1 John 3:19-21

THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE

‘And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.’

1 John 3:19

St. John refers to conscience as the supreme arbiter in this awful question. Who does not know the use of the conscience? It is to the supreme honour of Greek thought that it brought into use that word which first occurs in the Apocrypha—that word which describes self-knowledge; to describe that voice of God in the heart of man, a prophet in its information, a peace in its sanctions, and a monarch in its imperativeness. The Hebrews in the Old Testament use the word for truth and spirit to convey the same meaning. And the conscience of each one of us either condemns us or condemns us not.

I. Let us take first the case of the absolving conscience.—‘Brethren, if our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence towards God.’ The Apostle defines wherein this confidence consists—it is boldness of access to God; it is a certainty that our filial prayers will, in their best and highest sense, be heard and answered. It is the consciousness of a life which leans on the arm of Christ, and, keeping His commandments, is so transformed by the spirit of Divine life as to be conscious we are one with God. Yet there is such a thing as a spurious conscience. But when the oracle of conscience has been so tried, it can neither stand John’s test nor give us peace. It may indeed say something, it may be of flattery, of self-conceit, and of self-adulation, as the Pharisee who cried in the temple, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are; extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.’ That was not the blessed assurance of a holy and humble heart; it was the very fruit of hypocrisy; it was the narcotic of formalism; it was an ambitious hypocritical cry.

II. Now turn to the other case— the case of the condemning conscience.—‘Brethren, if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.’ What do these words mean? Are they merely a contemplation? Do they mean to warn us? Do they mean that we stand self-condemned in that silent court of justice which we ever bear about within ourselves; ourselves the judge and jury, and ourselves the prisoner at the bar? If we stand thus self-condemned by the incorruptible judge within us, in spite of all our ingenious pleadings and infinite excuses for ourselves, how much more searching, more awful, more true, must be the judgment of Him Who is ‘greater than our heart, and Who knoweth all things.’ Or, on the other hand, is it a word of hope? Is it the cry, ‘Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ Is it the affirmation that if we be but sincere we may appeal to God and not be condemned? My brethren, I believe this latter is the meaning. The position of man as regards the world and as regards God is very different. As regards the world his conscience may acquit him. Job could retain his innocence before the world. Does his heart condemn him? He only said, ‘I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.’ St. Paul, too, could only call himself ‘the chief of sinners’ because of the mighty tenderness of their consciences. The confessions of saints have always been full of self-reproach. Those are Christians who are full of self-reproach, not defiant, willing, high-handed sinners. God knows when a man is insincere. But when a man is sincere and, in spite of all his shortcomings, knows he is sincere, when he has given proof of his sincerity by love to the brethren, his life has been a witness to God: and then he may fall back on the love and mercy of One Who is greater than his heart, and therefore more tender even than his own self-condemned heart. Such a Christian is not afraid of the condemnation of men, but he is afraid when he thinks of his own unfaithfulness. Yes, it is just this, which to any Christian’s heart is well known, that he may turn to a gracious, pardoning Omniscience, and be comforted by the thought that his conscience is but a water-pot, whereas God’s love is a deep sea of compassion. He will look upon us with larger and other eyes than ours, and make allowance for us all.

III. Though our hearts condemn us not, so often we know they condemn us, we can still feel with humble sorrow the just compassion of Him Who ‘is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things.’ Then we may have reasonable assurance that we belong to the world of light, and not of darkness; of truth, and not of semblance; of reality, and not of illusion. And the more we can thus assure our hearts, the more we shall abide in Christ, and He in us. There is but one throne of Christ, of God, upon earth; that throne which is in the innocent heart of man. From that throne proceeds all evil thoughts; from that throne there also proceed all holy influences; all the purity and charity that binds man to man; which blesses the family, the neighbourhood, the nation, the world. That throne may be in the heart of man. Like a ruling sovereign who devotes his heart to the well-being of all his subjects; and the meanest of subjects who devotes himself to the good of his fellow-men; it may be a heart in the midst of the most pompous and splendid ceremony, which nevertheless secretly, in the consuming passions of the breast, utters a public prayer of sincerity; it may be that of the meekest missionary, laying down his unregarded life for the faith once delivered to the saints, on some foreign shore; it may be that of the heart in the most ragged home, mumbling her feeble tones in the darkest corner of the lowliest church; it may be the heart of the man of untold wealth, making of that wealth a friend of the mammon of unrighteousness; or it may be that of the Lazarus lying at his door; it may be that of the philosopher, who is following up the discoveries of science; or it may be the heart of him who in ignorance is telling his griefs at the shrine of some questionable saint, feeling there a thing he cannot understand. Yes, the throne of Christ cannot be in the evil heart and evil conscience of the worldling or the hypocrite. If we love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth; if we are trying to keep His commandments, and to walk in His ways; then in every pure, loving, humble spirit Jesus Christ shall abide, and you with Him.

