JRS 89 THE CONSCIENCE OF MAN 8/18/2026 SELECTED SCRIPTURES JESSE RANDOLPH As you heard announced this morning and again this evening, we’re launching our Men’s Equipping Groups in just a few weeks here. In those groups over the course of the upcoming ministry year, we are going to be going through John MacArthur’s, The Vanishing Conscience. That book, which is excellent by the way, I’m excited to go through it in our group, begins with a story. John MacArthur writes, “In 1984 an Avianca Airlines jet crashed in Spain. Investigators studying the accident made an eerie discovery. The black box cockpit recorders revealed that several minutes before impact a shrill, computer synthesized voice from the plane’s automatic warning system told the crew repeatedly in English, ‘Pull up! Pull up!’ The pilot, evidently thinking the system was malfunctioning, snapped, ‘Shut up, Gringo!’ and switched the system off. Minutes later the plane plowed into the side of a mountain. Everyone on board died. When I saw that tragic story on the news shortly after it happened, it struck me as a perfect parable of the way modern people treat the warning messages of their consciences.” MacArthur’s recounting of this tragic event in Spain is a fitting place to resume our study tonight of Biblical Anthropology, the Doctrine of Man. Last Sunday evening we studied what God’s Word has to say about THE DEPRAVITY OF MAN, that is the status of natural man, unsaved man, in a post-fall, post sin-cursed world and tonight we’re going to see what God’s Word has to say about THE CONSCIENCE OF MAN. As we see that man though depraved, has been given by God this built-in warning device, this built in system of warning, his conscience, which testifies to him about good and evil, about right and wrong. It warns him, the conscience does, to “Pull Up” like the warning indicator on that Avianca Airlines jet. It warns him, the conscience does, when he’s about to spiritually speaking crash and burn. We have a lot to cover tonight before we head outside for some food truck fellowship. So, let’s jump in with just the outline here. We’re first going to look at THE CONSCIENCE DEFINED. We always need to define terms first. Second, we’ll look at THE CONSCIENCE DESCRIBED where we’re going to hammer through various mentions of the conscience in the Scriptures and map out what God has revealed in His Word about the conscience. Third we’ll look at THE CONSCIENCE IN ACTION, as we consider the various functions the conscience plays in the lives of both unbelievers and Believers. Fourth we’re going to see THE CONSCIENCE CONTAMINATED as we consider what it looks like for our consciences to operate at sub-optimal levels. Fifth we’ll look at THE CONSCIENCE CALIBRATED as we consider the role of God’s Spirit working through the Word of God as it reforms and reshapes our contaminated consciences. And then sixth we’ll look at THE CONSCIENCE IN COMMUNITY as we look at the role of the conscience in the church and how Believers with differing levels of conscience are to function in community with one another. Let’s start with THE CONSCIENCE DEFINED. What is the conscience? Well, our English word conscience comes from a compound Latin word which combines the words for “to know” and “together.” Then you trace that back even further to Greek and you get this word, suneidesis, which means co-knowledge or accompanying knowledge, or knowledge together with oneself, which is not a very smooth way of saying it. But the idea is that our consciences know, and they reveal our inner motives. Our consciences know our true thoughts. Now Latin and Greek word studies are fun and all. But what is the conscience actually? What is the human conscience? As you can imagine there are a number of different theologians who offer a variety of different definitions of what the conscience is. But here’s a quote I want to get ahead of time before we get to the actual definitions. This is D.A. Carson essentially highlighting what MacArthur would point out about the conscience as a concept vanishing in modern-day discourse. Vanishing from our world. D.A. Carson writes “This is an age that gives little thought to the nature and function of conscience. Conscience is easily trampled if it gets in the way of authentic living. More dangerously, conscience is malleable and is easily reshaped to conform, in substantial measure, to the dictates of our age. We crush conscience in order to toss off what now appear to be the shackles of a bygone age, and then we immediately resurrect conscience in new configurations that establish new shackles, new expectations, new legalisms, new failures, new pools of guilt. For example, by determined suppression a new generation silences the voice of conscience in many sexual matters and teases it alive when it comes to the importance of finding out where your coffee beans were grown.” He’s right. Carson’s right. We live in a day where people are more concerned about coffee origins than they are man’s origin or when life originates in the womb. The conscience is in fact vanishing and that is a tragically sad development. Now onto these definitions of the conscience. The standard lexicon for students of Biblical Greek is called BDAG and it defines conscience as the “the inward faculty that distinguishes right and wrong.” Floyd Barackman defines conscience as “A witness within man that tells him he ought to do what he believes to be right and not to do what he believes to be wrong.” Henry Clarence Thiessen says, “Conscience is the knowledge of self in relation to a known law of right and wrong.” John MacArthur calls the conscience “a God-given faculty of moral evaluation concerning right and wrong, good and evil.” Andy Naselli says, “The conscience is your consciousness of what you believe is right and wrong.” What each of these definitions do, whichever one we’re to ultimately land on, they point to the fact that our consciences don’t teach us right and wrong. They don’t set the standard for what is right and wrong. God’s