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The Bible and Your Conscience, Part 4
How to Cultivate a Clear Conscience
Bruce A. Hess
Now, if you would, you can take out the Word of God. We’re going to be looking at a number of things in the Word of God today. We are going to be concluding our four-part series that we have been going through entitled, “The Bible and Your Conscience.” I hope that this journey has been informative, and that it has also been challenging for you. I hope that all of us have been spiritually refreshed by this series.
It is interesting…I met some people who are relatively new to Wildwood, or visiting for the first time, and they were wondering about, they asked me about the rest of the series. So, if you’ve missed this series, you can go to the Wildwood YouTube page and you can watch the videos of the previous messages. Or you can go to our Wildwood website, wildwoodchurch.org, and you can listen to the message. Eventually we will have these up on my website at brucehess.com and you can either listen there, download the mp3, or read the transcription of it.
I do want to go through a mini review of what we’ve covered in the first three weeks. So, the first thing we did is, we had a message that we entitled, “What is the Conscience?” and we answered the question of what a conscience is. We emphasized that every person has a conscience, and it is our internal sense of right and wrong. We pointed out that if we violate our conscience, it will condemn us; we will experience shame and regret and anxiety. If we follow our conscience, it commends us; and we experience joy, peace, and affirmation.
So, the first message is, “What is the Conscience?” In message number two we looked at “Some Anatomy of our Conscience.” We looked at multiple items, but I want to remind you of two of the things we looked at. One was that the Holy Spirit is Not our Conscience. He does work in conjunction with our conscience—in tandem with our conscience—but He is not our conscience.
The second thing we looked at, among others, is that Our Conscience Needs to be Calibrated to God’s Standards. It needs to be educated with God’s standards. In some senses our conscience needs to be retrained.
Then, last week in the third message in the series, we entitled it, “Your Conscience and Other Believers.” A couple of things that we said in that regard is that No Two Believers have Consciences that are Exactly the Same. We’re all different in some respect. We all have different stages of calibration. But there is an issue that often we face as followers of Jesus and that is, there are choices and practices in life that we might have to get involved with, or not get involved with, that are not directly addressed by Scripture. What happens is we have different convictions on those things. What we need to do is, not to fall into judgmentalism: “I’m right, you’re wrong.” Or, even to allow ourselves to get into conflict and division over those kinds of things.
So, we talked about Your Conscience and Other Believers. We then shared five principles of guidance when we have different convictions inside of the body of Christ. We said, first of all, that we need to Develop our Own Convictions. We need to pray through these issues, we need to let the Holy Spirit lead us, we need to reason with Biblical principles. We secondly said that we Don’t Judge Other Believers who come to a Different Conviction, a different conclusion.
Number three, we stressed that we need to Be Alert to Another’s Potential Vulnerability. Just because I feel a freedom before the Lord to do something, we might need to be aware that someone else, because of their background and other issues, maybe doesn’t. And we need to be very alert to their potential vulnerability. We don’t want them to take a spiritual pratfall because of something that I am doing.
Fourthly, we said that we need to Operate out of Love; we need to Assume the Best in Others; we need to Aim to Build up One Another. Fifth, we said, as we work through these different convictions, we need to Seek to Honor God.
But here is the interesting thing, we need to remember a conscience is standard equipment. Ultimately, our conscience is God’s gift to us. I think it is noteworthy to think about the culture in which we live, the secular culture in which we live. The secular culture is often promoting the idea that what we need to do is we need to switch off our conscience. We need to ignore our conscience, because guilt is always bad. It’s an irritating nuisance. So often what the culture is promoting is to jettison the idea of right and wrong. That way we can all feel better.
The conscience is God’s gift to us and what is interesting is that the conscience is very fascinating. Commentator, Richard Sibbes said that the conscience can play all the roles that we might see in a court room drama. Here is part of what he says: the conscience can be a register that takes careful note of what we have done and what we have said. It can be an accuser, making a complaint when we are in the wrong. It can be a defender: it can side with us when we are innocent. It can be a witness, a testimony for us or a testimony against us. And, it can also fill the role of a judge that might ultimately censure us or exonerate us.
So, when we are talking about the conscience, it’s just a fascinating, amazing thing that God has given to us. But you know what Satan’s strategy is for you and for me, when it comes to conscience? Here is Satan’s strategy: Satan’s strategy is to keep you and me from the blessing of living with a clear conscience! That is what he wants to do. He wants to keep us from the blessing of living with a clear conscience.
