Holding the Mystery of the Faith with a Clear Conscience Part III

Transcript (edited for readability).

I want to speak in this evening session on the gift of a clear conscience. And I'll be distinguishing between two things, the clear conscience and the good conscience. And I'm aware that in doing so, I'm making a distinction that very few commentators and scholars make. But while there's an overlap between a clear conscience and a good conscience, they are not exactly the same thing. The clear conscience comes first, and the good conscience is the result of having a clear conscience. So I want to talk about the gift of a clear conscience, the gift of a good conscience. It's not enough for us just to have a clear conscience before God. But God gives us a good conscience.

My motto for this evening session is: first white and then green. First white, then green. And in coining that motto, I recall the promise of God in the prophet Isaiah, chapter one, verse 18, where God says, though your sins are as scarlet, bright, vivid, in your face, they shall be as white as snow. Scarlet, white as snow.

What I find fascinating is the way the environmental movement has developed from nothing to the dominant ideology in my lifetime. If there is a universal ideology, if you like, a general religion, it is the religion of environmentalism. From nowhere, it's become pervasive. And the reason it becomes so pervasive is that it has fastened on a very powerful biblical image, which is the image of pollution. Now strictly speaking, environmental disorder has little or nothing to do with pollution. The pumping of carbon in the air doesn't pollute the air. Carbon is a natural substance. What is it that is so powerful about the imagery of pollution and why does it happen to fasten so strongly on people's consciences and motivate them so deeply? I wish I had time to explore that more fully, but it's worth reflecting on.

If I can just do a little bit of an aside. When doctors first discovered germs in the 19th century, they had great difficulty in communicating what germs were and what infection was, until they identified germs with dirt, and health with purity. And once they did this, it sold itself. They locked into one of the most universal categories, clean and unclean. The racist fascists got nowhere until Hitler and his cronies started speaking about racial purity and racial impurity. And once they identified a certain race as clean and another one as unclean, basically they managed to take over a whole nation. Likewise, environmentalists, as soon as they've fastened onto these categories of clean and unclean, basically it's selling itself. Clean, unclean. The modern motto is: green equals clean.

There are two pictures that I want you to have in your mind as I speak. The first picture is of a clear mirror. If a mirror is not clear, it gives you a bad reflection of yourself, you can't see yourself. The purpose of a mirror is so that you can do what is otherwise impossible, which is to see your own face. It's very interesting that God has constructed us in such a way that we see other people's faces, but we don't see our own face. Even when you look at yourself in the mirror, you realize — I don't know whether it's ever occurred to you — you don't see yourself the way you are. Everything's reversed, the opposite way. And things are flattened out. The dimensions are lost. Do you realize you have never, ever seen yourself? Other people see you, but you don't see yourself. Strange phenomenon. God constructs us in such a way that the only way we can see ourselves is through other people and through him. But the mirror gives us some idea of what we are like. And so God's word, and God's law, is a mirror to us, showing us the way God sees us.

The second picture that I want you to hold in mind — let me talk about a clear conscience being like a clean mirror. The second thing is that it's like a clear window. Now, windows have two functions: they let the light in, and they let your sight go out. If you have a clear conscience, the light comes into you. And the result — that's the clear conscience — the result is that you can see out and you see what's out there outside of yourself. You've got those two pictures? They summarize what I'm going to talk about.

It's true, I believe, that there's a general desire within every normal, healthy human being for a good conscience. A good conscience, which comes from the feeling that I, and my life, is in good order, in good shape, healthy, so that I can feel good about myself and can think well about myself. The last thing that I want is to despise myself, to loathe myself, to hate myself, to feel that I am useless, worthless, ugly, unclean. Otherwise, why do we spend so much time with our appearances? Why do you women wear makeup? These are very, very profound human reactions, that we want to present ourselves in the best possible light. So I want to think well of myself. So I've got dressed up this evening. I put on a suit, tie. Okay, because I want to present myself for your approval.

Now, what is the Christian experience of a good conscience? There are four important things that I'd like to put to you. It's not new. You know this. So I'm merely repeating, and from a different angle, what you already know.

We receive a good conscience as a gift, and it comes to us not as a result of anything we do, but through faith in Jesus Christ. It's the result of what we receive from him, rather than the fruit of our good behavior, our right behavior. My good conscience with my wife has to do with my behavior, and her assessment of my treatment of her and her approval of me. But when it comes to God, I cannot give myself a good conscience by my behavior, but I receive a good conscience through faith in Jesus. So faith is decisive.

Secondly, it's a gift of what we have from God. There are four times that I've listed there where, in the New Testament, the writers speak about having a good conscience. Now, the word "having" there doesn't necessarily mean possessing in the sense that, okay, you get a good conscience, you have it in your pocket, and you keep it for the rest of your life. But you have a good conscience as a gift, the way I have my wife. I don't possess my wife, but I receive her and her love every day of my life. We have a good conscience as a gift from God.