revelation does that. But our consciences do prod us to do what we know to be right and to avoid what we know to be wrong. So that was our first heading, THE CONSCIENCE DEFINED. Now we want to move on to our second point, which is THE CONSCIENCE DESCRIBED. What we’re going to do here under the second heading is take a really quick survey, a very fast-moving jet tour, of what the Scriptures actually reveal about the conscience with very little commentary in between. Now, before I get into this, I should mention that the conscience term, the word conscience does not appear as such in the Old Testament. As Andy Naselli points out, “Conscience is one of the few theologically significant New Testament words that lacks a parallel word or group of words in the Hebrew Old Testament.” However, that word conscience does appear about thirty times in the New Testament, with Paul typically, but not always, being the one using the word. And with this Greek word suneidesis again, being the term used to describe the conscience. Now, even though the word conscience does not appear as such in the Hebrew Old Testament, the concept of the conscience I would argue does appear in other forms. Naselli would agree “The concept of conscience is certainly in the Old Testament even if no word itself is present.” For instance, I Kings 3:9; this is Solomon prayer for wisdom and he’s asking God here for a listening heart to judge your people to discern between good and evil. That sounds an awful lot like the conscience. Then there are other places in the Old Testament where what we’d typically assign as being a function of the conscience, is instead assigned to the heart. I Samuel 24:5, “And it happened afterward that David’s heart struck him because he had cut off the edge of Saul’s robe.” That sounds like conscience. Job 27:6, “My heart does not reproach any of my days.” That sounds like conscience. We see the word heart here rather than the word conscience because as you study Greek and Hebrew you see that there is a much wider range of words available to use in Greek than there would have been in Hebrew. Hebrew is a much simpler system of verbal patterns and so they just didn’t have as comprehensive or wide vocabulary as the Greek authors did. Now onto the New Testament usages of that Greek term, suneidesis, or conscience. As I mentioned earlier, we have something like thirty of those usages. I’m going to go through just about all of them here really fast. Acts 23:1, “Now Paul, looking intently at the Sanhedrin, said, ‘Brothers, I have lived my life in all good conscience before God up to this day.’” He’s saying here before the Sanhedrin that he could honestly say that he had faithfully matched his actions, to his understanding of God’s moral standards. Acts 24:16, “In view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a conscience without fault both before God and before men.” Again, this is Paul and what he is saying here is that he always tried hard to make sure that his actions correspond with what he believes to be God’s moral standards. This one will be familiar to us tonight. Romans 2:14-16, “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law naturally do the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they demonstrate the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.” Paul here is saying that when Gentiles, as they satisfy certain aspects of God’s moral standards through their lives, they reveal that they have an awareness of some sort of moral standards. An awareness that is clear enough to allow their own minds to either accuse them, or to excuse them. Their consciences are clear enough as it says here in verse 16, for God to use those consciences as evidence against them on His coming day of judgment. Romans 9:1, “I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.” Here is Paul’s conscience confirming through the Holy Spirit, that he wasn’t lying about his love for his kinsmen, i.e. the Jews. Romans 13:5, “Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of that wrath, but also because of conscience.” Paul here is saying that Believers must submit to governing authorities, not only because those authorities have the authority to punish us, but also so that our consciences don’t condemn us. I Corinthians 8:7, “However, not all men have this knowledge; but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.” This is referring to those with weaker consciences. Paul is saying when they’ve eaten food that was sacrificed to an idol, they think of it as having been sacrificed to an actual god. And in doing so they defile their conscience, which is oversensitive, which is weak, and that’s because it’s been misinformed. We’re going to get into more of that later in the last point later this evening. I Corinthians 8:10, “For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be built up to eat things sacrificed to idols?” Here Paul is saying, if anyone sees you as one with a stronger conscience now, as one who knows that idols aren’t actually gods, they aren’t true gods, if they see you eating in an idol’s temple, isn’t that person’s weaker conscience now going to embolden them, to now sin against their conscience, by likewise eating food sacrificed to idols, when they should not be doing so. Then in I Corinthians 8:12, “And in that way, by sinning against the brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.” Paul here is on this same trail of thought. He’s saying that when you embolden your brothers and sisters to disregard their conscience, even if it is weak, even if it is misinformed, you’re sinning against them. You’re causing them to feel this intense guilt since their weak and misinformed consciences condemn them. In doing so you’re also sinning against Christ. I Corinthians 10:25-27, “Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake. If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake.” Here Paul is saying that you don’t need to bother asking where the meat you’re eating came from, because it doesn’t matter