· “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).

· “And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the valley” (Ezekiel 8:4).

· “And the Lord said, ‘Behold there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by” (Exodus 33:21-22).

· “They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass” (Psalm 106:20).

· “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:23).

Using these passages and many others, theologians have sought to define God’s glory properly. Charles Ryrie informs us that the glory of God is “the awesomeness, splendor, and importance of God seen in some way.”[1] Jim Berg focuses on God’s greatness when he states that the glory of God is “that unique excellence that makes Him supreme – towering over everything else.”[2] Norman Geisler views God’s glory as “the outward radiance of His nature, and in this light is displayed the outward expression of the inward character of God.”[3] John Piper states, “God’s glory is the beauty of his manifold perfections.”[4] While Wayne Grudem takes a broader tact and attempts to draw in all that Scripture says about God’s glory. In one sense, “God’s glory is the created brightness that surrounds God’s revelation of himself.” This visible brightness is the “manifestation of the excellence of God’s character.” In another sense, the word glory means “honor” or “excellent reputation.”[5]

We can understand the magnitude of God’s glory in the many definitions. I think we can also create a working definition for ourselves. God’s glory is the picture and perfection of the absolute magnitude, greatness, and goodness of our unique God. When we understand God’s glory, we can begin to understand what it means to glorify God.

To glorify God means that we live in such a way that we acknowledge that our existence depends on God.[6] I often say that we glorify God by making Him look as good as He really is. When we live a life that glorifies God, our life paints an accurate picture of all God is as we seek to point to and replicate God’s character. This helps us understand God’s purpose in creation. God created all things to demonstrate who He is. To fulfill that purpose, we must live in such a way that we make God look as good as He really is.

As we study God’s Word and allow it to train our conscience, we find two opposite actions take place simultaneously. We discover that we add restrictions to our conscience. We find that certain beliefs or actions we did not take seriously are, in fact, to be taken seriously. At the same time, we discover that we remove restrictions from our conscience. We learn that some specific actions are not sinful but were engrained into us through tradition or held due to a misunderstanding of God and His Word. Last week we examined what it looks like when we allow God’s Word to train our conscience that some things we previously thought were sin are not sin.

On the other hand, training our conscience also involves adding to our conscience. Sometimes, our conscience should bother us regarding sin, but it fails to do so as we have seared it. It is necessary in these cases to allow Scripture to inform us that our views need to change. We must conform our conscience to God’s Word by refraining from these actions.

Corinth was known in the ancient world for its sinful atmosphere. As a result, the Corinthian church often had to adjust their conscience so that their conscience would convict them of sin. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul takes the church to task for such an incident. Apparently, a church member became engaged in gross, incestuous immorality. Instead of addressing the issues, the church celebrated the fact that this was taking place. The individual did not view his action as a sin. The church members took pride in including this individual. Rather than mourn over sin, they rejoiced over sin. Their conscience was so misinformed and seared it allowed this evil. Paul instructed the church to purge the evil from their midst and to seek righteousness.

Unfortunately, these kinds of instances happen often in the church today. Rather than confine sex to marriage, churches celebrate when couples move in with one another. We allow our feelings and excitement to inform our conscience rather than God’s Word. Instead, we should instruct our conscience with texts like Hebrews 13:4 and seek purity. Only when we fill ourselves with God’s Word can we stand with a clear conscience against the world’s corruption.

As our world becomes more politically divided, we find ourselves falling back into the pattern seen in the Roman Empire. While we indeed should obey God over man, and there are times to resist our government leaders when they violate clear Scripture, we must always seek to honor our government leaders. Yet, honoring bad civil leadership goes against our natural tendencies. We must train our conscience with texts like 1 Peter 2:17 so that our conscience will sound the alarm when we are tempted to engage in conversations and actions that denigrate our civil leaders. As we come to understand God’s Word better, we will arrive at more opportunities to add rules to our conscience and weed out bad rules from our conscience because we will come to a greater understanding of what pleases God.

[1] Naselli and Crowley, Conscience, 64–65.

