Lord of Your Conscience
Text: I Timothy 2:5
Old Testament: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
New Testament: I Timothy 2:1-7
God alone is Lord of the conscience. This is Presbyterianism’s first principle. It was first declared by the Westminster Confession of Faith,in 1648. That was less than 20 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
God alone is Lord of the conscience is a powerful statement that has greatly influenced American life. This Presbyterian teaching gave birth to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, religious liberty, and church/state separation.
God alone is Lord of the conscience remains in the Presbyterian Constitution – what we call the Book of Order. It’s the basis for religious dissent from Church authority. It’s also the basis for religious dissent from civil authority. What it means, and how it’s interpreted are two different things.
Some Presbyterians believe it means preachers shouldn’t preach politics. Other Presbyterians believe it justifies Christians being prophetic voices against social injustice. Some Presbyterians believe it means the Church should stay out of government matters. Other Presbyterians believe it means the government should keep its nose out of church matters.
Presbyterian martyrs gave up their lives for this belief.
Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake at St. Andrews, Scotland in 1528. His crime was wanting a Bible the people could read so they could have direct access to Jesus’ teachings. He believed the Church would be more accountable to Christ if people knew Christ’s teachings for themselves. If they had a Bible they could read they could seeif Church teachings followed Christ’s teachings.
The Church objected. Archbishop James Beaton declaredhim a heretic. The Bible is in Latin – a language only the Pope and clergycan read.
Patrick Hamilton was the grandson of a Scottish king. He was 24. He died wanting access to Jesus Christ through the Bible. He heard Christ speaking to him the word of religious freedom. God, not pope or priest, is Lord of the conscience.
Presbyterians have also been martyred for dissenting against a king’s interference in Christian life. The Reverend James Guthrie from Sterling, Scotland, was executed for protesting King Charles I’s imposition of a Book of Common Prayer on Scottish Presbyterians. “Only the Lord Jesus Christ can instruct us on how to pray!” Forget kings. God alone is Lord of the conscience.
Reverend Guthrie and other Presbyterian clergy believed prayer was solely between a believer and God. Jesus taught us from the Sermon on the Mount to pray in the closet in secret. He didn’t mean we should take the king’s prayer book into the closet to tell uswhat and how we pray.
No earthly king had any business directing how his subjects should pray. Prayer is a matter of religious liberty. It doesn’t need an earthly monarch’s controlling influence. God alone, is Lord of the conscience.
Today’s New Testament lesson from I Timothy 2 is a very subtle approach to the question of whether God alone is Lord of the conscience. It’s so subtle, you may have missed it.
In I Timothy 2, Paul is comparing the role of an earthly ruler with the role of Jesus Christ over a person’s relationship with God.
The overall context of the conversation is prayer. Paul calls Timothy to teach that Christians should pray for everyone – including “kings and those in high places.” That seems pretty sweet until you think about the kings of that time.
Now who would they be, in 62-67 C.E.?
Timothy was in Ephesus when Paul wrote this letter to him. The Book of Acts says Paul had already left Ephesus for Macedonia. Both Ephesus and Macedonia were once under Greek rule, with Greek deities. Now the Roman Empire controlled the entire Mediterranean region.
Paul might have been referring to regional kings who controlled Ephesus and Macedonia. Or, he might have been referring to Rome, where Nero was Caesar. Or, he could have been referring to all three.
If Paul was thinking about the king of Macedonia in this letter to Timothy, then he could have been referring to Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great was the son of King Philip of Macedonia. He led a Greek army to conquer the Middle East from Greece to India, 300 years before Jesus.
The Greeks profaned the Temple of Jerusalem. The Jews fought a civil war to be liberated from their terrible rule 180 years before Jesus’ birth. The Apostle Paul would have not considered a Greek king worthy of God’s blessing.
If Paul was referring to Rome, Nero was already persecuting Christians. Nero had himself declared god and tried to force Christians to worship him. They refused and met their deaths along the Appian Way. The Apostle Paul could not have been thinking of Nero as worthy of God’s blessing in prayer.
If Paul was referring to Ephesus, we know from Acts 19 the local cottage industry of idol-making was rebelling against Christianswho worshipped there. Ephesus had grown wealthy by being a manufacturing center of idol-making. The goddess Diana was the patron deity forthe city. Silver idols of her were being manufactured there for sale. The idol makers had become very wealthy through their trade.