if it was sacrificed to idols. It’s a theologically unnecessary question. Your conscience should not condemn you for eating such meat. More on this topic. I Corinthians 10:28-29, “But if anyone says to you, ‘This is meat consecrated to idols,’ do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for conscience’ sake. I do not mean your own conscience, but the other person’s. For why is my freedom judged by another’s conscience?” So, Paul now is saying on the other hand, you shouldn’t eat meat that someone told you was sacrificed to idols, if the result would be that the other person’s conscience would condemn you for eating. Why should someone else’s weaker and misinformed conscience judge yours? By the way, we’re going to get into this topic of meat and idols and really broaden it to other forms of strength and weakness of conscience, hopefully in a helpful way. Sometimes we can get so tripped up on meat and idols and vegetables and all the like that we lose sight of the bigger picture concept of what it means to minister alongside with weaker and stronger brothers. We’ll get to that momentarily. II Corinthians 1:12, “For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you.” Paul here is saying in this second letter to the Corinthians, that the consciences of he and his companions testify that they have conducted themselves in the world with integrity and with sincerity. II Corinthians 4:1-2, “Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the Word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” Paul here is saying that he and his companions have plainly set forth the truth and having done so they’re now appealing to the consciences of the Corinthians to whom this letter was written. II Corinthians 5:11 “So then, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we have been made manifest to God; and I hope that we have been made manifest also in your consciences.” God knew and approved of who Paul and his companions were and so Paul here is expressing his hope that the Corinthians’ consciences would approve of he and his companions. He’s challenging the Corinthians Believers there to make a moral judgment about his faithfulness based on their own consciences, and he’s expressing his confidence that he will pass that test. I Timothy 1:5, “But the goal of our command is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and an unhypocritical faith.” The context here is Paul is giving this solemn charge about these troublemakers, these rabblerousers who will give Timothy a hard time. And he is reminding Timothy that his goal is to be to return with the highest motivation and standard of all, love, which flows out of a person whose heart is pure and who’s thinking consistently with the standards of his conscience. I Timothy 1:18-19, “This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some, having rejected, suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.” Paul is saying to Timothy here, that he must never let go of his trust in God. He must always live according to his conscience. Some he notes, have failed to do so and they’ve destroyed their lives. I Timothy 3:8-9. “Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, not fond of dishonest gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.” Those who hold the office of deacon must live uprightly, while affirming sound doctrine. Their talk must match their walk and visa versa. Right living and right doctrine go hand-in-hand. I Timothy 4:1-2. “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by the hypocrisy of liars, who have been seared in their own conscience.” This is saying that by repeatedly suppressing the alarm bells of their conscience, hypocritical liars in this time, had desensitized their conscience and the result was that they felt no guilt when they issued and taught falsehood. II Timothy 1:3. “I am grateful to God, whom I serve with a clear conscience the way my forefathers did, as I unceasingly remember you in my prayers night and day.” Paul’s conscience approves of his work. Titus 1:15, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.” Paul is speaking of this group of individuals who because of their sins, their minds aren’t working right, they’re not thinking right and their consciences aren’t functioning right. Moving on from Paul, Hebrews 9:9-10. He speaks of the “gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, requirements for the body imposed until a time of reformation.” What the author of Hebrews is saying here, is that under the Old Covenant, Israelites offered God various gifts and sacrifices which couldn’t completely clear the condemnation they felt on account of their consciences. Then we get to this one a few verses later Hebrews 9:13-14, “If the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” This is saying that the blood of Christ clears our condemnation. The condemnation we feel on account of our consciences. The blood of Christ cleanses our consciences, which in turn allows us to serve the living God. Hebrews 10:21-22, “Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Here the author of Hebrews is telling us that we should draw near, close to God with a pure heart and with complete confidence that faith brings because Jesus has sprinkled our hearts to cleanse us from a guilty conscience. Hebrews 13:18, “Pray for us, for we are convinced that we have a good conscience, desiring to conduct ourselves well in all things.” So, the author of Hebrews here, writing on behalf of others as well, is confident that he and they were living and acting according to the high standards of their consciences, and by seeking prayer, he was making it known that he sought to continue to live in a way that honored God. And then we have a few instances of this word conscience, suneidesis, in Greek, in the writings of Peter. Just a few, I Peter 2:19, “For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unrighteously.” I Peter 3:15-16, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and fear, having a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame.” I Peter 3:21, “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal of a good conscience to God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” We have just looked at THE CONSCIENCE DEFINED. We’ve looked at THE CONSCIENCE DESCRIBED. Here’s our third point. THE CONSCIENCE IN ACTION. Now under this heading we’re going to consider the various different functions that the conscience plays in both the life of the unbeliever and the Believer. Let’s start with the unbeliever. For the unbeliever, let’s remember that God has testified to him, to her, to them, about His existence. And He has done so, He has testified to the unbeliever in such a way that they are without excuse in their unbelief or their professed unbelief in Him. Consider these two passages. Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Acts 14:17, “He did not leave Himself (speaking of God) without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.” He has revealed Himself is the point. I appreciate how John Calvin has framed this issue. He did so many years ago. He wrote that God, “revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe.” So, the unbeliever simply by having taken in and observed what God has made, even if they have no written record of what God specifically expects and demands of them, even if they’ve never seen a Bible in their lives, they still have some innate moral understanding of what God expects of them. In Romans 1, after going through that long list of sins that are enumerated there. Greed and envy and murder and malice and gossip and more. Paul says this, in Romans 1:32 “Although they know the righteous requirement of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.” In other words, the wicked unbeliever knows that his sin is wrong. And he knows that his sin violates some sort of moral standard which has been given by God, even if he can’t articulate the chapter and verse in which that moral standard is found. In Romans 2, Paul begins describing the consciences of Gentiles who do not have God’s standards for them written down anywhere. So, in their case, it’s their consciences which serve as their guide. It’s their consciences which point them to the reality of God’s good standards. Again, here’s Romans 2:14-15, “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law naturally do the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they demonstrate the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.” So, the unsaved person has a conscience, one which points them to the reality of God’s existence and God’s standards and one which gives them this awareness of God’s moral demands for all of mankind. It is on this basis of conscience, though not having any specific written laws of God perhaps in written form for them to consult, that all of humanity even without it written down for them in chapter and verse, are held guilty before God on account of sin. And though their conscience renders them knowledgeable as they behold God’s glory and creation, and therefore responsible, the conscience of the unsaved man is still faulty. It still misfires on multiple levels. That is because the conscience of the unsaved man has been overridden by the unbiblical moral standards of this world, including for instance in Ephesians 2:3, “The lusts of our flesh and the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” The conscience of the unbeliever, in other words regularly misfires on a number of different levels because it’s conditioned by worldly thinking and worldly wisdom and as a result it’s been set to the wrong setting. Now a couple of additional items related to the unbeliever’s conscience, we know from Scripture that the unbeliever’s conscience can be pricked. Acts 2:37, “When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart.” Acts 5:33, “When they heard this, they became furious and intended to kill them.” These are all these early incidences of the apostles going out proclaiming the Gospel and facing opposition. Acts 7:54, Of course the account of Stephen and his stoning. “When they heard this, they became furious in their hearts, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.” The unbeliever’s conscience can be pricked as it was here. We know that the conscience of the unsaved person can be seared. That’s what we’re told in I Timothy 4:2, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by the hypocrisy of liars, who have been seared in their own conscience.” When a person has a seared conscience, what that means is that they rationalize, or they justify certain wrong actions to the point that their conscience no longer bears witness against their wrongdoing. The unbeliever’s conscience can be defiled. Titus 1:15, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.” Meaning, it can be worn down. The conscience can be ground down. The conscience can be desensitized. Now similar to what we covered last Sunday night when we’re studying the depravity of man, the one whose conscience is defiled, is not acting as evil as he could be acting. Because God through His common grace is restraining that level of evil and depravity from being exercised in the present age. But because His conscience has been so ground down and so polluted and so misinformed with wrong information about what is actually right and what is actually wrong; the one with the defiled conscience has an entirely wrong, entirely skewed sense of what actually would be right or wrong in any given set of circumstances. So, they are still responsible, they are without excuse as it says in Romans 1, but their equipment is damaged, their conscience is damaged through no one’s fault but their own. So that’s a bit about the role of conscience in the life of the unbeliever. Now let’s consider some truths about the consciences role in the life of the Believer. The conscience plays a number of roles in the life of the Believer. For starters, a cleansed conscience is a very part, it’s an essential part of our very identity