There is a very old saying that goes like this, “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.” That’s a rather picturesque statement: No pillow as soft as a clear conscience. No wonder Paul says, in a verse that we’ve looked at, in Acts 24:16, where he says, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” Or, as the New American Standard puts it, “I always do my best to maintain a clear conscience.” Or, as the Phillips says, “I always do my utmost to have a clear conscience, or to maintain a clear conscience before God and man.”
Now, the title I’ve given to today’s message is this: we’ve looked at What is the Conscience, Some Anatomy, Your Conscience and Other Believers, today we want to look at, “How to Cultivate a Clear Conscience.” That’s a worthy thing to aim for, right? It ties in with my new favorite prayer that I’ve been sharing in this series, where the author to the Hebrews, in chapter 13, verse 18 says, “Pray for us,”—why? how? what do want to be prayed for?—“that we have a clear conscience desiring to act honorably in all things.”
Satan wants to keep us from the blessing of having a clear conscience. But, here’s the question: How do we cultivate a clear conscience? How do we do that? What are the practical steps that you can take, and I can take, to help me and you operate with a clear conscience? Does that sound like a worthy thing to talk about? I think so. I want to talk about five practical steps that we can take to cultivate a clear conscience.
So, here’s the first one: the first practical step we can take to cultivate a clear conscience is to Proactively Flee from Sin, to proactively flee from sin. 1 Timothy 6:11, he says there, “As for you, O man of God, flee from these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness.” Now, he says, “O man of God,” but we could also say, “O woman of God.” What is a ‘man of God’ or a ‘woman of God?’ It’s someone who serves the Lord and sets an example for other people. This is a very straightforward exhortation, proactively fleeing from sin.
What is interesting is that that verb, “flee,” in the original language is the verb, “pheugo,” p-h-e-u-g-o. We get our English word “fugitive” from that word. We’re to be ‘a fugitive from sin’; we’re to be fleeing from sin. By the way, when this verb is used in the original language, it’s used in a tense that stresses the fact that this is to be a regular pattern, a regular habit in our life. It’s not something we just do at Christmas time, or just before Sunday comes around. It’s something we do as a regular practice in our life, that we proactively flee from sin. It is a regular habit that we have.
So, let’s think about this verse for a moment, “As for you, O man of God, (or we could say, O woman of God) flee from these things.” What are the “these things” he’s talking about? Well, if you go back into that passage and you look at what precedes it, and in the direct context part of what he’s talking about is having a life aim that I want to be rich. The life aim and mindset is one of I always want something that is better, newer, and nicer. The problem with that mindset is that such a quest will never end. So, that is part of what we are to flee from.
Another thing he mentions in that context is he is talking about people who are pre-occupied with spiritual controversies, and arguing, and quibbling among believers. Those things lead to divisiveness, which is really what we talked about last time—you know, the differences we have with our consciences. So, we are to flee from those things.
A parallel passage in 2 Timothy, the second letter, chapter 2, verse 22, he says there, we are to flee lust. That refers to sexual pleasure outside of a marriage relationship. It would no doubt include passionate kissing and fondling outside of a marriage relationship. Fleeing lust would include going online to just search around for some alluring things and alluring fantasies. Ultimately, when we talk about ‘fleeing’, it means that we are to flee from anything that God states is wrong. In other words, we are to run from wrong. If we want to Cultivate a Clear Conscience that’s what we do: we proactively flee from sin; we run from wrong.
Now, again, I don’t know what’s going on in your life, you don’t know what’s going on in my life, but I want to ask a question. This is really a question you don’t answer out loud. This is a question between you and God. Here’s the question: is there anything, right now, that the Holy Spirit, or your conscience, is nudging you on, right now? Is there anything that the Holy Spirit or your conscience is nudging you on right now?
So, we know that we are to Proactively Flee Sin, but also, you’ll notice he says in that verse we are to ‘pursue.’ This is a verb that means to vigorously chase after something, to run hard after something. It is also used in a tense in the original that shows that this is to be the normal part of our life, the normal practice of what we are doing.
We are to pursue, it says, Righteousness. What does righteousness mean? Well, righteousness refers to the outer life. It refers to upright conduct and integrity, we’re to chase after that. Upright conduct and integrity in our business; upright conduct and integrity at school; upright conduct and integrity in our dating life.
