1c A Call to Holiness: How to Train Your Conscience

Two weeks ago we started our new study on Standing Firm as we live in a post-christian age. During our first week we looked at the need for personal holiness. We looked at scriptural support for that as well as talked about our conscience being our soul’s Emergency Warning System.

Last week we began to look at how to train our conscience so it can shine the light of truth into our soul and help us hold fast to a standard of morality that is laid out in the bible.

Cleanse our Conscience

As part of training our conscience we the need to cleanse our conscience that can only be accomplished through believing in Christ Jesus and our salvation

Clear our Conscience

Next we looked at the need to clear our conscience once we have been saved.

Confessing our Sins

We do this by confessing our sins to God regularly. We need to focus on renewing the relationship between us and God by regular and consistent confession. Be as specific as possible when confessing, I find it a good practice to right after a sin to stop and pray right then. For me this often happens after I have made a flippant or thoughtless comment. When I realize what I have done I try and stop and immediately give a short prayer confessing the sin and actually say “I want to restore the relationship with you God, I don’t want anything in the way between us.” I am not talking about losing my salvation relationship, rather the intimate close relationship I want to foster with my savior.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Once we confess our sins we need to seek forgiveness and reconciliation from anyone we have sinned against. Please take note that I was and am talking about reconciliation with those we have wronged. When we sin against another, the onus is on us to try and make it right, not on the aggrieved party. Also I don’t want you to get the idea that sin doesn’t have consequences, it often does have real consequences here on earth and we may never be able to rehabilitate the relationship. Reconciliation does not mean that things go right back to the way things were. Instead it means that there is no longer any lingering debt or unconfessed sin between the parties.

Restitution

We go along way in reconciliation when we make restitution by clearing any lingering debts so that reconciliation is possible.

Don’t Overlook Indictments

Finally we looked at keeping a clear conscience means not overlooking the indictments from the conscience. We need to do our best to maintain a blameless conscience before God and man. When our conscience does indict us we need to take the steps listed above.

Strengthen Our Conscience

We need to make sure our conscience is giving us true warnings of danger and wrongdoing that is not swayed by emotion, overly fixated on good works as a way to secure our salvation, or to have a week conscience that is easily offended. But we must not seek to exercise our Christian Liberty to the detriment of others.

This week we are going to look at the last way we can train our conscience by:

Guarding Your Conscience

What good is a state-of-the-art alarm system if you don’t pay attention to its flashing lights and wailing sirens? You wouldn’t blithely ignore an alert that your house was on fire or that someone was breaking into your car. In the same way, the believer cannot afford to ignore the cries of the conscience. When it calls us to attention, we need to act. We need to take seriously the warnings it provides and deal swiftly with the sin it identifies. There is no room for a lackadaisical response— we must instantly go to battle with the flesh, thoroughly “putting to death the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8: 13). On the other hand, there is no better way to damage and darken the conscience than to let sin reside within us and fester. That is particularly true when it comes to sins of the mind. Nothing is more destructive and deadly to the conscience than the secret sins of the mind. Indulging in the private thoughts of a wicked imagination is a direct attack on the conscience. It’s an act of open defiance, engaging all of one’s inner faculties in the vile, vicious assault. Those who nurture sinful thoughts can’t hope to have a pure conscience. Sowing such impurity internally corrupts and perverts the conscience, defiling it and rendering it effectively useless over time. God’s people must not buy in to the demonic lie that God is only concerned with the exterior— that sins of the heart and mind are acceptable as long as they remain secret. That false notion undergirded Israel’s system of works-righteousness, and it was one of the first things Christ confronted in His public ministry. That is really the point of the Sermon on the Mount that Josh has been preaching through. The inward private sins, the sins of the mind are just as bad as the outward sins. In truth, there is no such thing as a private, secret sin. The wicked imagination is merely the seedbed of external sin. No one “falls into” immorality or adultery— the sinner indulged those lustful desires internally long before he ever acted on them. In the same way, the thief ’s heart was corrupted by covetousness long before he ever stole anything. Wickedly toying with sin internally is the best way to guarantee that it will eventually manifest itself externally. And in the meantime, the conscience is battered and defiled while its cries fall on deaf ears. We cannot afford the occasional dalliance with sins of the mind. We cannot indulge our sinful imaginations with impunity. If we think the sins of our imagination are truly secret, we’re lying to ourselves. There is no corner of our hearts or minds that is hidden from the Lord. God’s people need to remember that our thoughts are the truest test of our character:

Proverbs 23:7 ESV

for he is like one who is inwardly calculating. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

What goes on in the deepest recesses of our hearts is the best measure of who we really are.

Proverbs 27:19 ESV

As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.

We need to heed the call of Proverbs 4: 23

Proverbs 4:23 ESV

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

We began by saying the battle for personal holiness is won in the conscience. It’s just as easily lost there too. If we’re going to have a conscience worth listening to, we must not misinform it, or abuse and defile it. We need to guard it faithfully — most of the time from ourselves.

Which of these is hardest?