as followers of Christ. Hebrews 9:8-10, “The Holy Spirit is indicating this, that the way into the holy places has not yet been manifested while that first part of the tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly, both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, requirements for the body imposed until a time of reformation.” What this is saying is that the Mosaic Law could never perfect the conscience of the one who would bring the prescribed offerings because those rituals never took away sins. Hebrews 10:4, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Hebrews 10:11, “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” For those who were under the Law, their consciences were never free of guilt. Hebrews 9:9-10, “Both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, requirements for the body imposed until a time of reformation.” However, the one who is saved through Christ, he has a purged, she has a cleansed conscience, and it’s all because of Jesus’ work of redemption. Hebrews 9:13-14, “For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” So having a cleansed conscience, then is at the very root, that’s what this is saying, of our identity as Christ followers. Here’s another way the work of the conscience in the life of the Believer. THE CONSCIENCE PROMPTS OBEDIENCE TO GOD. Now, there are a number of reasons a follower of Christ will be moved to obey God. We obey to please the Lord and to express our love for Him. John 14:21, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me.” 1 John 5:3, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” We obey because we love God. We obey to be vessels who are noble and used nobly. II Timothy 2:20-21, “Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of clay, and some to honor and some to dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, having been prepared for every good work.” We obey out of a desire to see unbelievers come to Christ. This is the passage in I Peter 3:1-2 about the wife with the unsaved husband. “In the same way, you wives, be subject to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, as they observe your pure conduct with fear.” We obey God to avoid God’s displeasure and His discipline in our lives. Ephesians 4:30, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” I Peter 1:17, “Conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your sojourn.” I Peter 2:17, “Honor all people, love the brethren, fear God, honor the king.” We obey the Lord to enjoy a deeper walk with Him. Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” We obey because it’s a delight. Psalm 40:8, “I desire to do Your will, O my God.” But we also obey, and this gets us back to our topic for this evening, to maintain a good and clear conscience. As we saw just a moment ago, our cleansed consciences are associated with the fact that we’ve been saved through the shed blood of Christ. But once we’re saved, we continue to obey and we do so to maintain our good and clear conscience. I Timothy 1:5, “But the goal of our command is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and an unhypocritical faith.” I Timothy 1:18-19, “Fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience.” II Timothy 1:3, “I am grateful to God, whom I serve with a clear conscience the way my forefathers did, as I unceasingly remember you in my prayers night and day.” I Peter 3:15-16, “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and fear, having a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who disparage your good conduct in Christ will be put to shame.” Our good and our clear consciences prompt us to do what is right in a variety of different relationships. Like our relationship with the government. Romans 13:5, “Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of that wrath, but also because of conscience.” Or to bear up under an unjust employer. I Peter 2:18-19, “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are crooked. For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unrighteously.” Our consciences work in conjunction with our minds, helping us to live out Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect.” And then our consciences also testify to the sincerity of our assertions and our actions. Romans 9:1-2, Paul says, “I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart.” II Corinthians 1:12, “For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you.” Again, II Corinthians 4:1-2, “Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the Word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” Our consciences also help us to understand how we ought to engage with those with weaker consciences. Those who are weaker in the faith as we’ll get into momentarily. We have covered THE CONSCIENCE DEFINED. We have looked at THE CONSCIENCE DESCRIBED. We just covered THE CONSCIENCE IN ACTION, how the conscience functions both in the unbeliever and the Believer. Now we’re going to look at THE CONSCIENCE CONTAMINATED. Now, our consciences themselves are gifts from God. Like any gift from God, we can do damage to the gift of the conscience that He’s given us. There are really two primary ways, two major ways that this can happen, where we do damage to the conscience that God has given us. First, we can become so desensitized to our conscience that we eventually just tune it out. Its warning sounds or its warning sirens grow fainter and fainter until we ultimately ignore it entirely, like the pilot of the Avianca Airlines disaster. But there’s also this other thing we can do where we overpack and we overstimulate our conscience, loading it down with a number of rules which aren’t matters of right and wrong or good or evil, but instead are purely matters of taste or opinion or preference. We see actually both of these come to light in one passage in I Timothy 4:3. Now right before this in I Timothy 4:2, that’s where Paul mentions the seared conscience. The possibility of a person having a seared conscience, a desensitized