In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote that conscience does make cowards of us all. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and today we'll be talking with Dr. Erwin Lutzer about keeping a clear conscience with God and others. I'm John Fuller. John, Satan loves when he can neutralize us as believers and discourage us and, you know, really play on the despair that is in most human hearts, because we aren't perfect people.
We are sinners saved by grace, and Christians need not be held captive to that sin riddled with guilt, because God wants us to live with freedom and joy and peace of mind. And I know our discussion with Dr. Lutzer today will help ease so many burdens that you may be carrying today. I want you to lean in with us. This is not going to be the milk.
It'll be the meat of the Word today. So let's get into it and start talking to our great guest. Yeah, and Dr. Lutzer is a very popular author and speaker. Pastor Emeritus of Moody Church in Chicago and served as senior pastor there for 36 years. Of the books he's written, the one that really forms the foundation for today's conversation is The Power of a Clear Conscience, Let God Free You from Your Past.
Look for the details about our guest and his book in the program description. Dr. Lutzer, it is so good to have you back here at Focus on the Family. Welcome. I'm so glad to be back, and I thank God for this ministry, and thank you, John, and thank you, Jim. Great to be with you again. It's so stimulating. You know, the listeners and the viewers love it when you're here, because you do give them the meat of the Word, and people respond. Every time you're on, it's one of our most popular shows.
So thank you for the effort to get here and to be part of this. Let me start, this idea of conscience. You know, since I was a Christian at age 15, we always talk about the body, soul, and spirit, or the body, mind, and spirit. What is conscience? Where does it come from? And where does it fit in those three descriptions we read about in Scripture about how we're comprised?
Well, that's an interesting question. Let's look at the word conscience by itself. It comes from two words, con, which means with, and then conscience, science, which means knowledge. So, it's the knowledge that we have along with us. And there are several things that we can say about conscience with authority.
First of all, it is universal. Everyone has a conscience. But, Jim, we have to understand that the conscience also has tremendous power. One of the reasons I wrote the book that we're discussing today is I'm thinking, for example, of a man in a church married to a wonderful woman, four children. He's asked to be a church leader, and he says no repeatedly. Then he confesses to his pastor that the reason is he fathered a child when he was in college, and he knows that this boy is growing up in another city. So, here's a man who can't make progress in the Christian life until he has dealt with that. The Bible says in 1 John 3 verse 21, if our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence towards God. So, the Apostle Paul says this in Acts 24 verse 16, I make it a point to have a clear conscience before God and before men. Clearing our consciences before God is relatively easy through confession and repentance, but often those reconciliation issues are very, very difficult.
And one of the things that we have to do is to help people through the process. Now, one other thing about conscience, here's something very interesting. It does not condemn us before we do an act. It only kicks in after we have sinned. Well, let me ask you about that because it's, especially for the people listening that might not be committed to Christ, they're interested, I would say Christian-friendly, but they're not there.
There are people viewing us and listening to us that fit that description. The evidence of that conscience usually is described as a little child when they steal that cookie out of the cookie jar. That might be one of the first times they're doing something that they know mom and dad did not want me to do, and that's where that flares up. They've taken the cookie and mom says, did you take a cookie out of the cookie jar? No.
Now they've lied. And then that is like the early introduction of conscience to a child, isn't it? Well, it might be. That might be the evidence of conscience, but we're all born with a conscience, with a God consciousness.
And of course, it can be conditioned. In other words, conscience is not always a reliable guide as to what we should do. But at the same time, Jim, everyone who's listening to us today has had the experience of doing something and later on, the conscience says, haha, you have messed up.
You've done something that you know is wrong, and it has gone against your own values. And the way we can talk about conscience is this. Coming here to Colorado, of course, flying from O'Hare, I went through a metal detector.
Sometimes those metal detectors are very sensitive, sometimes less sensitive. So, you have people with a sensitive conscience, a not so sensitive conscience, but everyone knows that there is some objective standard to which they are accountable. Yeah. You know, on a lighter note, you had a story about a sandwich in a briefcase in your book. We need a little relief when we're talking about such heavy subject matter. So, what was the sandwich that taught you a lesson?
All right. So, this was years ago when you used to be fed on a plane, you remember? And the plane is coming into O'Hare, and I'm given a sandwich that is actually wrapped in cellophane. And I wasn't very hungry, so I put it in my briefcase. I had two briefcases at that time, one when I would fly and one when I would go to the church. And later on, I'd come into my room and I would smell something, but I didn't know what it was.
And then about a month later, when I flew again, there it was. Now, if you have to ask, what did it look like? It was green and mushy. Describe the smell.
And very smelly, okay? Now, that's the way some people are. They've taken sin that they need to deal with and they've wrapped it up. They've said to themselves, it is put away, but then it pops up and it's always there. And so, what we have to do is to try to help them see how that can be resolved, how they can be forgiven by God, but also by others so that there can be harmony. You know, there's so many issues out there.
