Imago Dei Series: Conscience - Moral Responsibility

Romans chapter two.

Romans chapter two.

We'll pick up at verse number twelve.

All who sin without the law will also perish without the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

So, when Gentiles who do not by nature have the law do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, their consciences confirm this.

Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.

Time for me to date myself.

I've seen the original Pinocchio.

I'm not talking about the remakes, okay?

I'm talking about the 1940 Disney Pinocchio.

There's a song from that movie called Give a Little Whistle.

It includes these lines.

And if you start to slide, give a little whistle.

Any of you remember that song?

I got a few nods.

I've got a lot of, I don't know what.

Well, just listen.

If you don't know the movie, don't know the song.

Give a little whistle, give a little whistle, and always let your conscience be your guide.

Some of you might have had parents that you're gonna go out with friends.

Now listen to your conscience.

Is that good advice?

I heard a no immediately down here.

We know listen to your heart.

That's that's not the best advice.

The Bible says our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked.

That's actually probably really Disney's number one message over the years, whether it's last year or decades ago, listen to your heart.

So that's not good.

Let your conscience be your guide.

I think for most of you, it sounds better than listen to your heart, but there's still some uncertainty about that.

We're doing a series made on the on humans who are made in the image of God.

Our consciences that God has given us are features of that glorious humanity and part of what it means to be made in the image of God.

The Bible never talks about animals having a conscience.

Sometimes he looks at you like I did a bad thing, didn't I?

You know, whether he's been trained to want that treat and respond the right way, or whether I don't know, but I know in scripture the language of conscience is always associated with human beings, not with animals.

So we're going to consider this theme of the conscience tonight as an aspect of what it means to be gloriously made in God's image.

I've got five S's for us that helps you track with where we're going.

Number one, the conscience stated, number two, the conscience seared, number three, the conscience saved, number four, the conscience strengthened, and five, the conscience shared.

So, first, the conscience stated, what is it?

Our consciences are an innate, God-given capacity that makes moral judgments.

We're here in Romans.

Look again at Romans 215.

They show the work of the law written on their hearts, their consciences confirm this.

Something inside of them, a kind of God-given intuition, says yes or says no.

The verse goes on: competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them.

So the conscience is not independent of our minds, our reason, our wills, our actions, but it's when we make moral judgments, and often it's making moral judgments about our own behavior.

Light goes off, you know, you're doing the wrong thing, or that's a good thing.

You should do it.

Acts 24, 16.

I always strive to have a clear conscience toward God and men.

What's Paul saying there?

The way I act, I don't want this thing God has given me to say, God deserves different than that, or you shouldn't have said that to that person.

I want to have a clear conscience, Paul says.

2 Corinthians 1, 12.

Indeed, this is our boast.

The testimony of our conscience, so consciences bear witness.

They get up on the stand and they say, He's right or he's wrong.

The testimony of our conscience is that we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially towards you with godly sincerity, purity, not by human wisdom, but from God's grace.

Animals don't make moral judgments in the same way that humans do.

Does the mother lion gather her cubs around and say, now, you see the way that other family of lions just ate that hyena?

Don't you do that.

That is wrong.

Humans are operated instinctually, but not with the same moral framework.

They may have certain loyalties or those kinds of things, but that moral capacity to say something's right or wrong.

It can be developed, but it's there from the very beginning.

How many of you have had children, and sometimes, even when you didn't tell them something was wrong, they give you that look like I did this thing and I shouldn't have.

Even though you didn't tell them.

They just they they knew mom probably wouldn't like that and I shouldn't have done it.

Conscience stated.

Our innate, God-given capacity that makes moral judgments.

Number two, the conscience seared.

This is where we get into the reality that our conscience is not perfectly reliable.

It's a gift from God, but we can't bank on it 100% of the time because, like other instruments, it can go a little haywire if we don't treat it properly.

And humans are universally in the habit of not treating it properly.

Turn back to Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

The word conscience isn't used right in that chapter, but it gives us an example of the type of behavior that sears our conscience.

Romans 1, verse 18 God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.

Romans 1:18

There's a witness of who God is, and they push it down.

It's there in nature, but they push it aside.

On an evangelistic note, you can appeal to this when you're talking to people.

