Rediscover the Gospel

The Conscience and the Law of Moses

Here we arrive to a major point that can change your relationship with God in a significant way if you understand this concept properly. The reason why God gave the Law was to bring your conscience back to a proper place, to the way that God intended it to function; back to the standard of God. The Law was an attempt to ”reset” and recalibrate the conscience. This was the purpose of the Law, namely The Ten Commandments. However, religion has missed the point and has propagated the idea that the reason God said “you shall not do this and that,” was because He wanted you to fulfill and obey all these commands, in order for you to be right with Him. But nobody can keep the Law. Nobody has ever kept the Law. That might be a radical statement to many people. Some of you may still think that God gave the Law to people so that they would keep it. It’s not true. You can never keep the Law. The Law was not given for you to keep. The Law was given to show you God’s standard of morality and perfection. If you yield to it, instantly it will cause your conscience to start functioning right, it would calibrate and tune your “internal moral monitoring system.” 

 

Imagine yourself for a moment as standing in quicksand and sinking and having everybody else around you in the same quicksand. If everybody is sinking at the same rate, most of those people will not notice it and the sinking rate will be relative, because everybody compares themselves with the others. However, if you have a pillar on solid ground with markers on it, even though everybody is sinking at the same rate, you can look at that pole and realize: “I am sinking, this is getting serious.” In this case, you have a fixed and immovable reference point. In the same way, the Law with the Ten Commandments was God’s immovable standard of right and wrong, and the reason God gave it was to re-activate your conscience and bring you back to where you would not have a dull, evil, and defiled conscience anymore, or a conscience that has been skewed by comparing yourself with other people. 

 

The Law was given to show you right and wrong, and to condemn you. The Law was not given to set you free, but to condemn you. 

 

2 Corinthians 3:7–9 (NKJV) 

7 But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, 

8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 

9 For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. 

 

The Ten Commandments were the only ones written and engraved in stones as this is mentioned in verse 7. Those Ten Commandments are called the ministry of death in verse 7 and the ministry of condemnation in verse 9. In the New Testament, Jesus came to give us life and Satan came to give us death:

 

John 10:10 (NKJV) 

10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. 

 

In the New Testament, Jesus made you free of condemnation, but the devil and your conscience continue to condemn you. The conscience is like a robot that knows only good and evil. The conscience knows only when you sinned, but it doesn’t know about the higher wisdom and righteousness of God in Christ that have already removed those sins that the conscience is condemning you with:

 

Romans 8:1 (NKJV) 

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 

 

Jesus, Who fulfilled all the Law, and Whose life was in complete unison with the Law, is not condemning you when you sin; yet the Law condemns you and it has always been a ministry of condemnation. Jesus is not the One condemning you when you sin, but your conscience fueled by the Law.

 

1 Corinthians 15:56 (NKJV) 

56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the Law. 

 

This passage tells us that sin produces death and that the strength of sin is the Law. Before I talk about sin and the Law, I would like to explain a little about what does sting of death mean. I personally didn’t understand this expression for years and I am sure that there are other Christians in the same situation. How does death sting people, including believers, through sin and what does that mean practically? When people sin, death itself stings them. It is similar to a scorpion sting or to an injection with a venom dose into their being. Once the sting happens, death begins to affect their personality, mind, thoughts, feelings, moods, and their physical body without them even realizing it, because death’s effects might not manifest immediately. How does death manifest in their lives? They will not lose their salvation if they are true believers, but death will affect the quality of their life here on earth. Sin brings condemnation and guilt that paralyze believers’ ability to serve God and people with full joy and peace, because their conscience is tainted by sin. They might begin to feel confused, depressed, discouraged, overwhelmed, or hopeless with no reason, and they will wonder why those things happened to them. Also, they will lose their peace, joy, and become weak in faith when it comes to facing various life situations. One reason for that is that death infiltrated their being through their sinful deeds and it began to affect them negatively. Similarly, the physical body is slowly affected by death. Those believers might experience certain sicknesses all of a sudden, age faster, and even die prematurely. When Adam and Eve sinned, they were stung by death, and from that moment onward, death started to work in them. Although not all the effects of death were seen immediately, slowly every part of their being was affected by it, until they finally died even physically. The rate of your sinning accelerates or slows down the manifestations of death in your life. That is one reason why we, as believers in Christ, are interested in walking in holiness, so that we would live longer, healthier, happier, and richer lives and fulfill the calling and the destiny that God has planned for us.