We’re to pursue righteousness, but he also says we are to pursue Godliness. This refers to the inner life. This is where the central focus that I have is on consistently honoring God.
Then we are to pursue Faith. What does that really mean? Well, faith is a daily reliance on His promises and on His power.
Then, we are to pursue, it says, Love, we’re to pursue love. I’ve shared this definition of love before. This is the real definition of love Biblically speaking. It is “a commitment of my will to your needs and best interest regardless of the cost to me.”
Then, we are to pursue, it says, Steadfastness. This is referring to spiritual endurance. It means that we don’t give up; we don’t back out. We don’t give up on being a parent; we don’t give up on doing good. We don’t back out of our marriage; we don’t back out of our commitments.
Then, it says we are to pursue, lastly it lists, Gentleness, which is really the opposite of being preoccupied with self.
So, I just want you to think about those things that we’ve been looking at and just ask yourself this question: are those things that we see that we’re supposed to flee, and then we’re supposed to pursue, have I been progressing in doing those things? Or, have I been regressing in doing those things?
The very first step in cultivating a clear conscience is to Proactively Flee from Sin. But there is a second step that we can take to cultivate a clear conscience and that is, Consistently Monitor your Conscience. Remember your conscience is God’s gift to you; my conscience is God’s gift to me. We need to be constantly monitoring our conscience.
You know, we have a passage up here (on the screen) from Psalm 139. This is David speaking, notice what he says there, he says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! See if there be any grievous way in me, (point it out to me Lord) and lead me in the way everlasting.” You see what this is, this verse? It’s an invite to God for a personal investigation of my heart and my conscience. That is something we should do! That is something we should do, to open ourselves up enough to say, hey, step in here. If there’s something that’s ‘off’, let me know it; point it out to me and lead me in the everlasting way.
So, we’re talking about steps to cultivate a clear conscience. The first one is Proactively Flee from Sin. Secondly, Consistently Monitor your Conscience. The third practical step we can take to cultivate a clear conscience is to regularly, Regularly Confess Sin.
Now, we have a mixed group, age-wise, here. Some of us are pretty young, and some of us are ‘quite seasoned’ in life. But there was an old TV commercial many, many years ago and the beginning of that commercial went like this: it asked a question, “How do you spell relief?” How many people know what the answer to that is? Yeah, quite a few of you do. How do you spell relief? The answer to that question was Rolaids, R-o-l-a-i-d-s, that’s how you spell relief. Rolaids was an antacid tablet for the stomach. Well, let’s flip that around a little bit. Biblically, how do you spell relief? And, the answer to that question, from a Biblical standpoint is, c-o-n-f-e-s-s-i-o-n. How do you spell relief? Confession, confession.
Remember, remember, if we violate our conscience, it condemns us and we experience shame, regret and anxiety. If we want to be freed from that, relieved, confession is what will do it.
You know I love David because David was one of those people that was quite real. He wasn’t a perfect guy, as a matter of fact he made some major, major, major mistakes in his life. But he also was seeking to always follow the Lord. He tried to come back from those spiritual ‘screw-ups’ [to do something badly or fail at something] that he had done. In Psalm 32 we see, really, some confession happening here by David. He says, When I kept silent,” I wasn’t confessing my sin, “my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” What is he saying? It was wearing on me; it was wearing on me! He says, “For day and night your hand was heavy upon me.” It was weighing me down. “My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” It was spiritually draining; it was draining me spiritually. It was wearing on me; it was weighing me down; it was draining me spiritually.
How did he get relief from that? The next verse tells us, he says, “Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”” And, guess what ends up happening? “And You forgave me! All my guilt is gone.” If we’re going to cultivate a clear conscience, we must, we must, we must, must, must, Regularly Confess our Sin.
This is a theme we see in the Scriptures. Remember 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins,” what does He do? He throws us out of the family of God…it doesn’t say that. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Because He wants to restore full fellowship with us.
Proverbs 28:13, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper.” It’s not talking about getting rich, it’s talking about prospering spiritually, “but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” When should we do that? We need to confess our sin the moment we are aware of it.
Now, again, I’m going to ask another question. You don’t need to answer out loud, this is really between the Lord and you, but it’s a good question to wrestle with. Here’s the question: how long has it been since you’ve confessed sins? How long has it been?? It’s a question I was wrestling with, even when I was working on this message: How long and how often do you do that, Bruce?
