“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart
in full assurance of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us
from a guilty conscience.”

Has anyone ever told you that?

It sounds like pretty good advice.  Actually it is not.  You see not everybody’s conscience is alike.  Your conscience might be telling you that a certain behavior is good.  Another person’s conscience might be telling them that the same behavior is bad.  Lets take drinking alcohol for an example.  Chances are there are some people here this morning that believe drinking alcohol is wrong. There are other people that believe drinking is right as long as the person is of drinking age.  Chances are there is a third group of people that believe drinking is right even if the person is not of legal age but as long as the person drinks responsible.

Who is right?  That depends on whom you ask and what their conscience dictates.

Do you see the point?  To tell someone to “let their conscience be their guide” could mean something different than what you intended and it could be dangerous.

It could be dangerous for a couple of reasons.

First, there are some people who just don’t have a conscience.  Whether they weren’t taught right from wrong as a child.  Whether they chose to rebel and live by their own rules.  For whatever reason, and there are plenty more then the two I mentioned, people choose to bend, ignore and even break the acceptable standards of right and wrong.

People do and justify doing strange things all for the sake of getting ahead.  So what if they had to cheat a little, if they had to stab a fellow worker in the back, if they had to take credit for an idea that was not their own.  As long as it got them what they wanted or where they wanted to be they felt justified.  It would be dangerous to say, “Let your conscience be your guide.”  Because what is right to them is what benefits them even if it means denying the truth of God’s Word.

The sad truth is we live in a society that seems to condone such behavior.  Our culture’s attitude is, “you have to do what you have to do.”  It is a ‘dog eat dog’ world.  Sadly this attitude is held by people who profess a faith in God not just people who don’t.

The second reason why we shouldn’t say ‘let your conscience be your guide can been seen in Peter.  Peter reflects another kind of conscience, a guilty conscience.  I am not talking about the type of guilt we have when we do something wrong that prompts us to ask God and someone for forgiveness.  I am talking about the prolonged guilt that we hold onto long after God has forgiven us.  The kind of guilt that prompts someone to say, “I will never be able to forgive myself.”

There was a man in his late twentys who lived across the street from me when I was growing up. He stood about 6’8” and walked with a slight limp, lived with his parents and had a drinking problem.  The limp was a result of an automobile accident.  One semester break he and a couple of roommates were driving home from college, where he was a basketball star with a promising career.  He fell asleep behind the wheel.  His roommates were killed and his leg was badly shattered.  He could never put the tragedy of that accident behind him.  His guilty conscience kept “raising its bony finger day and night to condemn him: “You did it! Guilty! Condemned you are!  Unworthy! Disqualified!”  His guilty conscience lead to his drinking problem.

Like Peter there are times you and I need to

Every time you or I cling to a past sin.  Every time that your conscience questions your love for God because of a sin you commit.  Every time you neglect to pray, or worship or receive the sacrament because you feel unworthy, you are denying God.  You are denying God because God said,

With a guilty conscience

Ron Susek states in his book God Will Answer “Your conscience doesn’t give you a true assessment of your standing with God.  It condemns you years after God has pardoned you.”

To advise someone to let his or her conscience be their guide is to say that your conscience has divine authority over your life.  Instead of your conscience let the Bible, God’s Word be your guide, then you guide your conscience.

It is time for us to take our conscience and demand that it believe God’s Word. Insist that your conscience believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, that the Bible is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that your conscience believe God’s mercy and grace triumphs over judgment.

A conscience once converted and trained in the way of grace is no longer a robber of God’s promises and grace.