 

Now, let’s come back to the second part of the verse that we read earlier, where it talked about sin and the Law. The Law didn’t strengthen you in your battle against sin; it rather strengthened sin in its battle against you. How? Well, on one hand the Law raised the standard of right and wrong, and increased the sensitivity of your conscience. On the other hand, because of your spirit’s sinful nature inherited from Adam, when your dead spirit came in contact with a perfect and holy Law, it caused you to fail every time. As a result, it created in you the consciousness of a failing sinner in need of God. That is how the Law strengthened sin: it gave you both the conscience back, as well as a sinner-consciousness. Consciousness is a little different from conscience. Consciousness is a mindset, a way of thinking, or a framework of all the things that you are aware of in the present time. Consciousness answers the questions, “What do you know? What are you aware of that influences your life’s decisions?,” while conscience answers the question, “What is right and what is wrong?.” This process of how sin was strengthened against you is explained in Romans 7:5 this way:

 

Romans 7:5 (NKJV) 

5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the Law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. 

 

In other words, the Law revealed the sin and the principle of evil that was already present in people, like a chemical reaction. Most Christians believe that God gave the Law to help us. True, it did help us when, as a human race, we had skewed our conscience, by comparing ourselves with other people and lowering our moral standards to a degraded state. In those instances, when God said “You shall not …,” your conscience was brought back to where it should have been, and you became aware that you were a sinner to the core. That was a good thing that God intended through the Law. However, the downside of the Law was that it also condemned you, killed you, caused you shame, and fear, the same way it happened with Adam and Eve when they got the conscience in the first place, resulting in all these negative effects. Therefore, on one hand, it was necessary for God to give the Law for the sake of the conscience, but on the other hand, through the Law, your conscience began condemning you and it continues to condemn you today. 

 

The conscience never tells you anything encouraging, neither praises you for something that you did well. If you did ninety-nine things right and only one thing wrong, your conscience will only show you the one thing that you did wrong. It will never tell you: “You are doing well; you are doing better; you are getting closer.” The conscience is there to condemn you and show you what is wrong. The conscience has all these negative effects, but in the New Covenant we have something better than the conscience and a better way o

The Human Conscience

The Purpose and the Effects of Conscience

In Romans 1:18-20, we are shown that every person has a conscience. It’s impossible for you not to have a conscience. 

 

Romans 1:18–20 (NKJV) 

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 

19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them (not to them), for God has shown it to them. 

20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen (not vague), being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

 

Some people believe that there are human beings that don’t have a conscience, don’t have any conviction over sin, and that it’s only religion that imposed this knowledge of right and wrong upon people. Some say that all things would be so much better if there weren’t any religious people telling everybody what is right and what is wrong. However, this passage indicates that this knowledge is placed by God in everybody. It’s like a homing device telling you constantly that you are failing. Even though this is painful and none of us like it, it’s necessary for us. In order to receive salvation, you must first be aware of your need for salvation. 

 

A question might arise here in some people’s minds concerning Jesus and the conscience. Since Adam received the conscience after he sinned, and Jesus was born without sin, did Jesus have a conscience? Did He need one, since He never sinned? Of course, He had a conscience. First, He had a conscience because He had to retain all the attributes of humanity, except the sin nature. He had to be a man in all aspects, so that His sacrifice would be meaningful, and that humanity would be able to identify with Him in His death, as a payment for its sins. Second, having a conscience does not make one sinful. The conscience is holy, because it reflects God’s nature and moral standard. Jesus had a conscience because He was human, but He never violated it. 

