EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/25/2025 7:49 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Gratitude For God’s Grace”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 3:19-20
Message of the verses: “19 We will know by
this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him 20 in
whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.”
I continue in this SD by talking first of all about
the conscience, something that is in everyone of us, but the more that your don’t
follow it in the right way the less effective it becomes. The conscience then is God’s guilt-producing
warning device, that as mentioned is given to everyone to confront sin. In the same way that pain is a physical
warning mechanism that alerts of conduct dangerous to the soul. Just think about those to aspects that we as
human beings have and it was all given to us by God. Of course, to function effectively, the
consciende must be informed by the right standards, and the reason is because
it is only a reactor to the person’s convictions about right and wrong. If ill-informed by falsehoods and lies, the
conscience will still react to those untruths that govern an individual’s
beliefs, think about Muslim suicide bombers.
MacArthur
writes “Conscience is thus not in itself an independent system of
morality. Rather, it operates based on
whatever knowledge and belief system that informs it, and in response to the
cultural conditions surrounding it. If
the level of moral and spiritual knowledge is drawn from any other source than
Scripture, the conscience (like that of the Islamic suicide bomber who is
convinced he is doing God’s work) will function in response to those false
ideas. It can be silenced not only by
being misinformed, but by being constantly ignored or overridden, until it is
scarred and unresponsive (1 Tim. 4:2).”
Let us look at that verse: “1 But the Spirit explicitly says that in
later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful
spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 by
means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a
branding iron,” (I decided to add verse on to help us better understand verse
2.)
Now
that is why it is essential to know God’s law very accurately (Pss. 19:7-9;
119:1-8; Luke 11:28; John 8:31-32; James 1:21-25) and allow it to properly
inform the conscience. Now think about
this statement that MacArthur writes: “It
is the law of God empowered by the Spirit that awakens people to their sinful
condition and need of salvation (cf. John 16:8-11; Rom. 7:9-10). The sinner, seeing his true wretchedness as
one guilty before God, is then faced with the reality of divine wrath and
judgment against him, offset by the offer of mercy and deliverance through
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Luke 18:13).” Now that is a very good reference to
understand how a person becomes a believer, and that is what happened to me 52
years ago tomorrow, January 26, 1974.
MacArthur
then goes on to explain more about salvation:
“In salvation, by the work of Christ on the cross, the wrath of God is
propitiated and the guilt of sin removed from the forgiven sinner who then
comes to enjoy the exhilarating, heartfelt deliverance of heavenly grace (cf.
Eph. 2:1-9; Col. 2:11-14; 3:9-10). One
of salvation’s most gracious gifts is a cleansed conscience (cf. Heb.
10:19-22), meaning it ceases to accuse.
Just before salvation it accuses most intensely, but afterward the
accusation stops and the believer goes from fear to joy, dread to hope, and
anxiety to peace. The writer of Hebrews
refers to this work of God when he writes:
‘How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit
offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works
to serve the living God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God?’ (Heb. 9:14). In Hebrews
10:22 he speaks of ‘having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience’ in
salvation.”
Lord
willing in tomorrow’s SD we will look at what the apostle John writes as he understood
that at times true believers can struggle with salvation assurance. By the way if you perhaps are struggling with
the security of salvation John MacArthur’s Grace to You website is offering a
booklet that can help with this. GTY.org
1/25/2025 8:21 PM
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