Thirdly, a good conscience comes from a clean or a clear heart. As I said before, the heart is the whole inner person — with all of what we'd call the mind with all its faculties — and a clean heart results in a clear conscience. So cleansing is important. The basic premise is that all of us have a dirty conscience. To put it most crudely, the dirty conscience needs to be washed for it to function properly and for us to receive God's gifts and to enjoy God's gifts. The cleansing of the heart, the cleansing of the conscience, comes through justification by grace through faith. I spoke about that last session. So it's something that comes to us through faith in Jesus, through his word. It comes as a complete and utter gift to us and as a result of our justification before God. Remember where I ended last session: since you have faith in Jesus, God looks at you and says the same words about you that he said about his dear Son. He says to you, you're my beloved son, you're my beloved daughter, I'm well pleased with you. As I said, what could be better than that?

Now, we have the gift of a good conscience through baptism. This is very important, not just for us as Lutherans, but for all orthodox Christians. But it's also most challenged here in North America because you're basically a Protestant country. And if there's one classical Christian teaching that's constantly being challenged, it is the doctrine of baptism and the understanding of baptism. And it's not just from your Baptists, but it's also being misunderstood and misapplied within Roman Catholic and Orthodox circles — the right understanding of baptism.

Just listen to the connection that St. Peter makes between baptism and a good conscience. This particular passage was very important to Luther and to our Lutheran fathers and mothers. Peter says baptism — and here comes the surprise — baptism now saves you. Notice the present tense, which is emphasized by the "now." Baptism didn't just save you when you were baptized, but it saves you when? Now. Okay, there's a riddle for you. Baptism now saves you. Then it goes on: not as the removal of dirt from the body, like the washings of the Old Testament, like your morning bath or shower. Here comes the critical point. Baptism now saves you as the appeal to God for a good conscience. How does baptism save you now? Through the appeal to God for a good conscience.

There's a lot there that I want to unpack. How is this possible? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right side of God, with angels, authorities and powers having been subordinated to him. Note here, first of all, the emphatic "now," which is a continual ongoing eschatological now. Now, today, tomorrow, for every day of your life, baptism now saves you. Notice that present tense — not just past, not in the future, on the last judgment. Both those are true, but here and now it now saves you. And you are now saved through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's because the risen Jesus not only rose from the dead, but he is present with you, and he rules over the whole of the cosmos, heaven and earth and all creation. He is the cosmic ruler. He's present here and now. So because he's present, baptism now saves, or to paraphrase it, the risen Lord Jesus now saves you through baptism.

The risen Lord Jesus is our mediator who brings us to God and brings God to us. That's the verb that Peter uses just immediately before this passage. The Greek verb there is a liturgical term. It's used for access to God. He brings us to God, the way the priest brought the sacrifices to God in the Old Testament. So Jesus, if you like, picks us up. He's there, he's here with us now, and he carries us. He leads us in, he ushers us into the presence of God the Father.

Now, there's a huge problem here, because if you bring a sinful, unclean person into the presence of a holy God, what's going to happen? Well, the same thing that's going to happen if you bring gasoline into the presence of fire. The fire will burn the gasoline. The same thing will happen if you bring light into the presence of darkness — what does light do? It dispels the darkness. Bring a sinner, naked, unclothed, apart from Christ into the presence of the holy God, and the result is wrath and death. But Jesus is our mediator. And he's the one who cleanses us, so that we can stand before God cleansed, pure, washed, white as snow, so that we don't come under God's judgment and condemnation, but we experience God's approval, God's justification of us.

Notice the analogy here that Peter draws between the cleansing of the body. He says baptism now saves you, not by the removal of dirt from the body. What do you just say? Yes, there is a kind of a cleansing, but it's not the kind of cleansing that happens when you take a bath or have a shower. It's not that occasional cleansing. There's a contrast between that and the gift or reception of a good conscience. So it doesn't say baptism saves because it removes dirt from us, the pollution from our bodies, but it removes the pollution from our conscience. Baptism does this. Just as you have a daily bath, so you have the daily gift of a good conscience. Now, what Peter emphasizes here is the daily ongoing reception of salvation and a good conscience, from the risen Lord Jesus through baptism.

Now, one of the Lutheran — I was going to say heresies, that's too strong — one of the common Lutheran misunderstandings is this. And you'll find it everywhere with our members and with many pastors. I'm baptized, therefore I am saved. That's the end of the story. I'm baptized, therefore I'm justified, I'm saved, end of story. It's true. But it's only partly true. In and through baptism, we are given a clear conscience, but we don't possess a conscience. We have, if you like, access to a good conscience. And it's something that we keep on receiving. Notice what St. Peter says. Baptism now saves you. How? Through the appeal to God for a good conscience. Not through the possession of a good conscience, but the appeal. So since I'm baptized, I have access together with Jesus to God the Father, and I can pray for what? I can appeal for what? A good conscience. And that's now. Not just then in the past. It's not in the future, on the last judgment, but here and now.