Dean Farrar.

Illustrations

(1) ‘There is many a text concerning which it may be said that without an earnest study of the whole chapter, of the whole context, or of the whole Epistle to which it belongs, it would be impossible to get at its depth and fulness. But happily, as St. Augustine says, if Scripture hath its depths for to swim in, it hath also its shallows. Just as the geologist may mark the beauty of the crystal without attempting to set forth all the marvellous and subtle lines of its formation, so without any possibility of showing all which a text articulates, a preacher may yet be thankful if he be enabled to bring before you with it only one or two thoughts such as may serve to the building up of the Christian life.’

(2) ‘He who builds on the general esteem of the world builds not on sand, but on worse—on the wind—and writes the title deeds of his hope upon the face of a river.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

GROUND OF ASSURANCE

In this verse the Apostle presents us with a contrast, a contrast between our own judgment of ourselves and God’s judgment. We might call it a short summing up of the doctrine of assurance. And what does it tell us about the doctrine of assurance?

I. God’s knowledge is the ground of our assurance.—That is the message that the Apostle gives us in this passage. Is it not that which we hear all through the Bible? That piercing insight of which the Psalmist tells us that the God Who is about his ‘path and about his bed, spieth out all his ways.’ Of which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us when he speaks of ‘the word of God piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow … a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.’ That is the all-knowing eye of God. When we see this knowledge in human beings we find it accompanied with a sort of malicious pleasure in detecting that which is evil. But we forget that the great message that the Apostle has to give us, in this very same Epistle, is that God, Wisdom as He is, Knowledge as He is, Justice and Power, is above all these, Love; and that He knows all things; that He sees through us as no man can see, and that He brings with that insight that essential characteristic of Love. He sees all, and knows all. And yet He pardons, because He loves.

(a) That was known even to the imperfect apprehension of the Jews of old: ‘He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.’ And so the psalmist too could take refuge in the knowledge of God, for he knew that God’s knowledge, all-embracing as it was, was yet only one side and aspect of His love; and that the knowledge whereof we are made, the remembrance that we are but dust, would plead with God for pardon.

(b) And the same thing is recalled to us by that wonderful story of the man who had sinned so deeply against One to Whom he owed everything, who seemed to have sinned so irrevocably, and to whom a certain question was put after he had sinned: ‘Lovest thou Me?’ And all that he could say was to appeal to that same knowledge: ‘Lord! Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.’

II. Have we ever thought of contrasting, not our judgment of ourselves with the judgment of God, but our judgment of others?—Have we ever thought of the way in which, while we are thinking of our own motives, and finding it impossible to say whether the motives have led to any act of good or evil, so hard is it to judge amongst the tangled and complex circumstances of our character—have we forgot that, whilst we thus judge of ourselves, we are continually, except a few rare characters among us—continually imputing motives to other people? People continually take upon themselves to scan our outward acts, and to reason of our motives from those which have prompted them. We are constantly speaking of men whom we have never seen, of whom we have merely read in newspapers, and imputing to them base motives, it may be great selfishness, or ambition, or some other unworthy motive of that kind. Does not a great part of our conversation consist in reasoning about the motives which have led others to such and such acts? That is a matter which ought to be left to the judgment of God, ‘Who is greater than our hearts, and Who knoweth all things.’ We are not competent to judge of our own motives, far less can we judge of the motives of other men.

—Bishop A. T. Lyttelton.