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Well, praise the Lord. Lets open the Bible to 1 Timothy.
1 Timothy Chapter 1. And we will read verse 5.
But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart
and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
Lets read it one more time. The goal of our instruction
is love from a pure heart and a good conscience
and a sincere faith. Tonight we will focus on these two words "a
good conscience." So what we want to look at and discuss, and
ask some questions about is the idea of conscience
and a good conscience. This is really important.
If you start to study the Scriptures they say a lot about the conscience.
And it's interesting you can see how central it is,
because he says here "This is the goal of everything we are doing."
We are reaching out to people and the Christian life ought to produce, he mentions three things.
It ought to produce love, we know that. If there is no love, you are not a Christian.
He wants there to be love in the midst of the church.
The second thing he mentions is a good conscience. So part of the result of becoming a Christian
is that God will give us a good conscience. So I want to talk about this and I hope this
will benefit everyone that is hear listening. We are going to talk about the good conscience.
This is talking about the believer, the goal of our instruction.
But first I want to focus on the conscience as it relates to the unbeliever.
What is the conscience of an unbeliever like? And the reason why I want to look at that
first, before we talk about the good conscience, is just to see the contrast.
I think seeing the contrast will help us gain an appreciation for what a good conscience
is. So let me start with a question.
What is conscience? What does that word mean?
How would you define it? What would you guys say?
So, what is it? With knowledge, is kinda a literal rendering
of it. Having knowledge.
What does it mean? An innate sense of right and wrong.
So, it's that you know right and wrong. It's that you have a sense of right and wrong
and Richard said "It's this innate sense." What do you mean "innate sense" break that
down. "Built it."
Built it, internal. And that's a pretty good way to think about
it. When you talk about the conscience you can
think about it as this inner knowledge that tells you about right and wrong.
And it's something that God wants to be good. Here it says "good conscience"
but what are some other adjectives in Scripture? Or even just in common speech, that we will
attach to the word conscience. Good conscience.
Clear conscience. Defiled conscience.