conscience. But then in literally the next verse, in I Timothy 4:3, he speaks against those who “forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God created to be shared in with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” So, the conscience, in other words, can be skewed in either direction. It can either under-burden an individual or it can over-burden an individual. And in either case whether we’re ignoring the conscience or over-loading the conscience, our conscience becomes contaminated. Look at some of these Biblical expressions of a contaminated conscience, just a couple of them. I Corinthians 8:7, “Not all men have this knowledge; but some, being accustomed to the idol until now, eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol; and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.” That’s a contaminated conscience. Romans 14:14, “I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is defiled in itself; but to him who considers anything to be defiled, to him it is defiled.” Romans 14:23, “But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.” Did you catch that last line there? That last clause. When we act contrary to our conscience we sin. That is true whether the action of which our conscience warned us was inherently sinful in its own right or not. When we act defiantly and independently of that moral monitor that God has given us, of our conscience. When we go against our conscience. When we ignore that internal alarm system that God has given us, we sin. I appreciate what Mark Dever said. He says, “Conscience cannot make a wrong thing right, but it can make a right thing wrong.” Now there is still hope because when a person’s conscience has become contaminated and we’re just in the realm of Believers right for now. When a person has a contaminated conscience and they are experiencing those linked feelings of shame or anguish or regret or angst or consternation or disgrace, or fear. They can know that God will cleanse their conscience, if they’ll confess and repent of their sin and commit from that point forward to walk in obedience to Him. II Corinthians 7:1, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” I John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Romans 6:19, “For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.” Jonathan Edwards was characteristically insightful when he said, “The way to keep the conscience tender is to the utmost resist sin.” So, THE CONSCIENCE DEFINED, THE CONSCIENCE DESCRIBED, THE CONSCIENCE IN ACTION, THE CONSCIENCE CONTAMINATED. Here’s our fifth one, THE CONSCIENCE CALIBRATED. Now as we get to this fifth point, I’m going to bring in a quote from Edmund Clowney, who says that “The Walt Disney version of Pinocchio has given us the cartoon image of conscience as a friendly cricket, an effort, perhaps, to reduce the hostility which people are inclined to view the promptings of conscience. Christians are called to do much better. To cultivate conscience rather than to stifle its occasional chirps.” How do we do that? As Clowney would put it, how do we cultivate conscience? Or to use the word I’ve used for that fifth heading, how do we calibrate our consciences? Well as we’ve already seen, our consciences, as Believers, are skewed. And that’s because we are all, everyone in this room, still in the process of sanctification. Secondly none of us has a perfect understanding present company included, of God’s perfect Word. Every one of us has a conscience that is skewed either in the direction of insensitivity toward it or hyper-sensitivity or over-sensitivity about it. Our consciences in one sense, can be re-calibrated through our personal life of holiness and repentance as we just saw from II Corinthians 7 and the Jonathon Edwards quote. But ultimately our consciences are calibrated, and they’re programmed rightly according to God’s Word. Let me give you an example. In the days that the New Testament was being written before the entire canon of Scripture was completed and closed, let’s say there was a Jewish person at that time who in light of the Scripture that he had and namely Leviticus 11, he believed it was wrong for him to eat pork, and it was wrong for him to eat meat that was sacrificed to idols, because he knew from Exodus 20:3 that “You shall have no other gods before Me.” But then this person, let’s say, gets saved. So, this Jewish person is now saved, and he would learn how, from God’s Word, that he is now under new management with Christ. But he’s also under this new set of rules. This new set of written materials known as the Old and New Testament Scriptures, the Bible, which would allow him to eat pork and allow him to eat meat that was offered up at some point in pagan temples. He would learn that from the written revelation of God that he’s no longer under the old dietary laws of the Mosaic Law. Now he can now point to passages like this one, Mark 7:19, Jesus having “declared all foods clean.” Or the scene in Acts 10:13 where Peter is told “Rise up, Peter, slaughter and eat!” Or I Corinthians 8:8, “But food will not commend us to God. We neither lack if we do not eat, nor abound if we do eat.” Or I Corinthians 10:25-26, “Eat anything that is sold in the meat market without asking questions for conscience’ sake. For the earth is the Lord’s, as well as its fullness.” Or I Timothy 4:4, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” So not only that, this same person, this Jew who has now been converted to Christ in this hypothetical, he’s aware of the fact that there is no such thing as the so-called god of the pagan people. I Corinthians 8:4-6, “Concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.” Now in this scenario, these are not truths that this person, this Jew who is not converted, would have just pulled out of thin air. No. As a once-practicing Jew, he would go from a no-pork diet or a no eating meat sacrificed to idols diet, to allow for pork or allow for meat sacrifice to idols diet, by learning from the Scriptures, from