Luther makes a very helpful distinction that I find is very, very important between the ceremony of baptism, which occurs at one point in time — now, I can give you the date of my baptism, that's past tense, it's never repeated, like my wedding, there's a particular day when I ceased to be single and I became married. So he draws the helpful distinction between the ceremony of baptism and the baptismal state, or the baptismal life. And he uses the analogy of marriage. He says, okay, it's not just that I have been married, but if you ask me, I never say, I have been married, I say I am married — and this tells you, your lady's here, I'm married — okay, the state of marriage. The result of the ceremony of marriage is the state of marriage, and my marriage is a lifelong enterprise. Or adoption too. You know, if you were born illegitimate and adopted, you're adopted at a particular time, and the result of that is that you've had the spirit of adoption, which means you enter the state of being adopted, of sonship or daughtership. Okay. Salvation, justification, the gift of the Holy Spirit, cleansing — all are ongoing activities.

There's a huge Calvinist influence here in North America, which sees justification purely in past tense, either connecting it to predestination, or Christ's death, or my conversion. But what they reject is justification as an ongoing thing, that I've not only been justified in baptism, but every day, every Sunday, I experience or receive justification. It's an ongoing thing. It's not just that I have been saved, but I am being saved, I will be saved. Or to take another point: I didn't just receive the Holy Spirit as a gift when I was baptized or converted or spoke in tongues — you get the different points of view — but I received the Holy Spirit when? Every day. Particularly every Sunday. What baptism opens up to us is the ongoing reception of salvation, the ongoing reception of cleansing, the ongoing reception of justification, the ongoing reception of the Holy Spirit.

So a good conscience is the result of salvation. Did you note this connection? Baptism now saves you. How? By the appeal to God for a good conscience. The word that Peter uses here for appeal has to do with prayer, but it's not any prayer. It's a legitimate or authorized request. You see, I could make a request, ask President Obama to give me a million American dollars. Okay, even if I could have access to him, his minders would make sure that I could never approach him, and if I wrote a letter to him, it would never reach him. Why? Because my appeal to Obama, my request, is not authorized. It's not legitimate. An appeal, the term for appeal, is a legitimate, authorized request. So, as a result of baptism, we have been authorized to do what? To pray, to ask for, to appeal to God for a good conscience. And that's not just something that's authorized, but it's been mandated by God. It's what he wants us to do. It's what he requires us to do. We need to appeal daily for a good conscience.

Now, there's a nice double pun here. Peter says baptism now saves you as the appeal to God for a good conscience. Now, that has two senses. It is the appeal for a good conscience, but also it's the prayer that comes from a good conscience. The two go together. So I appeal for a good conscience. And if I have a good conscience, then I appeal for salvation and all the gifts that Christ wants to give to me. Now, the surprise here in this text is, as I've already been emphasizing, the emphasis on the ongoing appeal to God for a good conscience rather than the possession of a good conscience as a result of baptism. So what baptism does is give us access to a good conscience, not as something that we have, and that's the end of the story, but it's something that we pray for. Every Sunday when we go to church, it's something that we pray for every morning, every evening. It's ongoing appeal. It's not something that we ever possess, but it's always received from God.

Luther puts this beautifully in his Small Catechism, in the last part where he talks about what is the significance of dying and rising with Christ. He speaks about daily repentance and daily renewal by the Holy Spirit. Daily repentance, daily renewal — you could say daily washing, daily cleansing, daily justification. So the fact that I'm baptized affects my daily life. So baptism is the foundation for a life with a good conscience. And the good thing about it is that it takes the issue of conscience away from myself and puts it outside of myself, on something that I can depend on. How can I be sure that I'm justified, saved, that I have a good conscience? Because I have been baptized — not "have been" baptized, because I am baptized. That's the significance. I am baptized, therefore I have the gift of a good conscience. But notice it's a unique gift. It's a gift that you never possess, but it's a gift that you keep on receiving. It depends not on water, like your daily bath, but it depends on the word of God, which leads to faith in God's word, which leads to prayer, the appeal to God for a good conscience.

So a good conscience is not something you can presume on or possess, but it's something that you receive every day. Just as every day we sin, just as every day people sin against us, just as every day Satan accuses us and condemns us, so every day we can — we are mandated, privileged — to ask God for what? A clear conscience, a good conscience, a gift from God through baptism. So just as all the benefits that I have as a husband come from my marriage to my wife, so all the benefits of a good conscience come to me because of my baptism.

I've spent some time on this because this is one of the most precious parts of our Lutheran doctrine that needs to be taught again and again and again, and is the foundation for living with a good conscience. It's the basis for it. And God, however, doesn't just leave us there. He doesn't just give us his word, law and gospel. He doesn't just give us the gift of baptism. But he gives us certain things which confirm, prove, demonstrate, or show that we have a good conscience.