They may have sincere or less sincere questions about the existence of God and things like that, but they've got a conscience that testifies to God's existence.

Look at the world around you.

You really think this is all by chance?

They've got a witness that's there.

Now they may suppress it and suppress it, but it's there.

Listen to 1 Timothy 4, 1 and 2.

The Spirit explicitly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared.

1 Timothy 1, 19 and 20.

Having faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected.

And he names two men.

So our conscience is a good gift from God, but you might have a good conscience or a bad conscience, and you can sear your conscience.

We're not talking about a beautiful piece of meat that has a nice sear on it.

Talking about when you take a hammer and bang your finger, it's gonna hurt at first.

You keep banging it long enough and hard enough, eventually you're gonna lose the feeling in that finger.

You put a hot iron on your finger, it's gonna really hurt.

But eventually, when the nerves are destroyed enough, you're not gonna feel that hot iron.

It's still just as hot, it's still just as disruptive for you, but you're seared.

People can do that, and people regularly do that when it comes to their own conscience.

Third, so we've got the conscience stated, conscience seared, the conscience saved.

All right, let's go ahead and turn over to Hebrews 9.

You might not have thought about the conscience in quite this way, but there's scriptural language here we want to look at.

Hebrews 9, verse 9.

Hebrews 9:9

This is a symbol for the present time during which gifts and sacrifices are offered.

This is talking about the old covenant law that cannot perfect the worshipper's conscience.

There are physical regulations and only deal with food, drink, and various washings imposed to the time of the new order.

So even in the old covenant, the people that were obeying God were bringing the sacrifices, there's something that says, this isn't enough.

A lamb can't really make up for your personal rebellion against the holy God, which fits with we're moral creatures who have a special relationship made in the image of God that lambs who are not made in the image of God don't have.

So lamb's blood can't ultimately make up for our behavior.

It temporarily covered over.

Importantly, it pointed forward to Christ, the Lamb to come.

But there's a testimony of there, something more needs to happen.

If you look down verse 22, brothers and sisters, we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus.

He has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain, that is through his flesh.

And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed in pure water.

The conscience is not itself demonic, it's a gift from God.

But our consciences can be seared, and they can be twisted, telling us you need to do more to please God.

God's not happy with you.

You've got to work and work.

You're gonna be judged by God.

That's that's a difficult burden to live under.

The gospel message is Christ is the great high priest and he's accomplished it.

And for those that embrace and trust Jesus Christ, they don't have to listen to that accusing conscience.

Satan himself is called the accuser of the brethren.

He lobbs his grenades, and the apostle John says, When our own hearts condemn us, our own hearts can add on to Satan's lobbies.

People around us, some of you grew up in homes, sadly, where with your parents it was like you never could do enough.

It was always criticism, always the next thing.

And laboring under that is a burden of conscience that you can be free from.

Salvation brings a purified conscience.

I am right before God.

Christ has done enough for me.

I'm free and justified.

You may not all have that freedom of conscience.

I want you to be encouraged.

That freedom of conscience is not the infallible sign that you know the Lord.

You may really know the Lord and be saved and still be wrestling with, am I justified?

But what I can say is God wants us to pray and strive towards that freedom of conscience, to be able to say, Yes, I know I'm justified.

I know that God is not against me, he's for me because of Jesus Christ.

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 sins.

My conscience needs no other sacrifice beside.

And this point right here, the conscience saved, this is that central hinge that we've seen throughout this series on the image of God.

The image of God is there in creation.

It's restored wonderfully and perfectly in Christ Himself.

And he brings with him in his graces many things in our lives that help to reset and renew and point in the direction and goal and destiny of what that image of God was intended to do all along.

And conscience is one of those things that, even though seared, is reset in Jesus Christ.

Number four, the conscience strengthened.

Let's go over to First Corinthians eight.

First Corinthians chapter eight.

When you're born from above, your conscience is cleansed, but it's not perfected.

Yes, your conscience still functions to make moral judgments about your behavior.

So if you're saved, you shouldn't have to fear God's condemnation.

But if you do something and you get upset and you just let somebody have it, hopefully your conscience isn't saying, don't worry about it.

Hopefully your conscience is saying, you know what?

You shouldn't have said that.

Why don't you go apologize to that person?