God’s written revelation, that it is permissible for him now to do so. So, under that circumstance, under that hypothetical, what this person has had happen, is his conscience has now been reprogrammed, recalibrated, according to the Word of God. That is a key principle to remember. That our consciences, whether weak or defiled or otherwise incorrect; they are calibrated and they are to be calibrated, they need to be calibrated, by the reading and the studying of the Scriptures. All of those old systems of morality or immorality that we once lived by all of that social conditioning we underwent in a previous era, all the motives which drove our actions before, those were the standards that used to inform our consciences. But not anymore. Now, the only true standard of conscience for us as Believers is the Word of God. Not tradition, not preference, not cultural norms. Rather the inspired, inerrant Word of God. It and it alone can rightly regulate and calibrate our consciences. I appreciate the words of Carson again. He says, “we must also know what freedoms and constraints are ours in Jesus Christ. The only way to achieve this maturity is to think through Scripture again and again to try to grasp the system of its thoughts, how the parts cohere and combine to make sense.” The wise Christian if his conscience is misfiring, if it’s skewed one way or the other toward insensitivity or hyper-sensitivity, he is going to seek to regulate it according to the principles of God’s Word. He is going to want to be like Martin Luther who believed that maintaining a good conscience, a Scripture-informed conscience, was worth going to jail and possibly even to die. Remember the story of Luther. After discovering from the Scriptures that God justified sinners by faith alone in Christ alone, through grace alone, Luther was eventually excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church called him to to a convention to speak and make a defense and they demanded that Luther recant his writings and he refused to do so, citing his Biblically informed conscience. He (Luther) said “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other, my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” That is where we want to be with consciences that are captive to the Word of God. On a similar note, we have John MacArthur again. This is from The Vanishing Conscience. He says, “The conscience reacts to the convictions of the mind and therefore can be encouraged and sharpened in accordance with God’s Word. The wise Christian wants to master Biblical truth so that the conscience is completely informed and judges right because it is responding to God’s Word. A regular diet of Scripture will strengthen a weak conscience or restrain an overactive one.” We’ve made it through five points. We’ve gotten through THE CONSCIENCE DEFINED, THE CONSCIENCE DESCRIBED, THE CONSCIENCE IN ACTION, THE CONSCIENCE CONTAMINATED, THE CONSCIENCE CALIBRATED. And now and finally, we have THE CONSCIENCE IN COMMUNITY. Every follower of Christ, simple truth here, has a distinct heart, a distinct mind, a distinct spirit, a distinct will, and yes, a distinct conscience. Your conscience is different than mine. My conscience is different from yours. Yours is calibrated at one level and the person on the other side of the auditorium has a conscience that’s calibrated at a different level. And according to God’s perfect plan, His perfect design, He saw fit to place all of us in the same assembly of Believers known as the local church. God placed some in this body who have stronger consciences, meaning their consciences have been better calibrated with more information from God’s Word. He has placed others in this body who have weaker consciences, meaning they have consciences which have not been as sharply calibrated Biblically to the same degree as those with the stronger conscience. Now, when you have those two groups of people and you put them together, and by the way those two groups of people exist in every single church, not just Indian Hills. You have this perfect storm, this perfect cauldron of built-in tension and the possibility of conflict and disputing. Because guess what? There are a number of different views out there even among followers of Jesus Christ on a number of different matters and topic and issues. Not just meat and not just meat sacrificed to idols and whether one can eat a certain type of meat that was offered at a temple for pagan worship. No, in common practice and modern-day churches today, questions about conscience bubble up when people ask questions like, can I watch a movie that’s PG-13? Can I have a glass of red wine with dinner? Can I smoke a cigar? If I’m in a dating relationship, can I kiss my girlfriend or kiss my boyfriend? Can I get a tattoo? How many? How much time should I devote to sports and recreation? Can my kids go trick-or-treating on October 31? Are we supposed to have a drum kit on stage? Can we listen as Christians to rap music? Should a church have more than one service on a Sunday morning? How short is too short when it comes to shorts that people wear? Can we watch MMA, Mixed Martial Arts, on TV? What form of schooling should we adopt for our children? Should we allow our children to have screen time? How much screen time? Should we let our children play video games? How many video games? Which video games? How many children should we have? When should we start having children? When should we stop having children? Now when it comes to matters like these, there are a couple of things worth mentioning. First, is this. You know sometimes in common discourse about the stronger, weaker brother, when you hear references to weaker brothers in the church, you’ll often hear about their weakness in terms of it being terminal. It’s just their fate. It’s just their lot. It is acceptable as though it is OK for them to stay in this state of perpetual weakness. In this state of perpetually weak faith. In this state of not having their consciences well calibrated