Now, let me use an analogy. How can I be sure that my wife approves of me? What shows that my wife approves of me? Answer: she says so. She expresses it. It's much more by what she does than what she says. Even if it's a sense of having sex with me without any complications. Okay? It's by what she does, not by what I do. So her behavior confirms, if you like, my good conscience. My own conscience will tell me, I've done nothing wrong. There's nothing between her and me. Her reaction to me confirms my good conscience. It doesn't produce my good conscience, but it confirms it. You get the understanding?

There are three ways by which our good conscience is confirmed by God. First of all, there's the testimony of our works. How do I know that God is pleased with me? How do I know that my hunch that I have a good conscience, and my feeling that I have a good conscience, is not self-deception? It's by me doing what God has commanded me to do, what God wants me to do. I feel like there's an analogy with marriage. I know things are right in my marriage when I don't fear my wife's disapproval, or I don't feel she's angry with me or she's criticizing me. Things are right. And a symptom of that is that I want to do what pleases her. Now, what does she want? What does she desire? It's a sign that things are right between her and me.

Then secondly, there's the testimony of a good conscience by our reputation before the world. People size us up. People see us. The reputation of our good behavior before others is a testimony to our good conscience. Don't get it wrong, however. It's not that my good behavior and people's approval of me produces a good conscience, but it confirms my good conscience — the testimony of others, of the world. And very often, the strongest testimony doesn't come from Christians, who are most critical of me, but from unbelievers. I've received some of the most powerful affirmation of me as a Christian from unbelievers. Even atheists. Now, there's a paradox for you.

Most important, you have the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit bears witness with my spirit — you have the testimony of the Holy Spirit — to the fact that I'm not playing games, I'm not kidding, I'm not a hypocrite, that I'm honest with myself. And much of the testimony of the Holy Spirit has to do with his conviction of sin and his conviction that I am justified. So you have the testimony of the Holy Spirit to my honesty, but most importantly, to my adoption as a child of God, as a son of God. Paul says the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit — and how do we know that? It's when we call God Father. So the testimony of the Holy Spirit is most clear if I can address God simply and naturally as Father, so that instead of me having to pray, I want to pray to him as Father. Because if I have a bad conscience with my wife, I will avoid her. I won't want to speak to her. But if I have a good conscience, I want to speak to her and will want her to speak to me. I won't fear her criticism. Likewise with God. If we have a good conscience, the result is simple prayer, addressing God as Father. These are the confirmation of a good conscience.

Now, the next three points build on this. The first and the third I've already covered, but they need to be re-emphasized; the second one is a new point. What's the basic character of life with a good conscience? Number one, I have God the Father as my judge, and Jesus my savior as advocate, the advocate before God the Father. I have faith in Jesus, I trust in him, his death for my sins and his intercession for me, his intercession for my pardon and justification before God. And the forgiveness that I receive through faith in Jesus is not just forgiveness now, but every absolution is the verdict and sentence of the last judgment. I don't need to know what God's word will be to me when I stand before his throne on judgment day, because I face him and hear his final judgment every Sunday. Every Sunday, I hear and receive the last judgment. The last judgment says, yes, John, you're a sinner. Yes, John, you are guilty and you are sentenced to death. Yes, John, you are pardoned. And that pardon is the same pardon as in the last judgment; it is, in fact, God's last judgment on me. So I can pass from death to life, there's no condemnation for me, there's no judgment for me. All that is behind me. I needn't fear it anymore. And the result of that word of justification, now, every day, every Sunday, for the rest of my life, is that I can live life, not just with a clear conscience, with no sense of accusation, but with a good conscience, every day of my life.

Now, there's a very interesting and partially helpful teaching of two awakenings within our pietist Lutheran tradition. I know that there are many bad things that have come to us from the Pietist movement, but there are also a number of very good things. Pietist teachers used to speak about two awakenings, on the basis of Paul's word in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 14, where Paul says, it is the light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said, "Wake up, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." The picture here is that the conscience of an unbeliever is like a person who is asleep, but even worse than that, a person who is dead. So before God's word and Holy Spirit shines on us, enlightens us, like this rising of the sun on a new day, I am dead, I'm dead in sin, and I am asleep. Therefore I cannot sense any spiritual realities.

And this is to speak about two awakenings in connection with law and gospel. They spoke about the first awakening, which is that we are awake to God's law and its demands on us. So very often for people who come from unbelief to belief, the first awakening is that they hear the law, the demands of the law, and they try to fulfill the law. They're aware of God as judge and his just demands. And they accept God's demands as being holy and just and good and right. Okay? God is righteous. His law is going to straighten out my life. So you have the awakening to the law and God's demands in the law. But that creates problems, because it leads to self-justification. They said that this needs to be followed by a second awakening, which is the awakening to the gospel. And with the awakening to the gospel, you have the assurance of salvation. So you have the experience of conviction of sin, and then the experience of assurance of salvation.