Paul opposed idols. They weren’t real. Gods and goddesses they represented weren’t real. Only Jesus Christ is real. He suffered. He died. He was raised from the dead. He lives. Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
No doubt the local ruler of Ephesus sided with the silversmiths who were upset with Paul for ruining their economy. When the silversmiths attacked the church in Ephesus, the Ephesian king was certainly on their side.
Paul of course was speaking spiritually. But what hesaid had political implications. His spiritual words were interpreted very politically when he condemned their idols.
“They are no gods that are made with hands,” Paul’s quoted in Acts. In our modern context, you might be tempted to say Paul violated church/state separation. You don’t preach to influence the political climate.
But Paul believed his conscience was bound only by God – not the local ruler of the Ephesians or the merchants he represented. Later he would say the same thing in Rome – Nero was not the sovereign over Paul’s conscience.
And so, the Apostle Paul lost his head in Rome according to Church tradition – just likeReverend James Guthriedid in Edinburgh, Scotland 1600 years later. Both men believed only God is Lord of the conscience.
God alone is Lord of the conscience threatens politicians. Their need for power over their subjects doesn’t tolerate another authority than their own wants and needs. A God who challenges their authority is a threat.
Theydon’t like that God’s followers’ beliefs compete with their political goals and ambitions. Worldly leaders either want to take the place of God for their subjects. Or, they want to be the ones who dictate how their citizens worship God and what Christ’s mission is for the Church.
So when Paul says there’s just one mediator between God and humankind in verse 5, he says the mediator isn’t the king. It’s Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only person who mediates our relationship with the God who gives life.
Paul’s letter to Timothy contradicts everything the Ephesians, the Macedonians, and the Roman kings believe to be true. The Greeks and the Romans had conquered the ancient world. Both ancient empires believed their rule was enlightened and superior to any other rule.
Both empires’ philosophies and worship rituals claimed superiority over every other nation and people. They ruled the world. Both empires deified their leaders. Their arrogance in believing they ruled the world was sin. Only Jesus Christ’s death for the world’s sins couldsave the earth. Only Jesus Christ’s love and compassion was worthy to rule the world.
Paul’s letter to Timothy in verses 5-6 says the God who truly rules the world wants to save the world from its sins. All peoplewho worship their kings and false gods need to be saved from the sin of idolatry. They’ve elevated earthly rulers and created mythological deities above the only mediator with the God who gives life – Jesus Christ.
Paul isn’t calling Timothy to pray for kings and all who are in high positions, as if Christians are docile people who accept the idolatry of these worldly leaders. Paul is calling Christians to show their freedom from earthly rulers. These earthly rulers are sinners and the people who worship them need to be saved from sin.
They need Jesus Christ as their mediator for their sins. Christians who have Jesus Christ as Lord of our conscience do not submit to the yoke of slavery earthly kings and high priests impose on us. As if we answer to them rather than to God.
You see friends, when Patrick Hamilton and James Guthrie turned to the Scriptures to validate their courage, they turned to I Timothy 2 for inspiration.
This passage called the Church to a cultural revolution of a spiritual kind. Only a Christian who is free in Jesus Christ prays for the salvation of an earthly ruler whose policies and practices try to enslave them in false worship.
Only a Christian who is free from the fear of death because of Jesus’ resurrection prays for the conversion of government leaders who try to control the religious beliefs of their citizens. Only a Christian who is free to love Jesus Christ and to be loved by Jesus Christ declares publicly that “Jesus Christ alone is Lord of my conscience!”
Whether it is legal or illegal in the eyes of the state or the Church, is of no consequence to the freedom of the Christian conscience. I, a Christian who knows that I am saved by Jesus Christ, submits to no man or woman, regardless of who they are or what position they hold in authority. I submit to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am the Lord Jesus Christ’s, and His alone.
I will agree with those who agree with Jesus Christ. I will challenge those who challenge Jesus Christ.
Now I have stayed in the historical past to this point in this morning’s sermon. What does it mean today? What does it mean for you and me living in twenty-first century America? What does it mean for your relationship with Jesus Christ in our current context?
First, God alone is Lord of my conscience is being reinterpreted within the Church and in the legislation of our land. God alone is Lord of my conscience was forged in the context of Church and governmental failures to represent Jesus Christ. Today, it is being used by those who have no concern for the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. They want us, the Christian community to endorse their freedom to not worship Jesus Christ.
