Developing A Clear Conscience

I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day. 2Timothy 1v3 

The devil has managed to intimidate Christian people with his lies that he presents as truth. These things are very easy to believe because they make the most sense. I am talking about how he brings Christian people into remembrance of their mistakes and shortcomings and then convince them that they are not
worthy before God. This is through guilt and self-condemnation. You know, the Word never encourages anyone to feel guilty when he/she sins. Actually, it’s not biblical to feel guilty

or to worry (meditate) about your sins that you will have committed. After looking at the scripture that tells us that we have no more condemnation in our last message, we will now look at how to effectively get rid of self-condemnation. The best way to do this folks is by
developing a clear conscience towards God. Conscience is the moral sense of right and wrong. It is the inner man that talks on the inside. It tells you to hate, to love, to like, to stop, to proceed, to do etc. depending on how it is trained.

A clear-conscience is not merely in denying the wrongs you have done, but it is denying those wrongs the power to carry any significance in your new life in Christ

 How you train your conscience determines how you will act and react. The conscience is the inner man, it is your spirit. When the Bible talks about your spirit it is not talking about the Holy Spirit in you, it is talking about your conscience.  Have you ever wondered why some brethren always talk about how much they hear from God yet you have never heard a single voice that you can pin point and say ”God told me this.“ The reason why people talk this way and you personally don’t have a similar testimony is not because they are superior or God loves them more than He loves you; the reason is that those people have conditioned their spirits (conscience) to be able to hear from God. You are the one to determine what your spirit man will say to you, depending on how you train it. Train it in accordance with the Word of God.

Backgrounds also shape the conscience of many people. Some grew up in child headed families, some were ill-treated as they grew up and some grew up in good families with all love and comfort; and all these backgrounds shape the people’s mindset and conscience.

Now let us look at the effects of the conscience to the life of the Christian. The Bible says, For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things (1John3v20). The heart in this case is the conscience, and it is the conscience that condemns. The conscience is that part in you that tells you not to steal because it is wrong. It is that part inside you that whispers to you to greet the old woman you see on the street. It is that part in you that causes your heart to beat hard every time you feel like sinning. It is your conscience, your spirit. I want you to know today that God or the Holy Spirit is not the one that tells you that you have done wrong, it is your own spirit, your conscience. Everyone, born again or not, has a spirit and that spirit is trained by what he surrounds himself with. If you stay with thieves for a long time, your conscience will be trained slowly but surely to believe that there is nothing wrong with stealing. Your heart will cease to beat hard or fast when you steal because your conscience will be adapting to the environment that it is surrounded with. That’s why you see in 1 Timothy 4v1 and 2 Paul tells Timothy that in the last days many shall have their conscience seared with a hot iron, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. Conscience can be seared, insomuch that bad things will become normal. One perfect example of people whose conscience has been seared with a hot iron is murderers. Those people are able to hold a sharp knife and cut off another person’s head without their hearts condemning them, without having nightmares afterwards, and they can kill people every day without a heartbeat to warn them off murdering. The reason why the conscience does not condemn such people is because it is dead; it has been seared with a hot iron. You on the contrary, can’t even look at a dead person, yet someone can afford to kill daily. The difference between the two of you lies in the state of your conscience. Yours has been trained that killing is a sin, the murderer’s conscience has been educated that blood is delicious, and because of the state of the conscience, your attitudes differ.

Now back to my story, the devil is trying to condemn God’s people, taking advantage of their knowledge of their past sins and using it to keep them away from realizing their potential because they are kept under through self-condemnation. The fact that your conscience knows that sin is bad provides the devil with the platform to always accuse you and tell you that God is mad at you, He does not answer the prayers of sinners, you are not worthy, your prayers are making a lot of noise in heaven because of your sins.

Such suggestions, coupled by ignorance of the new creation life in Christ Jesus will cause many Christians to give up on God, thinking that they will return when they have repented fully and feel worthy again to be loved by God. This notion is however one of the elementary stages of backsliding. If the devil can control your conscience then he can control your actions and ultimately your destiny. A corrupted conscience cannot love God, it cannot fear God, and it can never live to please God, as long as the devil has dealt with it. A conscience that knows more of sin than of the new covenant is very dangerous because one will be sin-conscious and unknowledgeable of the new creation life, causing his conscience to condemn him more than to encourage him. Such a conscience is the one that the Bible refers to as a weak conscience(1 Corinthians 8v12).

We have a responsibility as the new creation in Christ to clear our conscience because if it is weak or impure, it destroys every potential in us and keeps us under. If we however clear the conscience we can stick our heads out from beneath the waters of the devil’s control and put him back where he belongs, under our feet. Before I explain how, I want to show you a perfect example of a person who had a clear conscience. There was a man many years ago. This man would go to state officials to collect stamped and signed letters of consent to KILL Christians. He travelled from city to city killing Christians until he became very popular. Familiar story? Yes, his name was Saul. He would murder Christians the same way Churches are being bombed in North Africa. One day he was on his way to another city to kill again, but he had an encounter with the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ Himself and the encounter led to his repentance. On arrival, instead of killing people he preached Christ.