To use the God-given alarm system of the conscience, we should teach our conscience what those good, right, and true things are. The word discern in Ephesians 5:10 refers to the idea of putting to the test. We should constantly evaluate the situations, thoughts, beliefs, and convictions we come in contact with to understand what pleases God. This testing must have a standard against which we examine all we come into contact. Unfortunately, we often measure our experiences and beliefs according to our feelings. As a result, our conscience responds either by excusing our actions or making dark accusations against us. “Error, human wisdom, and wrong moral influences filling the mind will corrupt or cripple the conscience.”[1]

How, then, should the Christians train their consciences? The writer of Hebrews informs us through one of the most glorious passages of Scripture. In Hebrews 10, the writer demonstrates that Christ has perfectly fulfilled the Law for us. He is the great and better High Priest who has procured our atonement by sacrificing His perfect blood. For millennia, God required sacrifice to atone for man’s guilt. However, these sacrifices did not atone for man’s sin. Instead, they pointed to the perfect atonement that would come through the sacrifice of the Sinless Christ.

Because we no longer stand in condemnation before God (Romans 8:1), we can now confidently enter God’s holy throne room through prayer. As we enter with confidence, the writer of Hebrews challenges us to come with consciences sprinkled clean and washed with pure water. Christians seek to find what pleases God to approach God with a clean conscience. Verses 26-31 reveal that we strive to refrain from sin. While verses 32-39 reveal that we do this by understanding our faith and the sacrifice of Christ.

The author of Hebrews is building off the concept that Paul presented to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 5. As Paul presents a picture of a biblical marriage relationship for the church, he reminds them that marriage is to be a picture of the Gospel. In verse 26, Paul reveals that God has redeemed His church (us) and will present us blameless before God by washing us with the water of the Word. So, we can see that the primary way we train our conscience is through God’s Word. We understand what pleases God by understanding God through His Word. This means that we must constantly study God’s Word. And, as we study, we must do so, not just to re-enforce what we already think, but to challenge, refine, and change what we believe.

Pastors often teach their congregations to allow God’s Word to adjust their framework. We all have a framework by which we think and act. Our default position is to force our framework onto Scripture and use Scripture to bolster our ideas. If we come across a text that challenges our framework, we ignore it. Yet, when we do this, it has tragic results on our conscience. Our consciences remain uncalibrated and give us wrong results. So, we must read Scripture with humility so that it can change our thinking.

Since violating and ignoring our conscience is a sin, it is vital that we train our conscience to rightly warn us of sin. A conscience that fails to warn us of sin is like a smoke detector without batteries. It is hanging on the ceiling, but it is of no use. When the fire starts, we will have no warning. One the other hand, a conscience that warns us of things that are not sin binds us to a legalistic and bitter lifestyle apart from the freedom the Gospel provides. Therefore, training our conscience becomes necessary to a vibrant Christian life.

Each summer my lawn begins to grow. In Michigan, spring often arrives suddenly. Because of the wet environment, the grass grows and mowing becomes a weekly (and sometimes daily activity). As the summer progresses, I need to continually care for my lawn mower. Each week I need to fill it with gas, check the oil level and quality, and maintain the blades sharpness. If I fail to keep an eye on these things, my lawn begins to suffer. In a similar way, our conscience requires consistent maintenance and training.

In Ephesians, Paul informs us that we should train our conscience to understand what pleases the Lord. “For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10 and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8-10). While we once walked in sin and did not care if we pleased God, this is no longer the case. Now we care deeply about what pleases God.

No longer should Christians live like they did as unbelievers. We are children of the light and we must live like it. This involves those things that are good, right, and true. Immediately, one should think of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Our lives are no longer marked by the works of the flesh. The character and pattern of our life should immediately reveal that something different has taken place within us.

In order to use the God given alarm system of the conscience, we should teach our conscience what those good, right, and true things are. Paul informs us that this involves discernment. The word translated discernment holds the idea of testing and examining. A right conscience does not come by accident. Instead, Christians are to intentionally take steps to ensure that their conscience understands what pleases God.