I wanna tell you one other story, and that is that I have a friend whose mother, she would commit herself to a psych ward from time to time. He's 22 years old. She sits him down and she said, I want you to know that the man that you think your father is is not your father. Your father lives a number of miles away. He's a man with whom I had an affair. Now, let everyone put themselves in the shoes of this young man.
He's 22. He's trying to figure out who in the world he is. Today, he is one of the most mighty men of God that I know. He goes from church to church and challenges men, has a marvelous ministry. So, I want to shout out there to everyone who's listening, your background and your origin should not be an eternal stumbling block to who you can be in Christ and the forgiveness of God and the reconciliation of God. No, amen.
I mean, that's so true. What was is past and what is in the future is where God wants you to go. Let me ask you about another story that you had in the book because it really kind of paints that picture of the severity when you talk about the screener and some consciences being tender and others being less tender. This man was, I think, involved in a yacht race and did something. Explain what happened and the load that he carried. His name was Crow Horst and he was in a yacht race around the world and what he tried to do is to cheat, to pretend that he was going with all the other yachts but actually he wasn't. He was hiding somewhere.
He wanted to catch them on the way back. Eventually, he committed suicide. He left all of his logs so that people could see that indeed he had cheated. But here's the point.
He didn't want to face the embarrassment of having cheated. So, unresolved guilt can lead to suicide where people don't want to be able to live up to the exposure that's coming and so they want to end it. But I contend with all my heart. In fact, I have a chapter in the book that we're talking about on how nobody has to commit suicide because no matter what you have done, the grace of God is able to cover that and God has an answer for people where they are despite their past.
Erwin, let me ask you this. I know Christians who carry such a burden have a high sensitivity meter to their conscience, if I could say it that way. I like that description. That connects for me. But they can't shake it. It is always present. It's just those sins that they committed, they will say something like, God can't forgive me for that.
All right. Jim, that is so critical. And you know, you opened this program by mentioning something very interesting, namely that Satan accuses us during the day and during the night.
The Bible says night and day. So, let's answer the question for Christians. How do we distinguish the accusations of Satan from the conviction of the Holy Spirit? That's a big one.
That's a big one. And the answer is this, the Holy Spirit of God does bring conviction so that we repent of our sins, 1 John 1.9, we confess our sins that are brought to our attention. But it is Satan who hassles us and reminds us of sins that God has already forgiven. Example, here's a woman who comes to me and says, Pastor Lutzer, she says, when I'm in a mall and I see a three-year-old child, a three-year-old girl, she says, I am just so overwhelmed with guilt because I had an abortion.
And because of that, that's the age that my baby would be today. I said to her, have you confessed your sin? Oh, she said, I've confessed my sin a thousand times.
Now, let's talk about that. What she is saying is that God is not faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And I pointed out to her that it is Satan who reminds her of sins that have been forgiven by God and that these kinds of feelings might come up, but she has to meet them by saying, I receive the forgiveness that I have received from God and I'm not going to be overwhelmed with this. Now, while I'm on the subject, 1 John 1.9, he is faithful to forgive our sins and to cleanse us. I have to say in all sincerity, I think there are many people who are forgiven, but they aren't cleansed. Cleansed has to do with the conscience. Cleansed has to do with the whole idea that we are now not only forgiven, but we sense that forgiveness and we say that forgiveness is mine.
And I'm not going to be overwhelmed with the past because God takes our sins, He throws them into the depths of the sea, and then He puts up a sign that says, no fishing. Right. And I think for the, again, the nominal believer that doesn't know the lingo or the non-believer that doesn't know the lingo, this is why we call it the good news. This is the good news that Christ died for our sins so that we can have relationship with God. And it's not only that we have good advice for people, we actually have good news. Yeah. I would call it the great news.
The great news. Jesus died for the worst of sinners, and we need to be able to get that message out there, and we need to understand the nature of grace and also the nature of God. At the same time, we also have to help people to see that there are times when they have to reconcile with others, when it isn't simply a matter of forgiveness before God, but we go back to our key verse today where the Apostle Paul says, I make it a point to have a clear conscience before God and before man. Erwin, one of the things that is hard to understand is the Garden of Eden for some, and this is where conscience was raised, right? The Lord said, don't eat of this fruit. We can discuss is that a metaphor or what have you, but basically it's God's instruction to us, to them, Adam and Eve, not to eat of this fruit.
And of course, Satan comes along and said, why can't you be like God? You can eat of that fruit. You can have the knowledge, and they do. Speak to that moment of the garden, what that represents for us. Oh, that is so critical. That's the origin of conscience.
Yeah. You know, when Adam and Eve sinned, you remember one of the first things they did is they hid. They were ashamed. They were ashamed. And then God says, when he comes to Adam, who told you that you were naked, was there a little bird in the garden that said, hey, you're naked?