Now, this is a very helpful teaching, provided that you don't put it in a straitjacket and say it's always got to work that way. They spoke about a particular order of salvation in terms of conversion, and said, you know, I was an unbeliever, had the first conversion to the law, the second conversion to the gospel, and I can date the day when I had the first conversion, I can date the day I had the second conversion, and this only happens once in my life. That's far too crude. In fact, my experience is that this is something that happens to me over and over again. I suspect it's the same for you. You know, I sin, I fall asleep. I need to be awoken once again to God's judgment on me, and then I need to be convicted of my sin before I can receive the assurance of salvation.

Now, if you're interested in following that up further, the most powerful teaching of that is by Bo Giertz. It's in the wonderful book, The Hammer of God. Now, if you haven't read any book on theology, read that. I put it to my students at seminary that they were required to read two books every second year, at least. The first, most important one was The Hammer of God, and the second one was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. Now, for you — and many of you are lay people — I'd say, read The Hammer of God. It's a novel, so it's not abstract theology, it's very practical theology. And there's an immense amount of spiritual wisdom, and wisdom in matters of the conscience. One of the great teachers of conscience is the Swedish bishop, Bo Giertz. I don't know if you know it — how many of you know this book? Oh, thank God. Blessed are you. Okay, it's even there, if you want to look at it.

Okay, the standard for our conscience, as I said before, is God's word, as law and gospel. Now, I need to hammer that. I'm sorry if you get sick of my hammering of this, but it is so important. God's word, not just as gospel, but also as law. God gives us his commandments for a good purpose. You see, all of us have a floating, generic, general sense of guilt. And what Satan does is work in two ways. On the one hand, he gets us to focus on trivial things. So we have what psychologists call neurotic guilt. Little things, trivial things. And in that way, he belittles guilt and trivializes it and gets us obsessing about unimportant things. That's the one hand. But more commonly, he misplaces our guilt, so that instead of us being guilty about the right things, we are guilty about the wrong things.

Now, let me tell you one case that I had recently, a man who'd committed adultery and his marriage had broken up and he'd fallen out with his children, partly because of his obsession with his work and his desire to succeed in business. Later on, in the latter part of his life, he's a wealthy man. He has everything he wants, and yet he doesn't have anything. And at this stage in his life, he's not going to church, but he feels guilty about being rich. He feels guilty about being rich. Not guilty about his failure to his wife and adultery, or his failure as a father, not guilty about the way he's acquired his wealth, but he feels guilty about being rich. And he feels bad about what's happening to the environment. And so that's the focus of his guilt. Okay? The guilt's misplaced. It's focused on human commandments — thou shalt not be rich — rather than God's commandments.

And the worst kind of misplaced guilt is generalized guilt. Now, this is something that I've only really got hold of in my own mind recently, even though I've been confronting it all through my ministry. I've seen it most clearly in my wife, the way the evil one works in my wife. You can always see things more clearly in other people, particularly your spouse. Now, she's a very scrupulous person. Her background's Methodist, and there's a kind of very strong, scrupulous tradition that comes with that, and it's very good. It's very desirable. But in recent times, our pastors everywhere have been hammering congregations that they need to evangelize. Now get off your butts, go out and evangelize. And the classical text for evangelism is Matthew 28: go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So you are to go out and evangelize everybody. Now, she's a very good evangelist in many ways, and she has reached out to many people, but she feels guilty. Why? Because she's not knocking on doors. She's not going out and evangelizing the whole world. So you turn what's gospel into law. Instead of her being a Christian in a station and vocation — which, by the way, is wonderful teaching — it's to go out and do the Mormon thing or something, which goes around door-knocking and reaching out to strangers to try and evangelize. And then the problem is, okay, even when you do it, you feel bad because you do it in the wrong way. In most cases, when you do that, you get a negative reaction and then you get guilt by that, that you did the wrong thing, you didn't evangelize in the right way. Generalized guilt. You see, you take what's guilt and you misplace it, and then you generalize it. You've got to save the whole world.

And so many people feel generalized guilt as far as the environment's concerned. I've got to do something to save the world. They feel guilty because they don't live a sustainable lifestyle. No Westerner leads a sustainable lifestyle. But who said — where's the commandment, thou shalt lead a sustainable lifestyle? Okay? What Satan does is take something that you have relative unease about, and by misplacing it, it becomes general, absolute. So people in Australia feel guilty about our treatment of the aboriginals, the way Americans feel about slavery, or feel guilty about the way our politicians are involved in Afghanistan. Should you feel guilty about the way Obama is working in Afghanistan? No. It's misplaced guilt. And it's so general that you can't do anything about it. So do you get the understanding? You know what I mean by misplaced and generalized guilt. So he focuses away from the real thing to the phony thing.

