Episode Transcript
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
1 John 3:19–20 (HCSB)
This is how we will know we belong to the truth and will convince our conscience in His presence, even if our conscience condemns us, that God is greater than our conscience, and He knows all things.
CONSIDER
Let your conscience be your guide. We hear stuff like that all the time. People readily equate the work of the Holy Spirit with one’s conscience. It’s not so. Just as John began in chapter 1 dealing with the deception of the self-assured people who claimed to have no sin, now he turns to another group of potentially self-deceived folks on the other side of the fence. In today’s text, John addresses those whose consciences may be deceiving them.
Consider this hypothetical situation: the preacher at First Sinners Church preaches a sermon in which he strongly confronts the congregation on their lack of care for people in need. The congregants respond in one of two very different ways. One group agrees with the preacher’s assessment and immediately heaps shame on themselves for their failure. The other group rises up in pride-filled indignation that the preacher would say such a thing to them. Group 1, the self-shamers, feel as though they should have done more. They slink downward in a type of self-condemnation that masquerades as their individual consciences. Group 2, the self-justifiers, rise up in stiff-necked self-defense.
What I want us to notice is that the responses of group 1 and group 2 are really the same; they are two sides of the same coin. Both revolve around a self-oriented way of thinking: self-abnegation on the one hand and self-assuredness on the other. Each has a completely different yet totally related way of dealing with the issue. The shame people think they are bad. The pride people think they are good.
The massive and glaring problem is that when people are self-absorbed they can’t think about others. What about the people in need? This is why we should trust neither our confidence nor our consciences. John exhorts us to examine the evidence. Just because a person feels as if they have cancer doesn’t mean they have cancer. There’s a simple way to find out. It’s called a biopsy. Just because a person feels she has a healthy heart doesn’t mean her heart is healthy. There’s a way to find out.
This is how we will know we belong to the truth and will convince our conscience in His presence, even if our conscience condemns . . .
So what is the “this”? It’s the previous “this,” from verse 16, which is better explained in verse 18:
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. . . . Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
We know we belong to the truth if our love is characterized by the inside-out dynamic of truth. Truth is ever asking the question, Is our inward reality of love becoming the outward activity of love? If not, then we can question whether we belong to the truth. It’s not a question of how much is enough. That’s the misleading math of the conscience. We can always do more. The issue isn’t quantity of activity but quality of activity. If we are measuring quantity, it’s usually about what we’ve done. If we are measuring quality, it’s more about who we’ve helped. Both now and in the end, we can trust God.
John closes today’s text with this: God is greater than our conscience, and He knows all things.
Bottom line: Do your best to love others. Trust God with the rest.
PRAY
Lord Jesus, save me from the twin traps of self-justification and self-abnegation. Set me free from these self-oriented ways of thinking, that I might become able to give myself away. Thank you for showing us what love is. Make it manifest through my life to others. I pray in your name. Amen.
