Thursday, September 20, 2012

Consience

Today I want to talk about ones conscience. What is our conscience? It is something that God has placed in man that judges, bears witness, accuses, and excuses. It judges our words, actions, thoughts, motives, attitudes.

There are different kinds of consciences. One of these would be a weak conscience which talked about in I Corinthians 8:9-12. Verse 10 says, " For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols?"

A weak conscience is on that is spiritually weak. It is one that is not established in his convictions. It is one with lack of spiritual knowledge or understanding. It is one that is immature.

Another type of conscience is a good one. 

Acts 23:1 - " Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day."

A good conscience is one that is strong spiritually, and knows right from wrong. Not only knows right from wrong but does what is right. A good conscience is a clear conscience. 

 Of course the opposite of a clear conscience is a guilty conscience. (Hebrews 10:22) This is a conscience that knows right from wrong, but does wrong.

Another kind of conscience is a defiled or corrupt conscience. 

Titus 1:15 - "To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted."

This is ungodly conscience or an unregenerate conscience. It is the unbelievers conscience.

The las kind of conscience we will look at is the seared conscience.

I Timothy 4:1-2 -  The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits  and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. "

This is the good conscience which has been seared through deception and rebellion. It is the conscience that over time has resisted the word of the Lord until it no longer hears the voice of the Lord. One can have a partially seared conscience which is a conscience that has been hardened to a specific area of sin.

The question we must ask ourselves today is what kind of conscience do we have?

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