What God's law does is good because it cuts through — to use an Australian term, it cuts through the crap. It cuts to the quick and shows us what we should feel guilty about, but it also shows us what we don't need to feel guilty about. We can reject all these human commandments, because we have God's commandments. The law is good with its commandments because it diagnoses. It not only shows us what we should do, but it diagnoses our sin, and that's a good thing. Through the law — the law accuses us so that we can be convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit. And in that way, it prepares our hearts and minds for the gospel with its promises of pardon and cleansing from sin, and you have the good news of salvation. But God's law also not only shows us what we need to feel guilty about and convicts us for the sins we've actually committed, but it also shows us what kind of works are pleasing to God. And I want to speak quite a lot about that tomorrow. Because there are two kinds of judgment of God. There's God's judgment of us as people, and there's God's judgment of our works, what we do. We are called not only to please God in ourselves by our faith in Jesus, but to do God-pleasing work. So how do I know what pleases God? I don't have to wait for the inner voice of the Holy Spirit to tell me. I look at the Ten Commandments, and I examine my conscience in the light of the Ten Commandments. So they are my guide to show those things that are pleasing to God.

Now, if what I've said is true, then it makes sense — the strategy of Satan, the evil one, makes sense to us. Just for a moment, think diabolically. And that should come far easier than to ask you to think divinely. Okay, it comes easy to me. And I like doing it. If it is true that the most important thing, the result of my justification, the goal of my justification, is a good conscience — what's Satan going to do? Number one strategy: give me a bad conscience. If a good conscience comes through faith, what's he going to mess with? My faith. So they are the lifelines, faith and a good conscience, so his attack on me is on my faith and my conscience. He attacks my faith in order to attack my conscience.

So Paul, in 1 Timothy, where a lot of the teaching that I'm doing comes from, has this to say at the end of chapter one. I don't know how familiar you are with it. He says, Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction, this charge, in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight. How does he fight the good fight against Satan? Holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these, and so have shipwrecked their faith. Okay, you fight the good fight. Timothy's been called to fight the good fight, spiritual warfare. Fighting the good fight is by holding on to faith and a good conscience. How does Satan attack us? It's by attacking our faith and our good conscience. It's by rejecting these that our faith is shipwrecked. Satan's purpose is to destroy my conscience by undermining my faith in Jesus. And this comes to us most obviously, as I said in the previous session, by the misapplication of law and gospel.

Luther rather ironically calls Satan the best theologian, the angelic doctor — ironically. He knows God's word better than you do, even better than those who've memorized the whole of the Scriptures. He knows the Scriptures. He doesn't believe them, but he knows the Scriptures. And he does his most effective work in the church, and in the conscience — your conscience, the conscience of every Christian — by misapplying law and gospel. As I said, he uses the law to condemn justified sinners. He's called not just the accuser, but the slanderer. Diabolos, devil, means slanderer. What's his slander? Who does he slander? He slanders Jesus. But he also slanders you. What's his slander? You've heard it almost every day of your life. What does he say about you? You're a hypocrite. How can you, Matt Harrison, be in the position of the president of the LCMS, when you think and feel and do these things? How can you, as a sinner, run a sinful church? He slanders us. He slanders us to ourselves and before God. He accuses, he condemns, he slanders us.

And secondly, then, he also uses the gospel not to justify sinners, but to excuse sin. So he tells the lie. He says, it doesn't matter what you do, because you are a Christian, you believe. And it's through that lie that he murders the life in you. He murders your faith through the misapplication of the gospel, by employing, theologically, gospel reductionism. It happens all the time. You can see this all around you, and not in other churches, but in your own church, in every church.

So the gift of a clear conscience comes from the right application of law and gospel. We receive a good conscience through the gospel and no other way. It comes through justification, by grace, through faith in Christ and his gospel. And the result of that is the assurance of salvation and God's approval of you and me.

Now, I'm going to pause there for questions, and I'm going to leave out the next section, which you can look at yourself if we had time. My judgment is that I can't do justice to it in the time available. So I'm about to go over the page to section 10, which leads in a slightly different direction, and I don't know if I'm even going to get through it. But just a pause for any questions. Yes.

[Question about being hated by the world.] True, I guess. Yes. It's not that I don't believe you about that, but I think there's another side that needs to be mentioned. You know, they crucified Christ. And he did say, if they hated me, they're going to hate you. Absolutely. So there's a great deal of, you know, you can do anything you want to do. That's right. Yes. They've hated me, so they're going to hate you. No matter how good you are. In fact, the better you are — and all of you experience this — the better you are, the more they will hate you, despise you. So yes, that's the other side, but that still doesn't annul that other truth. So there are two sides to the standing before the world. And as I see it, the confirmation that comes from a good conscience of being proven before the world is not from society at large, but from individuals. The way I've experienced it is through individuals, rather than generally. Yep. But thanks for raising that. It needs to be qualified.

Yes, back there. Oh, Ron. Great to see you. And Carol. Carol's there too? Yes. Like your hairdo.

