremely misguided conscience because they have been programmed to believe that God, as they know him, has laid the obligation upon them to bring the whole world under submission to Allah, by death if necessary.

And so that framework has produced a fanaticism that we can recognize as wrong, as being improperly guided. So then how does conscience develop? Well let's take a look back into the book of Genesis and I want to take you right back to the Garden of Eden. What are the things that you find when you begin to search out and study certain subjects? Different things that you have been already thinking about often link together unexpectedly.

And I want to just draw your attention to the two significant trees in the Garden of Eden. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now it says in chapter 2, verse 8, the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

The tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And of course he made a commandment in verse 16, the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Now you know how the story plays out in chapter 3 where the evil one succeeds in drawing attention to the only thing forbidden to Adam and Eve in that beautiful paradise of God. You know they had no excuse for failure in the Garden of Eden. They were in absolutely perfect conditions and if you could just visualize in your mind the most beautiful tropical paradise that you can visualize with all kinds of fruit trees and anything just in its ripest, most tasty condition, that's what they were given.

The presence of God day by day. There was just one thing that they were told was not theirs to have. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And I'm going to suggest to you that while certainly I believe that these were two literal trees with literal fruit, yet the Bible makes it clear that it represents, it symbolizes something that is working its way right through the whole revelation of God until it finds its climax in the book of Revelation where finally in chapter 22 you have again paradise and you have a throne. You have the presence of God. God and the Lamb.

You have the water of life flowing out from the throne and you have the tree of life on both sides of the river and the healing, the life-giving properties of the tree of life available to all his wonderful creation. I'm going to suggest to you this morning that this has a meaning for us that before us continually there is a choice. Whether we are going to seek life at the tree of life that God provides or whether we are going to seek it at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now let me explain what I'm getting at. When it talks about the tree of life and I'm just going to take you through a few verses in the Bible. At the end of this chapter, end of chapter 3, it says this after they had sinned, verse 22, and the Lord God said behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. And there was no way back. A flaming sword was there to guard the way to the tree of life.

I hope everyone that's a Christian here this morning appreciates the reality that the way to the tree of life has been opened for us and that has come to us by another tree, the cross of Calvary. It took the death of the Lord Jesus, that sword, that flaming sword of justice, of holiness, had to find its sheath in the Lord Jesus Christ himself before we could find the way opened to once again experience the blessing of eternal life. John chapter 17 and verse 3, the Lord Jesus says this is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

Even today, even though we don't possess immortality presently, physically, we have eternal life and that eternal life is essentially in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, and you go through the description of the fruit of the Spirit, that is eternal life. That is the quality of life that is true satisfaction, true blessedness, and it's always associated with righteousness and goodness.

Ephesians 5 and 9 says the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Hebrews 12 speaks about us being partakers of his holiness, the peaceable fruit of righteousness. James 3, 17 and 18 again talks about the wisdom that is from above and says that it is first of all 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.

What I'm drawing together is this idea of fruit, fruit that provides life, that provides satisfaction, that provides happiness, joy, blessing, and we have been already hearing this morning, and I'm sure you believe this theoretically at least, that Christ is the true source of life. But what is the problem? The problem is this, we keep going to the wrong tree. We keep going to the bait that is put in front of us by the evil one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, expecting to discover life.

Now how does it work? Well if you go through and see how the serpent beguiled Eve, he offered her something that she didn't yet have. You will be, as gods, knowing good and evil, the lure of the unknown, and I would say every generation, every child growing up is experiencing this introduction, whether it's at school, there's every range of Avenue today, not just one lonely tree where you can get into trouble. You can get into trouble anywhere and everywhere today, but universally the bait is, how will you ever know unless you try it? How many people have been introduced to drugs, introduced to alcohol, to all kinds of habits that eventually enslave them and often destroy them, and it was just a bait, one initial bait to be like everybody else, to be what they are, to be drawn into, you know, a social club where you can fit, and so this is the lure, the bait, the promise, and he uses what God has created.