There are many people who say there is no sin in this land. There are others who say Christian teachings about sin are intolerant. There are others who say it doesn’t matter whether there is sin. We are free as Americans to do as we please, when we please.
Who is responsible for this change?
Non-Christians, former Christians, and even people who say they are Christian believe the Church’s teaching on sin is intolerant. It occurs as simply as a high school principle who no longer attends church saying to a teacher who is an active church member, not to wear a Cross around his neck at school.
Don’t show others in public that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins.
It occurs when a former Christian who doesn’t go to church anymore teaches a course on political history that is one sided. The course only describes Christianity in terms of the Crusades and Inquisition. The Crusades and Inquisition portray the Church solely as an intolerant religion without any benefit for society.
The history course does not include the contribution of the Westminster Confession of Faith to the formation of our society. The course does not explain the how John Calvin’s model for the Church became the model for our representative government in the United States.
The history course fails to describe how the Magna Charta was forged by a Roman Catholic bishop, Robert Langdon, from Church teachings. The history course doesn’t describe how a Roman Catholic writer, Saint Simon de Comte, outlined a social plan for caring for the poor that came from Jesus’ teachings.
Saint Simon de Comte’seighteenth social plan lies beneath all of our current political rhetoric about being a benevolent society. This history course teaches the Salem Witch Trials as the only example of Puritanism. It does not teach that an English Puritan, John Bellars, developed a proposal before the English Parliament in the late seventeenth century to create communities for the poor to have employment and education called colleges. He took his plan from the Book of Acts, chapter 4.
John Bellars and Saint Simon de Comte were Christians with a heart for the poor and lower classes. They cared for the future of all people. They pled with kings and people in high places for the salvation of all people, not simply the privileged. They did so from their faith in Jesus Christ. They believed their society was in sin by not caring for the poor.
They believed the salvation of the world comes from each man, woman, and child fulfilling their God-given purpose in Jesus Christ’s salvation story. They employed their freedom of conscience to call Church leaders and political leaders to lead by Jesus Christ’s teaching fora better life for all people.
They pled for the salvation of those Church and political leaders by posing for them their social responsibility to save all people. They prayed, they sacrificed their lives, their fortunes to raise the hope of all the world.
Their motive, plain and simple, was Jesus Christ. They were free to contemplate the application of Jesus Christ’s teachings for their lives.
So when you and I are considering the condition of our lives, we must first consider whether we employ our freedom to be the people God intended for us to be when we were born? Are our children free to be the people God intended for them to be when He gave them birth?
Are we, are they, motivated by Jesus Christ’s hope for their salvation?
When we and our children are surrounded by a culture of sexual liberation and coarseness of language, are we exercising our freedom of conscience to change the culture around us?
When we and our children are captives to a culture of economic disparity without opportunity to rise beyond it by our industry and intelligence, are we exercising our freedom of conscience in Jesus Christ to change the laws and practices around us to give future generations hope?
When the positive role of Jesus Christ’s teachings is not taught publicly, and the virtues of the Christ-like life are publicly disdained as useless for our national life, are we exercising our freedom of conscience in Jesus Christ to expose this injustice and affront to Christ with love and compassion for all people?
When judges and courts intervene in Church matters of theology and faith to steer children and adults into a secular world-view where Jesus Christ has no value or contribution, are we exercising our freedom of conscience in Jesus Christ to resist their inappropriate exercise of their authority over our nation’s laws?
When media moguls and their multinational corporations are spewing forth an alternative set of values and norms to the Christian life of moderation, devotion to God, and fidelity to Christ, are you exercising your freedom of conscience in Jesus Christ to seek their silence before your children become their minions?
When your church and her members is weakened by apathy and is listless before the tremendous cultural forces aligned against Jesus Christ and His teachings, are you exercising your freedom of conscience in Jesus Christ to pray for and contribute to a spiritual revival within your home and church fellowship?
If you think about I Timothy 2 for your life, more applications will emerge.
When Jesus Christ is the Lord of our conscience, Christians won’t be arguing with our hands in their air over what is our mission. We will not be confused by how the Bible or Jesus’ teachings apply for our lives. We will be united and committed to fulfilling His commission to save the world. Every one of us will commit ourselves to be engaged in His mission with enthusiasm and energy!
We will not debate what Bible passage is our mission statement. We will hear Jesus Christ alone, the voice of our shepherd, our Lord, our Savior calling us to be free to save the world!
“Go forth into the world, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you. And lo, I will be with you always, even until the end of the age!”
Amen.
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