[Question about Calvin and conscience.] Yes. That's partly true, because Calvin does have great emphasis on conscience. And by the way, I've listed there a wonderful work which examines the issue of conscience both in Luther and Calvin — Zachman. Whereas for Luther, if you've been following what I say, the important thing about conscience is not conscience, but the word of God, as law and gospel. So Luther keeps hammering the importance of God's word as law and gospel, conviction of sin, assurance of salvation. That's his big theme. He does speak a lot about conscience, and in preparation for this I reread a lot of Luther, and I was surprised where conscience crops up. So I don't think it's a numerical thing, but I think it's a different function. For Calvin, conscience operates apart from the word of God, basically. Whereas for Luther, conscience never operates apart from the external word, the word of God. And for Calvin, the most important thing is not the external testimony of God's word, but the internal testimony of the heart. How can I be sure I'm justified? How can I be sure I'm saved? It is because of this inward testimony, and the feeling that I have and the sense that I have that I am saved or justified. So the internal testimony is the basic thing. Now, Luther was rather suspicious of that. He emphasized the external testimony of the written word as law and gospel. Ron, that's the simplest way that I could put the difference between the two. There's a large amount of overlap, and yet there's quite a difference between the two. It also means that for Luther, faith is far more important than for Calvin; for Calvin, obedience is most important. And the result of obedience is that I have the internal testimony, the evidence within my heart and mind and conscience, that I am justified, that I belong to the elect.

Yes, back there. Where is it? Who is it? Okay.

[Question about the three ways of affirmation and the experience of criticism.] Yeah, I wanted to return to the three ways of affirmation. It seems — I mean, it's obvious that Scripture uses that way, but it seems, though, that quite a few people experience — and also Luther would experience this — the experience of the criticism of your peers. Yes. And your president. Yes. So — He will hear Luther say immediately in his sermons that the art of being a Christian is to not see what you do see and to not feel what you do feel. Yes. Yes. But to see what God's word says. So it's not to see what I feel or what's visible to me, but to see what God's word says the reality is — to see what God's word says is the reality. It seems that a lot of times he describes faith as going against, being the experience of holding to God's word apart from the other confirmation. Yes. Indeed, you're right.

Okay, let's go on. Now, the next point is something that I think needs to be emphasized, because as far as I can gather, it was largely lost in our Lutheran circles ever since pietism swept through. And I can put it very simply and say, what's the purpose of a good conscience? Okay, we've got a good conscience. It's not an end in itself. What's it for? Good practical question. What is the purpose of a good conscience? And if I can give you the answer very simply and then unpack it: the purpose of a good conscience is so that I can receive holy communion for my salvation rather than my judgment. Now, there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the basic purpose. Or to put it more broadly, the purpose of a good conscience is so that I can approach God in his heavenly sanctuary and receive his heavenly blessings. So a good conscience and worship, a good conscience and the divine service, a good conscience and holy communion, a good conscience and prayer, go together.

Put another way: what's the result of a good conscience? The purpose of a good conscience is so that I can pray. What's the result of a good conscience? So that I can meditate on God's word in a fruitful way. What's the result of a good conscience? So that I can hear the word of God beneficially, so that I can receive the sacrament to my salvation rather than my judgment. So it has to do with worship and spirituality.

Okay, it's put most simply in Hebrews chapter 9, verses 13 and 14, an analogy between Old Testament and New Testament. They're not completely different. What was partly there in the Old Testament is completely given to us in the divine service in the New Testament. Very simply: for if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling with blood of those who had become common, sanctifies in connection with the purity of the flesh, bodily purity, how much more will the blood of Jesus, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify what? Purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. So we are purified for divine service. We have a pure conscience so that we can participate in the divine service, so that we can participate in the heavenly liturgy. It's not all that complicated, but it's very profound.

The basic premise of this is that in the Old Testament, God gave a partial physical cleansing to his people for access to God in an earthly temple, in an earthly tabernacle, in an earthly sanctuary. So you have God's physical presence in the temple here on earth, and the body was cleansed to provide limited access to God. And you know that both the tabernacle and the temple were constructed in such a way that people had limited access to God. The blood of animals cleansed, but it cleansed partially. It cleansed the body, but it didn't cleanse the conscience, the heart, from the stain of sin. It cleansed the body for service of God, participation in the divine service, but it didn't cleanse the conscience, the whole person, so that human beings could serve God totally. Jesus offered himself by the Holy Spirit to atone for the sins of all people. And now, through his blood, we are cleansed — not just physically cleansed. We're physically cleansed, but we have the cleansing of the conscience through his blood, in baptism, where his blood is sprinkled on us, and in holy communion, where we take in the blood of Jesus, where the blood of Jesus sprinkles our hearts, our conscience.