But even though we're saved and our conscience has been reset and we're free, justified in Christ, our consciences are not perfect this side of glory.

There's all the influences of our past, there's the influences of our people in our lives right now, there's our own thoughts.

And different Christians will sometimes have different testimonies in their conscience about certain kinds of behavior.

Now, hopefully, not issues that are clearly revealed in God's word.

But you've heard sometimes the phrase a matter of conscience.

What they mean by that is not, well, I think it's okay to just have an affair.

No, that's that's in God's word.

But there's other issues that aren't clearly spelled out in God's word.

And Scripture itself even has a category for issues that are not necessarily right and wrong in and of themselves from God's word.

But sometimes that little voice, that little yellow light will say, I don't think you should do that.

Or, yeah, you need to do that.

1 Corinthians 8, here's an example.

Verse number one.

Now about food sacrificed to idols.

Paul is writing to these Corinthians, he's responding to some of their questions.

Apparently, they were asking him about food sacrificed to idols.

In Paul's day and age, sometimes food might be offered to a pagan false god and then brought out and served in the marketplace.

You know, the butcher's like, bless my work, bless this meal, bless this food, O Zeus, and he goes out and sells it in the marketplace.

Like, what should we do about that?

Is it okay to get that food and eat it?

Paul continues.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know it as he ought to know.

But if anyone loves God, he is known by him.

About food sacrificed to idols, then we know that an idol is nothing in the world, but there is no God but one.

For even there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there's one God, the Father.

All things are from him, and we exist for him.

And there is one Lord Jesus Christ.

All things are through him, and we exist through him.

However, not everyone has this knowledge.

Some have been so used to idolatry up until now that when they eat food sacrificed to an idol, their conscience, being weak, is defiled.

So this is talking about believers.

He's writing to believers.

And he says you could have a weak conscience, or you could even defile your conscience when you run over it.

So the first principle about strengthening our conscience is be very careful not to run through your conscience.

That's not the way to strengthen it.

That that could be a way to sear it if you're not careful.

So when your conscience is giving you the yellow light, don't just run through it.

Even if you see somebody else, in this case, eating food in the marketplace that may have been sacrificed to an idol before they bought it.

Strengthening our conscience.

Recognize that with some of these disputable matters or issues of conscience, your participating in them is not going to destroy or or seal your relationship with God.

Listen to what Paul says in verse 8.

Food will not bring us close to God.

So he's saying, okay, first of all, relax a moment.

If you do or don't eat the meat, that's not going to ultimately be the measurement of your relationship to Christ.

We are not worse off if we don't eat, and we are not better if we do eat.

So we don't run through our conscience, but we do instruct our conscience.

We instruct it with God's word.

I know the conscience is not a person, it's a capacity we have, but we're we're patient with our conscience.

We continue to instruct it and say, well, what does God's word say about whatever this issue is?

Let me let me think along those lines.

Romans 14, 17.

The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking.

He brings up the same issue in Romans 14, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Paul says that some people have a weaker conscience.

That sounds like, boy, I really don't want a weak conscience.

Context here, the weak consciences are those that are extra sensitive to associations that might be sinful, in this case, the food offered to idols.

But he says weak.

He doesn't say it's immoral.

He doesn't say it's horribly unpleasing to God.

He just says the conscience is weak.

And if you've got a weak conscience, whatever's not from faith is sin.

So if you avoid the meat, if you avoid the drink, Romans 14, you're not sinning against God.

How can we strengthen our conscience?

Well, we have to test it and calibrate it with God's word.

There's an example of this in Acts chapter 10, where Peter has this vision of the unclean animals, and the voice says, Peter, rise, kill and eat.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

He says, No, Lord, I it's unclean.

His conscience was saying, I can't do that, I know it's wrong.

And the Lord said, No, God has called it clean.

So we have to be willing to test and calibrate our consciences according to Scripture.

Don't look for unnecessary ways to trigger your conscience or to sear your conscience.

And this is where it's so challenging a message like this, because some of us tend to have overly sensitive consciences.

And some of us might have consciences that are a little bit dull when they should be sharper.

And some of us, in certain issues, have a very sensitive conscience.

And in other issues, I can do this to the glory of God.

So even the weak and the strong can vary from issue to issue.

Let me give you a couple examples.

Dulling your conscience.