 

The inquiring minds might go further with the questions and this is a very good thing. I always encourage questions from the Word of God. The next possible question is this: “Since Jesus had a conscience and He was also God, doesn’t that mean that God, the Father, or the Holy Spirit had a conscience too? After all, Genesis 3:22 shows us that the whole Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – had the knowledge of good and evil. In that passage, God said: ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil.’ If God, the Father, knew good and evil, doesn’t that mean that He had a conscience too?”  Well, not really. Ask yourself this question: “Does God, the Father, really need a conscience?” I believe that God, the Father, has never had a conscience and that is why He didn’t create man with a conscience in the first place. At this point, you might really get alarmed: “What? Isn’t that heresy?” Well, I encourage you to be calm for a moment and think a little deeper about this together with me. God is righteous. He exists in righteousness and His very nature is righteousness. He does not have a moral compass that governs Him. By His very nature, God is right all the time. Everything God says and does is right and just. 

 

The concept of good and evil is so deeply ingrained in us, as human beings, that it is difficult to understand a perspective where good and evil do not exist. It is a human perspective to see God as the ultimate symbol of moral goodness. However, God is much more than that. He is righteousness. There is a difference between the two, and I will explain why. For instance, if you see God as simply moral, then His laws are open for moral debate. Moral standards change over time.  What is immoral for one culture is acceptable in another. You can debate morality forever, and never come to a point of agreement. This is particularly evident in the issue of same-sex marriage. God defined marriage only between a man and a woman. It is not open for discussion, but people have made it a moral and ethical argument. “How can two people who love each other not be allowed to marry? Who cares that they are same sex gendered?” Although I understand the logic behind this argument, it doesn’t matter, because God’s law is not ethical or moral – it is righteous. Therefore, God is right and there is no discussion. Simply the fact that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was that an immoral thing? No, not at all according to moral standards. What is so bad in eating the fruit of a tree? However, it was a capital sin and something immoral because God said so. Was something immoral the fact that Moses hit the rock the second time instead of speaking to it? No, it wasn’t a sinful thing in itself. However, it was a serious sin for which Moses was harshly punished by God, because God had told him to speak to the rock, and not hit it. Do you see the difference between a moral compass and righteousness? 

 

Now, let’s try to define evil based on what we’ve said so far. Because God is righteous, there are only two possible responses from humans to what God says. Obey God and live. Rebel against God and die. Anything that leads to death, distress, or judgment is what the Bible defines as evil. Evil is not an objective entity that is opposite to God. Evil is anything that leads to death, distress, or judgment, because it is rebellion against God. For man, this is a matter of moral choice: obey God, which is good, and live; reject God, which is evil, and die. However, for God, it’s a matter of truth. God said the wages of sin is death, thus when you sin you will surely die. God knows good and evil, not through a conscience, and neither because He experienced evil Himself, but because evil is anything that God isn’t. Evil is anything contrary to God’s nature, and contrary to His decrees which are truth. 

 

