Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Satan is a great pacifier of guilt.

Heb_5:14  But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Gen_2:9  And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

'In abiding by the spirit and listening to the voice of conscience we should remember one thing, and that is, conscience is limited by knowledge. It is the organ for distinguishing good and evil, which means it gives us the knowledge of good and evil. This knowledge varies with different Christians. Some have more while others have less. The degree of knowledge may be determined by individual environment or perhaps by the instruction each has received. Thus we can neither live by the standard of others nor ask other people to live by the light we have. In a Christian’s fellowship with God an unknown sin does not hinder communion.'  The Spiritual Man - by Watchman Nee

'Conscience is limited by knowledge'  This is truth. Those who are less knowledgeable can't be accountable for the knowledge they don't possess- unless, a person deliberately refuse knowledge when it is being offered to them.  If you know right from wrong and deliberately choose wrong even when your conscience is convicting you, then it can be nothing other than sin. Satan will trap us in a web of conscience and try to convince us that there is absolutely no way out, that we're stuck fast and going to remain so. Then he'll soothe our conscience as he tries to convince us that we have nothing to feel guilty about, nothing at all. Satan is the great pacifier of a guilty conscience while the Holy Spirit is the great convicting force of sin, and Jesus the forgiver, the redeemer.

'We can neither live by the standard of others nor ask other people to live by the light we have.'  Yet we do try to live like others, and we do try to get others to live by our standards, we do it all the time.  I reveal the light I have and want you to live that light, but honestly we can never live in the knowledge of others. Too often we can take the knowledge of others and simply let it slip away as irrelevant to us and how we choose to live. Yet at the same time we do take bits and pieces of knowledge and mold it to our live. Do you do anything today that you were taught to do by another?  The answer for all of us is- yes. We learned a lot when we were children growing up and a lot of that follows us through the rest of our life. Some of what we learn we deliberately change as we grow up, other things gradually change as we merge a lot of knowledge we have with new knowledge.  Suffice it to say that no two people are exactly alike, not even twins. We learn differently, individually.  Our spiritual life grows in the same way- individually.

Truly we CAN never judge another's eternal life, never. We don't know what their conscience is answerable to, what knowledge they possess. God help us to comprehend this truth. We have knowledge of good and evil and to say there is no such thing as good and evil is to deny reality.  Satan has convinced the multitude of evil being good and good being evil and the closer it comes to our Savior's return, the more he will deceive. 

May God protect us from all evil!

All through Jesus Christ our LORD and SAVIOR!  Amen!

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