So the purpose of a cleansed conscience is for our participation in the heavenly service, together with all the angels and all the saints. So if we hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience, it means that every Sunday when you go to church, you have access to heaven here on earth. When we go to the chapel shortly — 8 o'clock, is it? — we don't just enter an earthly place, but we stand in a place where heaven comes down to earth, and earth comes down to heaven, and we'll be surrounded by angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. So we participate in the heavenly service. So quite simply, the purpose of delivering a good conscience is for our participation in the heavenly liturgy.

Now, okay, I have said the whole divine service is meant to give a good conscience. Let's just go through it and say, what's the reason why we have the classical order of service? The classical order of service is constructed in such a way that if it's done the way it's meant to be done, and if it is received in faith, it delivers a good conscience. We begin with the invocation and confession and absolution — the invocation which recalls our baptism, the absolution which gives us pardon from sin. Why do we begin this way? It's so that we can have a clear conscience, so that we can stand together with the angels and sing the glory to God in the highest, so that we can hear the word of God, not as accusation and condemnation, but with a good conscience. We have access to God and to the hearing of his word because we have a good conscience.

That first part of the service is followed by the readings, the three readings and the sermon. What's the purpose of the readings of the word of God? What's the purpose of preaching? It is to deliver a good conscience to people who are about to pray for the world and the church and all people in need. It's to deliver a good conscience so that the people who present their offerings will present their offerings with a good conscience, not trying to buy off God and get themselves — get God's judgment off their back. It's so that people can receive holy communion with a good conscience. That order of preaching and holy communion is an essential part of the order of the divine service, because if you don't have the preaching of God's word as law and gospel, your people will not be able to receive holy communion with a good conscience. And that means that they will come under God's judgment rather than God's salvation.

There's a lovely line in Barnabas, who's a New Testament apocryphal writing in the early church that nearly got into the New Testament. He says, you shall not approach prayer with a bad conscience. And in the early church, this was done very dramatically. You had the first part of the service, up to the end of the sermon, open to everybody, but only people who were baptized were allowed to present offerings and were allowed to pray. Why? Because if you didn't have a good conscience, you couldn't present a clean offering with a clean heart to God. If you didn't have a clear conscience, you couldn't pray for yourself and the world and others with a clean heart. That's what lies behind that wonderful verse.

Okay, well, we receive holy communion, and the service ends with the benediction. What's the purpose of receiving holy communion? What's the purpose of the benediction, the blessing? It is so that we are sent out into the world as holy people, living in God's presence, living with a good conscience, not just in the divine service, but in our daily lives. So we are sent out as people with a clear conscience, a good conscience, to serve God in our station and vocation.

Now, all that is drawn together rather nicely later on in the letter to the Hebrews, in chapter 10, verses 19 to 20, where the writer to the Hebrews says: therefore, my brothers, since we have confidence for entry into the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he inaugurated for us through the curtain — that's the curtain that leads into God's presence — that is, through his flesh; and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us come near, let us draw near, let us approach with a true heart in the full assurance of faith, and with our hearts sprinkled clean from what? A bad conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water, the pure water of baptism.

Now, one of the key words in this passage is the word that's translated as "confidence" in English. The Greek word is parrhesia, which means free speech. And it was used in contemporary Greek for free speech in the assembly of citizens in a Greek city state. It's also the term for bold, frank speech in public. And then it has the secondary sense that it's the freedom that people have to approach somebody in a position of authority. So it's the sense of freedom, boldness, confidence to approach a Roman official, to present a petition to him. And it has to do with the confidence in approaching and addressing a person in authority. So since we have been washed clean, since we are justified, we have access to God, through the flesh and blood of Jesus, and we can have access to God because we are sure of his approval of us. There's a contrast here between the restricted access that the people of God had in the Old Testament and the unrestricted access that we have to God in the New Testament. And this comes to us through Jesus. Jesus is the bridge-man. He is our high priest in the heavenly sanctuary, but he also stands with us here on earth. So he stands in for us before God in heaven and intercedes for us. But he also stands in for God the Father and brings God's gifts to us. We therefore have open access, free access to the heavenly sanctuary together with Jesus as our high priest. And our approach to God the Father is through the flesh and blood of Jesus. Did you notice the reference to both the curtain, which is the flesh, and our hearts being sprinkled with the blood of Jesus?

Well, what's our qualification for entry into heaven already now here on earth? Just let that sink in. Already now, you and I, all of us, when we go down to the service, enter heaven, here on earth.

[Interruption — it's time for the chapel service.] You need to enter heaven just about now? I thought I had till 8 o'clock. It's a terrible thing to interrupt a man like this. Yes, yes, yes. Okay.

Okay, I'll just quickly summarize this last part. What was I going to say? So what's our qualification to stand before God there? It's the clear conscience that comes from the washing that we've received through baptism, the sprinkling of our hearts with the blood of Jesus, which gives us a clear conscience. And we have that clear conscience through faith, which brings us the full assurance of a favorable reception with God. Let's stop there then. Thank you very much.