As I mentioned briefly earlier, when man ate from the forbidden tree, two things happened. First, man’s spirit died and became separated from God’s righteousness. Second, he received the conscience to distinguish between good and evil. Man’s spirit didn’t die because of the fruit in itself in the sense that the fruit imparted death to him. Man died simply because He disobeyed God’s command to not eat from that tree. When man violated God’s command, he became evil and knew evil, just because he came against the righteous command that God had given him. If the tree of knowledge of good and evil had imparted death and evil to man, then it should have been called the tree of death, or the tree of evil. After all, the other important tree was called the tree of life because it would have imparted eternal life to Adam’s body. However, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil imparted something to man - the conscience. Think about this for a moment. This is amazing! God is so smart. When God gave man the command to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God actually gave man the option to rebel against Him, and become evil, so that man would have freedom of choice. However, in the same time, God embedded the conscience in the very fruit of the forbidden tree. Conscience is the ability to distinguish between good and evil; it is a footprint of God’s righteousness, which reveals a little bit of God’s own nature. Man needed the conscience so that he would know immediately that he rebelled against God, and he would realize the magnitude of his sinful act. Otherwise, he would have moved on with his life and would have never realized what he did. Furthermore, the conscience was going to keep in check the dead spirit of man until the full righteousness in Christ would come. That is why man didn’t become pure evil like the devil who also rebelled against God. This whole strategy in itself, reveals something extraordinary about God. It reveals that He prepared for the possibility of man disobeying Him, by placing a conscience in the fruit of that tree instead of death. God could have created the tree of life and the tree of death, and when man would have eaten from the tree of death, that would have been his end. Man would have entered death forever and become unredeemable like the devil, while God would have let man remain in death, and create maybe another world. That would have been righteous for God, and nobody could have blamed Him for it. After all, He told man that the day he would eat from that tree, he would die. However, here we see God’s extravagant love for us and His magnificent wisdom! Praise the Lord!

 

Now, let’s come back to the purpose and the effects of the conscience. Your conscience is the part of you that condemns you. Yes, it is true that there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). But we have to believe that verse in order to get rid of the condemnation that comes from our conscience. We have to take the Word of God and purge our conscience with it, cleanse our conscience, and wash it with the water of the Word.  There are two ways to cleanse our conscience. Let’s read first Hebrews 9:14 and Hebrews 10:22: 

 

Hebrews 9:14 (NKJV) 

14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 

 

Hebrews 10:22 (NKJV) 

22 Let’s draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our heart

Introduction

Do believers in Christ need to confess their sins? If yes, how should it be done and what is the importance of it? If they don’t need to confess their sins, why not? Can genuine born-again believers ever lose their salvation? In this series, we will have an extended discussion about the practice of confession of sins, conscience, righteousness, eternal security, and about overcoming temptations and living in holiness. Now, I have to admit and provide a little warning to my listeners that some of the things that I am going to share here are usually challenging and difficult to accept for a vast majority of Christians. However, I still encourage you to listen to the end and as you listen, put aside the things that you don’t understand temporarily, or things that you are not ready to accept yet. The Holy Spirit will teach you all things (John 14:26), He will guide you into all truth (John 16:13), and He will give you peace. The challenges of these topics don’t derive from the fact that I am looking to share something new, out of the ordinary, and shocking. The challenges come from the fact that these topics are quite different from the way they have been approached and practiced by the mainstream Christianity in general, especially when it comes to confession of sins, righteousness, and eternal security. However, they are things that I was convinced of by the Holy Spirit from the Word of God, and about which I cannot stay silent. 

 

What is presented in this book is what  the Holy Spirit has revealed directly to my wife and I, ‘precept upon precept,’ over a period of about thirteen years. These revelations were also shaped, refined, and confirmed by the teachings of various pastors and teachers from the body of Christ like Joseph Prince, Chris Oyakhilome, Curry Blake, Andrew Wommack, and Ryan Rufus. I am eternally grateful and thankful for these people through which God has worked so mightily in our lives and brought so much revelation, freedom, and peace. I want to give God and them the credit they so much deserve, as well as to attempt to pass on to others this powerful message of grace and righteousness to the best of my ability.

 

As a general principle, a lie does not become truth just because it has been propagated for hundreds of years throughout history, or because the majority of people has accepted it as truth. From time to time, people of God need to re-evaluate some of the existing doctrines in Christendom to see if they are really in line with the Word of God. 