With any discussion surrounding the conscience, we must remember that it has been impacted by the fall. If we fail to understand this critical point, we can fall into serious danger through our conscience. Scripture reveals that the conscience can be seared, scarred, and ignored. When we ignore and violate our conscience, it is a sin and has real-world consequences.

As we ignore our conscience, Scripture reveals that it becomes seared (1 Timothy 4:2). As we ignore our conscience’s warning, we stop feeling its pangs. In high school, several of my friends and I worked in jobs involving mowing and landscaping. When we started these jobs, we developed blisters on our fingers and palms from our tools. Over time, these blisters hardened into deep patches of dead skin or callouses. The thing about callouses is that you cannot feel anything through them. We would often disgust the girls we knew by taking pins and running them through the callouses. We were able to do so because they were unfeeling. The skin was dead and desensitized, so we received no warnings of pain. This is the illustration that Paul uses for the conscience that no longer warns of impending sin and error. It has been so ignored we can no longer feel it.

In 1 Timothy 4, Paul warns Timothy and the church of impending danger, not from outside the church, but from inside the church. Some who claim to be Christians would move away from God’s Word and lead others with them. They would depart because they would buy into false teaching subtly brought into the church by Satan. While they initially felt the pangs of conscience, they ignored these warnings. They seared their conscience by convincing themselves that their actions were right.

Some who are part of the body of Christ, some who seem to be Christians, will depart from the Word and will begin to make Christianity something that it is not. They will turn away from the theology of the Word and begin to accept and promote the humanism of the world. An important lesson is that a mere profession of faith does not guarantee the actual possession of eternal life. Just because something or someone claims to be Christian does not make it so. We are reminded of the parable of the seeds. Some seeds will appear to take root but are not genuine.

The cause of their departure is not their high intellect. The cause of their departure is not some new revelation. The cause of their departure is not an overwhelming love for people, which drives a desire to make Christianity palatable. No! Paul informs us that the cause of their departure is something far more sinister. It is the false teaching from Satan that makes that which is wrong seem like it is right. Another important note is that these errors rarely come through people easily identified as non-Christians. They are nice people. They don’t seem to be doing wrong. But this is because they have had their conscience seared. These people have no sense of the heinousness of their actions because their consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. By constantly arguing with conscience, stifling its warnings, and silencing its alarm, these people have reached the point where their conscience no longer bothers them. “Grieving the Holy Spirit has led to resisting him, and resisting him to quenching him. Then, through their own rebellion and obstinacy, their conscience will have been rendered (and that will be permanently) seared.”[1]

When we no longer listen to our conscience, it becomes quieter until it is imperceptible. Don Carson notes that this silence becomes incredibly dangerous because we get into the habit of ignoring the conscience even when it is appropriately warning us of evil.[2] Through this repeated abuse, we nullify the conscience and make it worthless. Suppose we persist in setting our minds on earthly things. In that case, we can arrive at the point where we boast about things we should be ashamed of (Philippians 3:19). As we continually defy our conscience, we can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. Sadly, when these warnings fall silent, the danger is not gone. We are in a more perilous position.[3]

As society slides further into ruin, Christians stand in danger of joining in this slide when we ignore our conscience. The writer of Hebrews informs us that our conscience is deceived by sin and, through this deceit, is hardened (Hebrews 3:13). Unfortunately, this hardened conscience falls into pride and becomes further desensitized to sin. This process leads to a vicious cycle through which sin desensitizes our conscience, and our desensitized conscience leads to more sin. Romans 1 indicates that as society slides deeper into this cycle, God judges the culture by removing his presence and allowing sin to be its just result.

Ignoring the conscience becomes one of the most dangerous actions a Christian can take. Through this action, the Holy Spirit’s tool in our lives to warn us of sin falls silent. We begin a slide into deeper sin without shame because we sear our conscience. As we make decisions, then, it becomes vital that we listen to our conscience. While others may think we are soft or foolish, listening to your conscience is a sign of wisdom.