Now what I want you to notice about this man is in 2 Corinthians 7v2. When he wrote to the Church in Corinth, he understood that they still feared him and that they associated him with his past. He then cooled down that belief and said unto them, ”Receive us; we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, we have defrauded no man.“ Just imagine what kind of a prank that was. Just imagine a terrorist who is top of the International Criminal Court’s wanted list appearing at your Church and saying, ”I have never done anything wrong.“ This is exactly what was happening. The whole Church was afraid of Saul, and some who were reading this letter had probably just arrived from a funeral where they had buried their brethren who had been killed by Saul, and yet that same person had all the courage in the world to stand up and say, ”I have never done anything wrong.“ What transpired is that Saul quickly got a revelation, and when he knew that he was a new creation in Christ he understood that old things had passed away and all things had become new(2Corinthians 5v17). This new knowledge gave him the audacity to change his name from Saul to Paul. He changed his identity and refused to identify with the life he had lived in the past. The same is the reason also why he said that the life that I live is not I that lives but Christ lives in me and my life is hid in Christ and I am dead(see Galatians 2v20). Knowledge of what Christ had done in him gave him the audacity to proclaim his identity in front of witnesses that he was innocent of the things that they witnessed him doing. Probably there were even scratches and wounds from the fights that he had had with some Christians, yet he said, ”It wasn’t me.“ That is what I call a clear conscience. A clear-conscience is not merely in denying the wrongs you have done, but it is denying those wrongs the power to carry any significance in your new life in Christ. Just because you are a new creature, you are a new species of being that never existed before, you have no past, that is why God encourages us to remember not the things of old or consider the former things, because they do not count anything. Renew

your mind with the truth that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, and that will enable you to clear your conscience. Look at this:

Whenever our hearts in [tormenting] self-accusation make us feel guilty {and} condemn us. [For we are in God's hands.] For He is above {and} greater than our consciences (our hearts), and He knows (perceives and understands) everything [nothing is hidden from Him]. And, beloved, if our consciences (our hearts) do not accuse us [if they do not make us feel guilty and condemn us], we have confidence (complete assurance and boldness) before God, And we receive from Him whatever we ask, because we [watchfully] obey His orders [observe His suggestions and injunctions, follow His plan for us] {and} [habitually] practice what is pleasing to Him. 1 John 3:20-22AMP

Did you see that? He says if our consciences (our hearts) do not accuse us [if they do not make us feel guilty and condemn us], we have confidence (complete assurance and boldness) before God. The main aim in having a clear conscience is so that we may have confidence and boldness. He asks us to come before the throne with boldness (see Hebrews 4v16). With a clear conscience, you can believe God with complete assurance and confidence, because faith is confidence, and without it you cannot please God.

1Ti_1:5  Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

1Ti_1:19  Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:

1Ti_3:9  Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience.

2Ti_1:3  I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day;

You see then brethren how that we ought to have a clear conscience before God, without thinking of the wrongs that we have done, but thinking of the good that He has done. God has given us a very powerful agent to cleanse us and give us a clear conscience.

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?(Hebrews 9v14)

The blood of Jesus was shed so that we could be cleansed from our sins(1John 1v7) and also so that it could purge our conscience, to make it clean, so that we may have boldness in the presence of God. If your conscience condemns you then you cannot have confidence. This is the main reason why the devil is ever fighting this gospel of having a clear conscience, because as long as people are under the yoke of condemnation, they cannot be a threat to him due to lack of confidence, lack of faith in God. Hebrews 10v22 says ”Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.“ A heart that is sprinkled with the blood from an evil conscience produces full assurance of faith: CONFIDENCE.

 Practice this everywhere you are, make confessions like this one:

   I am a new creature in Christ Jesus; I cannot be condemned because my life is hidden in Jesus. God sees Jesus in me, I have been justified, I have been sanctified, I have been redeemed, I have been made righteous and holy therefore the devil cannot accuse me. The blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin and purges my conscience. I have a clear conscience and I come boldly before the throne of grace…Hallelujah

When you make a mistake, never allow the devil to tell you that God will punish you, rather, open your mouth and declare that the blood cleanses you from all sin. Refuse to be condemned by anyone, anything, or by yourself. When your old friends meet you and say that you used to drink and party together, look them in the eye and say, ”I don’t know what you are talking about, it wasn’t me.“ Do not even think that it is a lie, Paul said it because he understood that the old man had perished with his deeds (Colossians 3v9), and he was a new creature, new species of being that never existed before, with no past. The devil is a historian, be futuristic and tell him his fate. Never be slack to tell the devil that he is a liar. If you have a clear conscience you can pray to God at any time, knowing that He hears you, and because He hears you, you have the petitions that you ask of Him.

Stay blessed and remember, that

Jesus Is Lord! TLG