So, we’re talking about How to Cultivate a Clear Conscience. Step number one: we Proactively Flee from Sin. Step number two: we Consistently Monitor our Conscience. Number three: we Regularly Confess Sin.
And number four: we Routinely Rely upon the Holy Spirit. If we’re going to Cultivate a Clear Conscience, we need to routinely rely upon the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace,” that’s what we want to experience, right, “in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” If we’re going to cultivate a clear conscience we need to Routinely Rely upon the Holy Spirit. This is what the New Testament teaches, we see it clearly. Galatians 5:16, “I say, walk by the Spirit,”… [freeze frame, stop and reflect for a moment], what does it say next? “And you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” When we are relying upon the Holy Spirit, we’re not going to be about gratifying the desires of the flesh.
Then, in Ephesians 5:18 it says…it’s a command…“…Be filled with the Spirit.” What does that really mean? Well, it’s an attitude of reliance and dependence on the Spirit of God. It is saying to God, I want the Holy Spirit to fill my life, I want to be dependent—I want to be reliant—on the Spirit.
So, we’re learning some practical ways that we can cultivate a clear conscience: Proactively we Flee from Sin; we Consistently Monitor our Conscience; we Regularly Confess Sin; we Routinely Rely upon the Holy Spirit. And then, the fifth practical step is to Faithfully Calibrate your Conscience to God’s Truth.
If you were with us earlier in this series, I talked about when I first began to grow spiritually and I kind of looked around at my life. I saw several rather ‘large boulders’ there and I was thinking, you know what, I’m going to have to work with the Lord on getting rid of those, those need to go. Then, you work your way through some of that stuff, and then after those ‘large boulders’ were gone, then I noticed there was a bunch of ‘small boulders’ cluttering up my spiritual life. I hadn’t seen those before.
Then, you deal with some of the ‘small boulders’ and then you find there are more ‘large rocks’ laying around. What’s going on it that whole situation? What was happening in my life? Well, I was calibrating my conscience to God’s truth. I was dealing with some things, but then there were some more things I didn’t know I needed to deal with. Then, there were more things I didn’t know that I needed to deal with. So, it was this process of calibrating my conscience to God’s truth.
Do you know that it is possible for a follower of Jesus to go passive spiritually? It is possible for a follower of Jesus to go passive spiritually!! See we start doing that when we make assembling together as a church family an optional kind of a thing. We’re starting to go passive spiritually when I stop meeting with the Lord, maybe spend some time in His word, spend some time in prayer. I go passive spiritually when I’m just not in the Scriptures at all, because that’s what helps me to calibrate my conscience to God’s truth. I go passive spiritually when I’m no longer serving Him and other people. Oh, I used to serve the Lord, I used to do that. I don’t really do that anymore. What?!? That’s going passive spiritually. It is a real possibility for any one of us.
You know, in Hebrews, chapter 5, the author to the Hebrews addresses this. He says in verse 11, “About this we have much to say…but you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time,” I mean, you’ve logged enough months with Jesus, “you ought to be teachers.” It doesn’t mean you’re going to be the person standing up in front of the congregation necessarily, but it means you are teaching some other people about Jesus and His truth. He says, “By this time you ought to be teachers, but you need someone to teach you again the basic principles…you need milk, not solid food.” You’ve gone passive spiritually.
Verse 13 says, “For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness…but solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained themselves by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Trained by constant practice! You can’t grow spiritually if you’re not out to calibrate our conscience according to God’s truth.
That’s why it says in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful,” to do what? “to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives,” that’s calibrating our conscience. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip His people to do every good work. (NLT)”…faithfully calibrating our conscience to God’s truth.
So, we have shared these five practical steps and how to cultivate a clear conscience,
- Proactively Flee from Sin
- Consistently Monitor your Conscience
- Regularly Confess sin
- Routinely rely upon the Holy Spirit
- and, Faithfully Calibrate your Conscience to God’s truth.
Now, indeed, those are some practical steps to cultivating a clear conscience, but here’s a question I want to ask you: what’s the motivation for doing those things? I mean, why should we bother?? Well, we could go back to that old saying we saw earlier, “there is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience” and I think that is a true statement. But you know what? Scripture goes deeper than that in terms of motivation.
One of our motivations is that We Will Give an Account to God. We saw this earlier in our series. Romans 14:12 says, “So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” Part of our motivation to cultivate a clear conscience is we will give an account to God. It’s part of the motivation for pursuing cultivating a clear conscience.
