Scriptures Inform the Conscience

It- it's, it's really, it's really, really quite astonishing sometimes when you realize the degree to which it is.

And what can happen as a result is well-meaning Christians in that environment can come away with assumptions that, again, may be well-meaning, but also misplaced and, and perhaps even somewhat dangerous, for lack of a better term.

I don't...

Uh, that sounds a little dramatic, but you'll know what I mean here in just a second.

And, and I wanna look at a couple of passages to illustrate this.

And, and the thing that I talk about so often, uh, and I, I don't know if I've talked about it here in, in Devo much, but I- I've talked about it in our church, and that is that when a, a Christian is saved, when a, when a person first calls upon the name of the Lord, he's justified.

He, he, like the thief on the cross, he has rights as a child of God to the heavenlies right then and there.

That, that position doesn't change.

But at the same time, it goes without saying when a person is first saved, it's not like they automatically have all of the biblical knowledge that they need to have in that moment.

They're not fully sanctified yet.

They have not read the entirety of the Bible yet.

They don't know what all of God's word says yet.

And of course, the word is just that.

It is God's revealed will, his revealed word.

It is his revelation to his people so that they know exactly what he says, how he said it, and how he expects for us to live our lives after the point of salvation.

Uh, the, the person that just got saved is not going to know all of the, um, y- you know, the full mission of the Christian life, if you will, as the person that's been saved, at least hopefully, uh, the person that's been saved 10, 20, 30 years will be on that path, um, having consumed a lot of scripture, meditated on it, and things like that.

And so the thing that I often, kind of a refrain I bring throughout my teaching in our church is that the word of God is what informs our conscience.

The word of God is what informs our conscience.

The conscience of humanity is a good thing.

At the time we're born, it is enough to tell us there is a God and that things like killing are bad, and that things like stealing are bad.

So it is like it's preprogrammed with the law of God, uh, the, the base-- the moral law of God.

And Paul in Romans 2 teaches us this much.

Every human being ever born is preprogrammed with the moral law of God impressed upon their conscience, which is enough to keep them out of big-time trouble, but it's not quite enough for them to underst- well, to have a saving faith.

It's not enough for them to know, "Okay, I know there's a God out there.

I look in the sky.