 

A good friend of mine shared with me a funny story from his family when he got married and used to go to his wife’s family for different holiday dinners. He noticed that while this family was preparing to do some roasted pork legs they would always cut and throw away a good part of the pork legs. My friend started asking the ladies who were cooking why did they do that. The answer that he got was that they always did it that way, because that’s what the recipe called for. So he began a little investigation on his own in his wife’s family to find out why they did it that way and threw away such good meat. He asked his wife, his sisters-in-law, and his mother-in-law, until he found out the reason behind it: his wife’s great-grandmother first cut that part of the pork legs because they didn’t fit in her cooking tray. Wow! That is quite a reason, isn’t it? It’s hilarious, I know, how a silly habit can be passed down from generation to generation without ever being questioned. But it’s true, it happens a lot of times and in many areas of our lives. I am sure you have your own examples of the kind. 

 

Some of the beliefs that you hold today as a Christian might have been simply taken from your parents, pastors, friends, and teachers without ever being challenged or questioned in a constructive way. You’re probably not even aware of this. You don’t need to believe everything I say here or take my word for it, but consider this time while you read, a season of re-evaluation of some of your beliefs, and check again for yourself from the Scripture and with an open mind if what I am saying is according to the Scripture or not. 

 

I would like to begin creating the context for the discussion about confession of sins and righteousness by first talking about the human conscience and its purpose.

 

 

The Human Conscience

The Origin of Conscience

Genesis 2:15–17 (NKJV) 

15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. 

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 

17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” 

 

God gives here a command to Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that he would eat, he would surely die. Then Satan comes and tempts Eve with deception, by bringing doubt about the word of God that was spoken to them. As we all know, Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree and something interesting happened to them when they did, besides the fact that their spirit died instantly and was separated from God. Let’s read it in Genesis 3:6-7:

 

Genesis 3:6–7 (NKJV) 

6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. 

7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. 

 

This passage tells us that the moment they ate from the fruit, their eyes were opened. What eyes? Didn’t they see before? Of course, they have been seeing perfectly before, but they have been walking and seeing by faith. They were dominated more by the spiritual world in their inner vision and perception. The spiritual things were more real to them than the physical things. However, when they ate of that fruit, their perception of spiritual things diminished, and their perception of the physical things became dominant. We consider it to be normal today the way you and I see, feel, and think right now, but it’s actually abnormal compared to the way God created us initially. And through the new birth, we receive a new spirit inside of us that is capable again to walk by faith and not by sight. Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:7, 17 the following:

 

2 Corinthians 5:7 (NKJV) 

7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. 

 

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NKJV) 

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 

 

We are called to walk by faith in what the Word says about our new identity and not walk by what we see with our physical eyes. We can behold and perceive that all things have become new for us through the eyes of the new spirit. We, as New Testament believers, should go back to the way Adam and Eve were intended to be. The spiritual realm together with what the new spirit holds inside of us should be more real to us than anything else. That has to become more real to us than this natural, physical, and tangible realm. It’s so sad that very few Christians today live in and from the spiritual realm. We are physical carnal beings that are controlled and dominated by what we see, taste, hear, smell, and feel. In 2 Kings 6:15-17, Elisha’s servant had his spiritual eyes closed and Elisha prayed that his spiritual eyes would be opened. Let’s read:

 

2 Kings 6:15–17 (NKJV) 

15 And when the servant of the man of God arose early and went out, there was an army, surrounding the city with horses and chariots. And his servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” 

16 So he answered, “Don’t fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” 

17 And Elisha prayed, and said, “Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 

 

In this instance, it was the exact opposite of what happened to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve have been walking by faith prior to their fall; but when they ate of the tree, the eyes of their heart were closed to spiritual things and opened to physical ones. Here on the other hand, Elisha’s servant had the eyes of his heart closed to spiritual things and open to the natural ones. But when Elisha prayed for him, God opened the servant’s spiritual eyes so that he was able to see by faith what Elisha was already seeing. Coming back to Genesis 3:7 now, it says there that the eyes of both Adam and Eve were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Let’s continue reading up to verse 11:

 

Genesis 3:8–11 (NKJV) 

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 

9 Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” 

10 So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden

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