A second motivation for cultivating a clear conscience that we see in Scripture is that We Avoid any Legitimate Cause of Criticism, especially from the unbelieving world. 1 Peter, chapter 3, verse 16, “.Keep your conscience clear. Then if people speak against you, they will be ashamed when they see what a good life you live because you belong to Christ.” So, part of our motivation for cultivating a clear conscience is that we will give an account to God. Another one is we avoid any legitimate cause of criticism, especially from the unbelieving world. That is why we want to seek to cultivate a clear conscience!
But that’s not The Ultimate Motivation, that’s not the ultimate one. Do you know what the ultimate motivation for cultivating a clear conscience is? The ultimate motivation is The Amazing work of Jesus on our Behalf. That’s the ultimate motivation!
I want to underscore this by sharing with you an analogy. It’s just an analogy, but it gives us a feeling for what I mean when I talk about the amazing work of Jesus on our behalf. I want you to imagine that I am driving down Interstate I-35 and I am clocked at 111 miles per hour. Because I am speeding more than 36 miles per hour over the limit, I understand the fine for that is $250. Now, imagine when I’m clocked at 111 miles per hour, I’m also clocked doing that speed in a construction zone. And in our state that means the fine doubles. So, now I have a $500 fine.
But, it’s not too hard to imagine that I could also get an additional ticket for reckless driving. I get a ticket for reckless driving, now my fine is $1,000. So, imagine if you would, that I am now in traffic court. I know that I am guilty. I know the evidence will confirm that I am guilty. I know my punishment is certain.
But suddenly, something weird happens. The judge steps down from the bench, takes off his judicial robe, his robe of justice, and sets it down. He walks over, comes up alongside me, and he pulls out his wallet, and he counts out $1,000 and hands it to me. Then, he walks back, he dons his robe again, goes back to the bench, and he turns and he says to me: you are free to go, your debt has been paid in full. I chose to pay it for you. Now, that would be amazing, right? Would that not be amazing?!?
You think that’s amazing? Anybody giving me any feedback on that? Yeah! That’s truly amazing! But after the case has been dismissed, the judge says to me, approach the bench. When I approach the bench, he leans over and says to me, “I want you to also know that I transferred one billion dollars (with a ‘b,’) into your account. It’s a gift from my heart to your heart.” Now, men and women, that is truly amazing!!!! And, as amazing as that analogy is, it is totally inadequate compared to what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us.
2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” My crappy sin gets exchanged for the full righteousness of God and that has magnificent eternal ramifications. Men and women, that is the ultimate motivation! The ultimate motivation for cultivating a clear conscience.
The classic hymn, It Is Well, has these words in it,
My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought
My sin, not in part, but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, o my soul!
How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior’s love for me! That is the ultimate motivation for cultivating a clear conscience.
Let’s pray together. Father, we thank You again for Your Word. We thank You for the Truth of it. We thank You for this series. We thank You for everything that we have learned about conscience. We thank You today for these practical insights into how to cultivate a clear conscience. May we remember the ultimate motivation for doing it! It’s not just for personal benefit, it’s to honor the One who bled and died for us. How marvelous, how wonderful, is my Savior’s love for me. We thank You, and we thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Questions for Reflection
The Bible and Your Conscience
Message 4 – How to Cultivate a Clear Conscience
1. Bruce stated that Satan’s strategy is to keep us from the blessing of living with a clear conscience. Why does he employ that strategy?
2. One step in cultivating a clear conscience is to proactively flee from sin. How can we accomplish that most effectively?
3. Have your personal convictions ever been altered by Scripture? Elaborate on how that transpired.
4. What are some productive ways we can calibrate our conscience to God’s Word?
5. When it comes to consistently monitoring our conscience, how did David choose to do that in Psalm 139:23-24?
6. What kind of things get in the way of us regularly confessing our sin?
7. Bruce said it is possible to go passive spiritually. Why do you think that happens and how can we avoid it?
8. Bruce mentioned three motivations for cultivating a clear conscience. Can you list the three? Which one is most motivational to you?
9. Have you ever found it profitable to confess a sin in the presence of another believer, or believers? [see James 5:16] If so, explain why you found it helpful.
Some personal questions:
– Are there any dark corners or “hidden rooms” in your life that you have refused to open to the Lord?
– Are you postponing doing something that your conscience has been telling that you should do?