Here's a potential example.

Most of you, your grandparents, if you're under 20, let's say your great-grandparents, if you took them with you to a random movie in the movie theater in a time machine, and sat them down, started watching, say, what are we doing watching pornography?

And you say, Well, what do you mean?

This is just this is just a movie.

This is not the pornography place.

They'd be like, Yes, it is.

What's happened?

Over time, standards of movie acceptability has continued to decrease and decrease and decrease.

So that possibly if they consider you've you've watched it so much, you might have become desensitized to something that maybe is harming you or tempting you to sin.

Now let's take the other side of that.

If you remember from just a month or so ago, Doug gave the example in one of his sermons that he and Royal had to really work through in their earlier days as Christians in an environment where many things were verboten, to use our German phrase.

Absolutely not.

One of those was going to the movie theater at all.

So it took them time and looking at scripture and praying before they stepped out and went to the movie theater for the very first time to watch the Lion King.

Do you remember that?

You guys remember that?

Like a month ago?

Most of you are like, well, that's that's silly.

No, their conscience had been told and trained by people around them, it's always wrong in every case to go to the movie theater and they had to say, well, wait a minute, is that what scripture actually says or not?

So you could have an overly sensitive conscience or a conscience that's dull.

And we want to be aware of both of those challenges, as we do desire to have consciences that are informed by God.

And yet, the information is not the most important thing.

Paul gives him the information.

There's really no false God.

Whatever the butcher did in the back, there was no nothing hokey-pokey's going on.

If it's a good piece of meat, you can eat it.

So he gives him the knowledge, but he says, whatever's faith is not, whatever's not from faith is sin.

So here's the knowledge, but more important than the knowledge is love.

And that brings us to the last point.

The conscience shared.

So far, I've been talking about our individual consciences, and that's where we really need to start.

Where's my heart before the Lord?

Have I been saved and cleansed?

Is my conscience bearing witness that I belong to God?

In the everyday decisions of my life, am I sensitive to my own conscience?

Am I seeking to train it and build it up with Scripture prayerfully?

When the scriptures speak of the conscience, though, here in 1 Corinthians 8, Romans 14, especially, it's in the context of how do you live with your conscience convictions alongside of other Christians who might have some different convictions.

There may be some of you here that just would never go to a movie theater.

It's fine, no problem.

You know, you're not going to be closer to God if you do or you don't.

Most of you would probably say, well, the Lion King is fine.

I mean, I don't want to sit through a movie where there's just scene after scene of graphic sexuality.

But there's a lot of middle space in there, right?

There's a lot of middle space of language that's not honoring to God.

But I'm am I supporting that by going?

Am I not going?

You're going to have different consciences about an issue like that.

Let me give you another example.

Harry Potter.

Christians, don't go online and Google this.

Please don't.

You just, it's not going to be edifying.

But you're going to have Christians very passionate that all Christians should avoid the witchcraft of Harry Potter.

And you're going to have other Christians saying, this is a fantasy, and people are using their creativity to give us a good moral story that actually points us to, spoiler alert, sacrificial death for others.

That's great.

You should all do it.

But those are pretty different perspectives, right?

The Bible says for some things like that, let each person be fully persuaded in their own mind.

And importantly, be very loving in how you approach other Christians.

You don't need to convince that mom that doesn't want her kids to check out Harry Potter from the public library.

You should let them do it.

And you don't have to.

Yes, we have to judge in certain clear matters of Scripture.

But in some of those cases where Scripture's not entirely clear on every single application of what would it look like to honor God in this situation or that situation, if they've got the Holy Spirit and they've got a conscience they're working on renewing in Christ, say, you know, I wouldn't do that, but I love you and I care about you.

You can talk about your differences in a way that doesn't treat another Christian like your conscience is the Pope, and their conscience should be the slave of your conscience.

Now, it's not always easy.

I know that.

And that's the gift of the conscience is you can feel so strongly about things.

You really can.

But again, let's look at 1 Corinthians 8.

Actually, verse 1 again first.

We know that we all have knowledge.

Paul's talking about the people in Corinth that realize an idol's a piece of wood.

Yeah, we have knowledge, but he says knowledge puffs up and love builds up.

Your goal is not to cram the knowledge of Christian freedom down someone's throat.