You see, God has given beauty in our world, and most of us who are men happily acknowledge that God has made women beautiful, and yet it is the way in which we have our greatest temptations, because Satan takes what God has made, what God has designed for our happiness, for our blessing, for our well-being, and he presents it to us in a way that is not right for us to have. That's why in the entertainment world, in our media, you will have every kind of sexual immorality glorified except the sexual intimacy of marriage. You will have everything but the way God has designed it for it to be experienced, and so there is today a tree of life where there is life that is wholesome, life that is good, that is honorable, that is satisfying, that will bless you in every way, and God is still holding it out to you, and that is essentially in his own Son, but also in many other ways in life, but Satan is continually taking what is beautiful, what is attractive, and he does it on every level, aesthetically, sensually, intellectually, and lures you to participate in what will corrupt you, what will destroy you.

So at that tree there was the lure, the attractiveness, but then there was the reality. What did it actually produce? Well, it produced the consciousness of nakedness and a self-awareness that was negative, and this actually makes us all the more vulnerable in our world because we all feel negative about ourselves, and if somebody flatters us, they can gain access to us and corrupt us very easily by offering to us acceptance, love, closeness, honor, if it's a sin. And so the awareness that it actually produces is something that is negative, lacking, shameful, and guilt.

The very first thing they did was try to cover themselves, and then when they heard the voice of the Lord, what did they do? Well, they went further into the darkness, into the shade, into the shadows, away from the presence of God because shame and guilt were now in their conscience. I'm going to suggest to you that it is when sin took place that conscience was activated in all its multiplied effects. So sin always brings to us a sense of shame, a sense of alienation, a sense of guilt, and it also brings enslavement to the authority of evil.

Now, the sobering thing about it is this. God did not permit them to have both trees, and we have to recognize this. If you push past the barrier of conscience and follow sin, you will lose your ability to experience life as God wants you to have it, as he intended to bless you with.

So that's how significant, how important the issue really is. And so I'm going to just suggest, I don't have time to finish this this morning, but as each of us grow from infancy to adulthood, we actually go through the progression of the history of man. From a state of innocence, and if you want to think about that, all you have to think about, I mean, I have four grandchildren now, and sometimes you walk in and here's this little toddler coming out, and just, you know, happy and totally unconscious of the fact that he or she is stark naked.

Just have absolutely no shame, no self-consciousness whatsoever, but it's not very long before that changes. And as we begin to develop, we become aware of good and of evil in people around us and within ourselves. And what is so important is how we respond to that knowledge.

Rules in the family lay out right and wrong. If we obey, we live in the good of the blessing of being approved, of enjoying the blessing of communion and fellowship and so on within the family and the consciousness of God. And so there are really three choices that we have when we experience sin and what we will do about it.

If we respond properly and confess the truth, I've done wrong. And if we are humble before God, before the other person, if we have wronged another person, and if we seek God's grace to change, we can be recovered and we can live in his grace and favor. That is the best choice.

That is the choice that blesses us. But there's a second choice, and sadly some people make this choice as they begin to experience more and more evil in their life. Some people come to the decision, to the idea, well this is all I really am.

They may struggle with some sin, they struggle with it, they feel bad about it, but then they go back to it again and again and again. And finally they give up and say I'm just an evil person. And they identify with that evil and accept it as being who they are and they just make a choice to live that way and live as a slave to sin.

That is what Satan wants. He wants, and this is really the genius of sin, to take over our being so that we don't distinguish between who we really are and the sin that exists within us. That's taken up in Romans chapter 7 in relation to the Christian, but it is true in every human being.

And this is where some of the ideas, the philosophies that we see and hear today so much can be very dangerous, and that is just be yourself. Just be yourself. Just be what you want to be.

Well unless you distinguish between what is your true self as created by God and that sin that has come in to supersede and take you over, you could make some tragic choices in life. The third choice is to reject the accusation. Deny the conviction of truth.

Deny the conviction of conscience. Reject the light and become a dishonest and a deceitful person. To live with a basic dishonesty within yourself where you live the life of a hypocrite.

So may God grant to us to recognize that conscience will be the dividing line between living an honest life and a shameful life. A good life, a blessed life, and a life that is destructive and deceitful.