The Church promotes the role of conscience in establishing right and wrong actions, and applying and understanding natural law. Conscience can be described as the voice of God within each individual.
Conscience has to be listened to and used alongside reason to make decisions. These three works of the Spirit coexist together and complement one another. They are mutually dependent on one another in producing the greatest of Christian virtues. Can you imagine a pure heart without a good conscience? Can you imagine a good conscience without a pure heart? Can you imagine a sincere faith deprived of a good conscience and a pure heart? They belong to one another.
And as one commentator put it, they co-labor as an organic cooperation to produce Christian love, the highest ambition God holds for the believer. They should also be priorities for the Christian. Now look with me at verses 18 to By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.
He charges Timothy to confidently address this crisis of false teaching, using the metaphor, the word picture, of warfare in verse 18, and in verse 19 once more he invokes the importance of a good conscience and faith as necessary for Timothy in this battle. But note one more thing found in verses 6 and 7 and 19 and Paul says that there are certain persons, false teachers in verses 6 and 7, and specific individuals in verses 19 and 20, who have set aside a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith resulting in their doom.
What a troubling consideration and a tragic possibility that there are persons who profess Christ who by lasting neglect or rejection of a good conscience risk apostasy. I think that sets the table well for the questions I hope to answer this morning.
For the record, there are 30 occurrences of the Greek word for conscience in the New Testament, and the conscience occurs in concept in both Old and New Testament many times. You might want to read that. But there are a number of helpful definitions that clarify the meaning of conscience. Here are a few. Thomas Aquinas said that the conscience is the inner voice we have that either accuses us or excuses us for our actions. John Frame, a contemporary Reformed philosopher and theologian, defines conscience as the God-given ability to discern good and evil.
Franz Delitzsch says that the conscience is the knowledge of divine law that every man bears in his heart. I want to share them with you. For the Christian, the conscience is intended for our good and our ultimate freedom as sinners living in a fallen world. They say that conscience is a human capacity, to be human is to have a conscience.
Conscience is inherent in personhood. We are moral beings who make moral decisions. So conscience is a spotlight of your moral judgment shining back on yourself, your thoughts, and your actions.
Further, they say that conscience feels like an independent judge, pronouncing verdicts. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.
So that they are without excuse. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.
The conscience does not nuance or do gray scales well, they say. They say that your conscience is for you and you only. You cannot force another to adopt your conscience stand, but you should always remember, brothers and sisters, that God alone is the Lord of your conscience. It cannot be bound by anyone, including your pastors, your parents, fellow believers, except through the clear teaching of Scripture.
We do desperately need the Gospel at all times. How does the conscience work? For a sinful person, living in a fallen world, the conscience is a great gift. The conscience presumes our world is immoral, and like the Gospel, the conscience is perfectly designed for life as we experience it, as long as we inform it and obey it.
A biblically informed conscience is to our soul what pain is to the body. Physical pain serves as a warning to protect us from danger and harm physically. The pain of putting your hand on a hot stove will quickly convince you not to do it a second time. And the conscience operates in a similar way. A biblically informed conscience, Naselli and Crowley say, functions in four ways: As a guide, as a monitor, as a witness, and as a judge. It has both preventative and remedial purposes for us.
Because our conscience is that inner sanctuary in which we listen to the voice of God, we must remember to distinguish between our subjective self and what is objectively true outside ourselves. We can be subjectively in error about something that is objectively true.
If there is an incorrect conscience, that means that the conscience is erroneous in its view of truth. The person thinks it is a Holy Day certain subjectively but incorrect objectively and acts on it. This person has a certain but incorrect conscience. But because the conscience acted against what it perceived to be objectively the good, the conscience chooses to sin. First, always follow a certain conscience. Second, an incorrect conscience must be changed if possible.
Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God; just as I also please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit but the profit of the many, so that they may be saved. The context again involves idol worship and meals associated with idol worship. This time Paul emphasized the Christian's conscience must be sensitive to an idol worshipper's conscience. The Christian Paul affirmed his credibility in a congregation where many attacked his credibility.
He did so by affirming the sensitivity of his conscience. He was sincere and genuine as a person and as a teacher.
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