Your knowledge is how can I build them up in the Lord and care about them and love them?

Verse number nine Be careful that this right of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak.

For if someone sees you, the one who has knowledge, dine in an idol's temple, won't his weak conscience be encouraged to eat food offered to idols?

So the weak person, the brother or sister for whom Christ died, is ruined by your knowledge.

Now, when you sin like this against brothers and sisters and wound their weak conscience, you are sinning against Christ.

Therefore, if food causes my brother or sister to fall, I will never again eat meat so that I won't cause my brother or sister to fall.

Paul isn't saying here that whoever has the most sensitive conscience in the whole church, everyone has to live their private lives entirely how that particular person wants you to live.

But he is saying, don't do things that are going to encourage other people to run through their conscience.

You go out of your way to love others.

And if that means avoiding certain things when you're around them, think about how you can love them in that way.

Because Christ died for you.

It's about him and his work, not about me and my rights.

And we can think about that even collectively as a church.

Let's be generous towards other churches that might not have every single practice identical to ours.

There are some churches that regularly have one hour plus sermons.

It's not our business to look at them and say, Oh, you think you're all high and mighty?

Yeah, probably no one getting saved in that church.

People can't pay attention for an hour.

Why don't you think about caring for the people?

No, they're trying to love the Lord and honor Him with those sermons.

Praise God for that.

There's some people in some churches that have 25-minute sermons, 30-minute sermons.

Our evening sermons are usually closer to 30, morning, usually a little longer.

We don't need to presume, oh, we probably don't care about God's word, 30-minute sermons.

A 40-minute sermon would be probably a lot more honoring to God.

No.

Let's be generous and love and build up those that are around us that God's called us to.

I want to give you, uh, as we close, I've got a handout for you to take home and look at.

I'll be honest, it the print job was terrible.

I copied it out of a book.

I don't think I broke any copyright laws.

Don't sell it on eBay or anything like that.

I was reviewing again this afternoon.

There's a book that's really helpful, a little book called Conscience by a guy named Andy Nassali and a guy named J.D.

Crowley.

And this is a chart from the book.

And as I was looking at it again this afternoon, I said, man, this chart is, it would be so helpful for people to put this in their hands.

So I'm gonna just pass this out.

Maybe I'll just I'll start it on both sides.

Oh, you want to you want to walk it down that side?

Maybe uh, Walter, you want to just kind of walk it and pass it around this side.

Uh I think I have 30 or 40 copies.

If you're a couple, maybe just take one per couple.

And I think it just helps us give a little framework and scripture for the different stages and levels of our conscience.

So let me can I grab one, Mike?

Just before I pray here.

And again, we're not gonna go through the whole thing right now.

You open uh have questions about it.

But but you can see that that on one side there could be even a legalistic, you must do this to be saved.

If your conscience is telling you that, that's that's far on the side of heresy.

Or if your conscience is saying, yeah, do whatever you want.

Well, that's that's that's a strong conscience, but it's it's too strong.

The middle category is what we're aiming for, where we're not judging others in our shared consciences, but some of us might have stronger or weaker consciences in certain issues.

That's okay.

And we want to aim towards a goal of flexibility.

Paul says, I have become all things to all people.

Not sinful, but when I'm with the Jews, I want to try to live among them so that I can have an avenue for the gospel.

He's flexible because he's looking to love and serve, not looking to shout his own rights and freedoms everywhere.

So take a look at it, maybe as you go.

Let's pray and ask God to help calibrate our consciences through his word, through his spirit.

Lord, we need you, we thank you for the gift of conscience.

We want to be renewed in the image of our Creator.

We want to have our consciences restored, working, not dulled or deluded by our sinfulness, and not sensitive in a way that runs beyond your word, as though we could somehow be holier than what your word reveals to us.

Give us, Lord, as we think about our own consciences, give us a great generosity, a faith and love which respects others amidst conversations, sometimes disagreements about the best course of action or behavior, that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

We don't want to add burdens to others that they weren't meant to bear.

We want to worship together in the freedom of our conscience, and we acknowledge that we need the Holy Spirit.

Would He be particularly at work to strengthen and cleanse us, to sensitize us, that we could say we live with a clear conscience, like Paul, before God and others.

In Christ's name, amen.