B, The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany - 1 Corinthians 1b-3 "A Conscience Known by God"

To see, to know, and to love.   Paul encourages the Corinthians to use their knowledge in a right way that upholds the person whose conscience is weak.  Use your God-given faith in a way, that encourages those who are weak, to have their consciences strengthened by God alone! 

Paul teaches the hearer about the direction of knowledge.  Paul says, “…we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up.  If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.  But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”  (1 Corinthians 8:1b–3 ESV)

To see, one is known by God, is to know that God knows the whole truth of who we are, and not just the half-truths we want others to see.  This is the faith to which God calls his church on earth, through Paul’s letter to the Corinthians!  It is a change of direction that sees knowledge, as not what we know, but that we are known by God!

For those who wish truly to be Christian in belief and practice, the organ of faith is the ear.  True God given faith is nurtured when one hears the Word of God.  Not to our immediate glory, but, to God’s glory.  This is how followers of Christ, see, know, and love. 

We see, know, and love, trusting that the bible is the Word of God.  So, truly believing, one allows the Holy Spirit to lead one to works that, glorify God, and love our neighbour, which encourages them to glorify God too.

Moved by the Holy Spirit, this is what Paul teaches the Corinthians about eating food offered to idols.  God schools the Corinthian believers to look outwardly in what they do, so the weak are not led into sinning with their conscience.

Those who are weak, are the weak in faith, new Christians, and those unbelievers before whom the Christian faith is lived, in the hope of winning them for Christ.  Those who are weak, are weak because they have not one organ of faith, but many.  The ear, the eyes, sensations, feelings, touch, and taste, all contribute to one’s heart, and therefore, the collective tastes and feelings of the community’s conscience.

The difference between a believer’s conscience and an unbeliever’s conscience is that being known by God, the flow of knowledge is reversed.  Our knowledge brings a knowledge of our weakness that leads to repentance, receptive forgiveness, and joyful service, rather than a knowledge that puffs up!

Because the Christian Church lives in the world, we continue to struggle with the knowledge to love our neighbour, and please God.  This comes about, by what the world teaches us about knowledge, and how we allow a worldly understanding of knowledge to be impressed on God’s church.

We need to know what the conscience is! 

There is both the conscience of an individual and then there is the conscience of a community, or a collective conscience.

The conscience of an individual is moulded by a group’s conscience.  Conscience comes from a Latin word that means, “being privy to knowing”.  Having a conscience is having “shared knowledge” or “knowing together”. 

For a worldly knowledge or conscience, one sees and experiences what is going on around them and it becomes the norm, and then it’s expected to be common practice.  When one works with a worldly conscience one survey’s the self, fashioned by their experiences and emotions, and then their conscience places faith within what one hears from there heart!  The heart becomes conformed to the world, to keep in step with the shared experiences of the world. 

With our hearts driven by the world and its opinions, the church is oppressed, when we seek to impress, or allow, a worldly conscience to steer God’s church.  The direction of the conscience is turned about face.  As a result, our knowledge of good and evil is gleaned from the world and driven by the feelings of the heart, rather than God and his Word having singular authority.

The bible, God’s written Word, becomes a book that just “contains” words about God, rather than “being” the holy and inspired Word of God, written down by faithful servants of God.  With worldly suspicions then one can pick and choose what one wants to take from God’s Word.  Parts can be rejected because, those who wrote it were working with an alternative agenda.  In short, one then can stand in judgement over God’s Word, rather than remain under and in submission to it.

So called believers, no longer believe the Word of God.  But believes what the heart feels about the Word of God.  Knowledge is not being known by God.  But becomes puffed up in protecting what one thinks is God. 

Dear friends in Christ, when we do this, we stand naked before God, with an idol of God in our hearts. This idol is an image of the heart that imagines that we know something.  The idols of our imaginations tell us plainly that we do not yet know as we ought to know.  This faith is not from the Holy Spirit but from the imaginations of our human spirit, without the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  This faith covers what is truly known by God, our sin!

The Old Testament word for conscience is heart.  A heart pleasing to God is that which sees with the ear!  However, one’s heartfelt feelings that misplace having a true heart for God, is a common teaching we’re called to hear in God’s Word as sin. 

Jesus says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:21–23 ESV)

The first mention of man’s heart is recorded in Genesis chapter six, causing God to send the flood. 

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”  (Genesis 6:5–6 ESV)

When we become conscience bound by anything other than God and his Word, it grieves God to his heart. 

Jesus pleases God the Father.  He does not turn away from following the Father.  Therefore, he is set apart as holy.  In his holiness, he became like you, without doing what you do, to set you apart from the evil intentions and thoughts of your heart, that is your nature and its sin.  By his holiness he continually prays before our Father in heaven and sends the Holy Spirit to make you holy. 

Jesus came to cleanse you and me from the unholiness of our hearts.  Jesus seeks to cleanse your spirit from the common corruption that the Law of God reveals in the heart, but that the world feels and says is okay.

Humanity’s sinful nature, from Adam and Eve, throughout the ages, to the end of time, seeks to reject the Word of God, outrightly, as a lie!  Even within the church it’s in our nature, to water down God’s Word to the point where we, with the world, are tempted to regard the Word of God as a lie.  With the world, our hearts become deceived in a shared knowledge, that evil is good and good is evil.  Humanity’s collective conscience of the “good and evil” lie, replaces the truth. 

Isaiah warned the priests and the people of Jerusalem, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!  Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”  (Isaiah 5:20–21 ESV)

This same puffed-up worldly conscience continues to deceive pastors and people in the church today!  Many are shamed by the truth of God’s Word and have turned to idols of God in their hearts.  The love of God is exchanged for an image, a contrary imaginary puffed-up love.  

This love is a lie!  It’s love that’s opposite to a love of being known by God.  It’s a love that hinders the Holy Spirit, making us unable to serve our neighbour, like Christ serves us. 

Instead of hearing God in his Word, a worldly heart seeks the word within one’s conscience, deflating one’s knowledge of the power and holiness of God’s word within themselves.

However, knowing we are known by God; we stand accused by his holy Word of the Law.  We know, if we stand before God with a knowledge of good and evil based on the conscience of the world, we stand before God, calling what is written in his Word, a lie. 

Knowing that God knows our knowledge of good and evil is a lie, the Holy Spirit unites us with Jesus Christ, so we know Jesus Christ.  We know, he knows us, died for us, and now intercedes for us before our Father in heaven. 

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, pleases God our Father.  The Holy Spirit pleases God our Father and God the Son.  We please God our Father when we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into God’s Word, to cleanse us.  We please God our Father when our hearts hear, receive, and believe Jesus Christ.  We please God our Father when we hear the Word of God, and not what’s within our sinful hearts or within the ways of the world.

Being a Christian requires that we are in the world and not a part of the world.  Jesus sets you apart from the world, so being known by God, you can love your neighbour in the world.

Let us pray.

Change my heart, O God, make it ever true.  Change our hearts, O God; may we be like you.  You are the potter; we are the clay.  Mould us and make us to be set apart as servants like Jesus your Son, in this we pray.  Amen.