by the Word of God. But just as it’s not acceptable for a new Believer, coming out of the world to maintain this state of carnality out of which they came when they first came to Christ, it isn’t acceptable for a Christian to remain weaker in faith, to remain in that weakness, perpetually as some sort of crutch to lean on. Like anyone, they ultimately put their nose in the Word of God and have their consciences strengthened and sharpened and calibrated accordingly. Here’s something else to mention. It’s not the job of the stronger brother, the one whose conscience has been better calibrated by the Word of God, to bring the hammer of judgment down on the brother who is weaker in faith. The one in who in that present day, has the weaker conscience. Rather, it’s the duty of the stronger conscience Believer to lovingly accommodate their behavior, to the who is currently in that state of weakness, so that the weaker brother, isn’t led into a situation where they are acting contrary to their conscience because they want to impress this stronger brother and thereby sin. The strong brother and the weaker brother alike, are to maintain this goal in view. Romans 14:19, “So then let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.” Now that statement, Romans 14:19, follows on the heels of a lengthy exposition and explanation by Paul from Romans 14:1 on, where he explains how stronger and weaker brothers are to interact in the local church in a situation specifically where the stronger brother is to accommodate the weaker brother. Now in context he’s speaking of meat sacrificed to idols in Romans 14, but then again, these principles apply to other situations as well. Video games, short shorts, drum kits, you name it. I’m going to give you some principles here. First principle would be to welcome those with whom you disagree. Romans 14:1-2, “Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on opinions. One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only.” So, first principle, respect those, welcome those, with whom you disagree. Second principle. Even if you have freedom of conscience, don’t look down upon those who don’t. And if you don’t have freedom of conscience, don’t be judgmental toward those who do. That’s Romans 14:3-4, “The one who eats must not view the one who does not eat with contempt, and the one who does not eat must not judge the one who eats, for God accepted him. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” Third principle. Every Believer must be fully convinced of their own position in their own conscience. Romans 14:5, “One person judges one day above another, another judges every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.” Fourth principle. Assume the best. Assume that the one who is operating either partaking or refraining from what they have liberty to partake or refrain from partaking in, that they’re doing it for right motives, for the glory of God. Romans 14:6-9, “He who regards the day, regards it for the Lord, and he who eats, eats for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who does not eat, for the Lord he does not eat and gives thanks to God. For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” Fifth principle and this is everybody’s favorite line in non-Christian circles when they think that of what we’re to be as Christians but fifth principle is don’t judge. Romans 14:10-12, “But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you view your brother with contempt? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For as it is written, ‘As I live, says the Lord, to Me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess to God.’ So, then each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” Basically, it’s all going to be settled at the judgment seat anyway, so don’t judge your brother in this life. Sixth principle is your freedom to eat meat in this context, is correct. We all have that freedom. Rise, kill, eat, was said to Peter. But don’t let your freedom destroy the faith of the weak brother. Romans 14:13-15, “Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather judge this not to put a stumbling block or offense before a brother. I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is defiled in itself; but to him who considers anything to be defiled, to him it is defiled. For if because of food your brother is grieved, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died.” Seventh principle is that in the big picture, eating and drinking are not terribly important when we look at future realities and eternal realities. That’s what he’s saying here in Romans 14:16-21, “Therefore do not let what is for you a good thing be slandered; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is pleasing to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another. Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense. It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles.” Next principle, eighth. If you have freedom, don’t flaunt your freedom. And if you’re being strict about this, don’t expect others to have the same level of strictness. Romans 14:22, “The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God.” Then ninth, the last principle, remember that anyone who lives according to their own conscience, who stays in their lane conscience wise, will be blessed. Romans 14:22b-23, “Blessed is he who does not judge himself in what he approves. But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.” Blessed is he who does not judge himself in what he approves. I appreciate this short little summary from Andy Naselli. He says “We must never allow the conscience of others to determine our own conscience. But we must always consider the conscience of others when we determine our own actions.” I think that’s well put. We’ll end it there. And I hope we’ll be able to enjoy fellowship tonight around the food trucks, with some eating meat, some eating vegetables, some eating ice cream, some eating nothing at all, all in good conscience. Let’s pray.