How to Awaken a Sleepy Conscience
PRACTICING YOUR FAITH
Mark Warner
4 min read
How do you wake up a sleepy conscience? To awaken your conscience, to cut through a lifetime of rationalizations, you need regular self-examination that gives birth to repentance. We see this in the life of King David. In Psalm 51, David openly confesses his sin. He writes,
Against you [God], you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge (Psalm 51:4).
A sleepy conscience, which is one way of describing the condition of David’s heart before his encounter with Nathan, is awakened when we begin to compare our behavior to the absolute standard of God and his Word.
You’ve, no doubt, heard of the Theory of Relativity? Well, here’s how it was born. A scientist was standing on a railway platform and a train was passing by him at thirty miles per hour. Aboard the train, a man was walking in the same direction the train was traveling at a rate of three miles per hour. The scientist, standing on the platform, began to think about the man walking on the train and he asked himself this question: “How fast was that man walking? Was he walking at three miles per hour when he passed me in a train traveling at thirty miles per hour or thirty-three miles per hour?”
This is how the theory of relativity was born. Relative to a person sitting on the train, the man was traveling at three miles per hour. Relative to a man standing on the railroad platform, he was traveling at thirty-three miles per hour. In other words, what the man was doing depended on what it was related to. And this gets really confusing, spiritually speaking, until you learn to de-relativize your sin by lining yourself up with the absolute standard of God’s Word. People justify their sin all the time by relativizing their behavior. They say:
Well, you’ve never been in my situation.
You don’t understand.
There’s no way I can reconcile my marriage.
I’ve tried harder than most to make this work.
I’m no saint but compared to what so-and-so did, this is nothing.
Every time we use the sins of others to rationalize, excuse or minimize our own sin choices, we’re not engaged in self-examination but deflection. We’re not allowing the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to what is true about us. The Word of God de-relativizes our behavior! Don’t try to relate your behavior to what someone else has done. Don’t try to compare your behavior to your own internal standards, what you think is right and wrong. The way to wake up a sleepy conscience and become a spiritually healthy and mature adult is to compare your behavior to God’s Word. God says, “Compare what you’ve done, compare what you think, compare your current attitude with my Word. I’ll tell you what’s right and wrong. I’ll define for you what’s good and what’s evil.”
The reason why we would engage in this process with God, the reason why we would bring our stuff to God and repent of what we’ve done without fear is because of who God is! Verse 1,
"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions (Psalm 51:1)."
It’s God’s unfailing love that enables David to pray, “Have mercy on me, O God.” The word for unfailing love here is the Hebrew word chesed. It refers to God’s commitment to stay with us, to continue to be our Father, in a persevering way even when we repeatedly blow it. God is a God of covenant love, whose love you cannot quench, no matter what you say or do. And David prays,
...according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions (Psalm 51:1).
The phrase great compassion is a beautiful word in Hebrew related to the word we translate womb. It refers to the feeling a mother has for the child in her womb. When you come to God and begin comparing your behavior with God’s Word, the reason you can do that with some degree of security is because of the constancy of God’s love, his commitment to persevere with you no matter what you’ve done, and his tender mercy. God loves you the way a mother loves the child in her womb!
So, how do we confess our sins? We begin with God and before God, who is both absolutely just and absolutely loving, we take full responsibility for our sins. David writes,
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (Psalm 51:1-5).
Notice how many times David uses the first person, personal pronoun “I”, “me” or “my.”
v. 1 – Blot out my transgressions.
v. 2 – Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
v. 3 – For I know my transgressions, my sin is always before me.
v. 4 – Against you, you only, have I sinned.
v. 5 – Surely, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Contemporary culture has a million possible scapegoats that deny people’s personal responsibilities for the choices they make and the attitudes they have. Just pick up a copy of Psychology Today or go to a counselor who doesn’t have a strong biblical foundation. Your behavior will be blamed on everything from genetics, your body chemistry, your hormones, your inherited temperament, your parent’s failure, your early childhood traumas, your education, and your social environment. Now, all these things are factors, all these things — genetics, hormones, environment, upbringing, trauma — all these things partially explain our behavior. All these things may partially diminish responsibility. But no factor, no matter what’s happened to you, or what kind of parents you’ve had, no factor can completely destroy your personal responsibility for your thoughts and actions. To confess, you need to own that! You need to use the personal pronoun “I.” I did it. I take responsibility.
This is the purpose of self-examination. It allows the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to what is true about us, so we can surrender ourselves to the unfailing love and tender mercy of God, receive his forgiveness and find freedom. Self-examination is a very life-giving, life-altering spiritual practice.
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