No, conscience told them they were naked. So, here you have hiding. From now on, we're going to live in two worlds. We're going to live in the public world, and we're also going to live in the private world. And in its worst form, here you have a man who in one compartment is a Sunday school teacher, and he is highly thought of in the church.
On the other hand, he's an abuser and an addict, okay, privately. So, you have immediately you have hiding. But you also have blaming. Jim, I don't know if you've heard me say this or not because I've said it in a different context, but you remember when God said to Adam, hast thou eaten of the tree? Where have I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? He blames God. He says, the woman whom thou gavest me, it's this weak-willed woman, Lord, whom you gave me. And I always point out that Adam blamed his wife even though there wasn't a chance in the world that he had married the wrong one.
Right, there was only one. That's really good. It's so then you begin the blaming, you begin the hiding, and all of that began in Eden. Well, and I love that connection of the fact that there's nothing new under the sun.
I mean, we are still behaving like Adam and Eve, caught every day. That's the battle. And that's the evidence for the spiritual journey of this life. Yeah, yeah.
Well, that shame and blame continues. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and our guest is Dr. Erwin Lutzer. And we're talking about some of the content in a terrific book he's written called The Power of a Clear Conscience, Let God Free You from Your Past.
Stop by the show notes for the link and the details. You know, just to encourage you, I get the prep for the program in the book, and I read that, and I sent the prep along to my 21-year-old son this morning, early, because he's flying out, and he had a chance to look at it on the airplane. He wrote me back and said, this is incredible content. So even a 21-year-old is connecting with what you're having to say in this regard. I just think that's an affirmation to you about the importance of your work and what you do. Yeah, and ultimately, it relates directly to the gospel, of course, and God's answer to our problem. And on the one hand, we never want to minimize sin. But on the other hand, we always have to maximize grace. And to the person that's out there who think that they've sinned too much for God to forgive them, the answer is no.
Yeah. And man, that should light everybody up. How could we hold back from sharing that good news with people and with ourselves?
There is an element of this, Erwin, I wanted to ask you about. For me, one of the most difficult public speaking situations, when I share about my past and being an orphan and my dad and being an alcoholic, and I'll have 50-year-old, 60-year-old men stand in line, come up to me in tears and say, how did you ever forgive him? I can't forgive my father. And I honestly, the one thing I just thank the Lord that he gave me is even a five, six-year-old child. I always thought to myself, wow, that's really a bad problem my dad has.
I did not own it. I thought that's sad that he has that problem. And it's one of those things where you as a believer, you have to get to that point that this burden is too big for us to bear. We can't find a way out of sin. We need God. And then you have to be able to say, God, I'm inadequate. I can't do this.
I need you. And those men will walk away. Some get it and others are still punching at the air of guilt, shame, regret, resentment, and I struggle helping them. And you know what I'd like to do is to shout out to everyone listening, whatever you don't forgive, you pass on. And so, when you have someone who says, I can't forgive my parents, they actually take that kind of anger and guilt with them into their next relationship. And to all those who are out there, you say, well, I can't really be reconciled to my parents because number one, they won't admit to what has happened. Secondly, maybe the dad has died. I tell the story of a woman who traveled far away to go to the grave of her mother who was a prostitute.
And this woman stood there for a long time just dealing with the anger and the guilt and laying it down at the foot of the cross so that she could be free. You can't do anything about the past. The past is past. You can't pray like the teenager did.
Lord, I pray that this accident might not have happened. The past is past. The question is, if you hold on to bitterness, you are the one who is suffering, not the person against whom you have the anger. Yeah, that's so, so true. Sometimes the environment we're born into can be a shame-based environment.
I studied in Japan and that culture, there's a high performance requirement. And if a child can't meet that educationally, whatever it might be, there is shame that comes to that because you're shaming our family. Speak to that kind of attitude and the destructive nature of it. Well, this is a false guilt, of course. I mean, if you were brought up in a home where your father was an alcoholic, where you were so ashamed of what was happening in your home or a home in which there was abuse and you were abused, you are going to feel guilty for just being alive. And you're going to end up with a lot of self-hatred. That kind of guilt is not guilt from God.
Let me give you another kind. My parents knew a woman who convinced her husband to go to a concert that he didn't want to go to on the way they were in an accident and he was killed. For 14 years, she went to her husband's grave regretting the fact that it was because of her decision that he was dead. That kind of guilt is not from God. That's self-imposed guilt. So, what we have to help people to understand is you have to be free from a guilt that is not given to you by God. Now, God does make us feel guilty over sins that we have committed, but the purpose is to drive us to repentance. But we have a lot of self-imposed guilt that is very destructive. Erwin, we're going to come back tomorrow and continue the discussion because, again, I think this is rich content. This is the meat of the word. This is how we apply it in our lives to be stronger Christians, to be more faithful in our commitment to Christ, to break those bonds that Satan whispers to us, that our own conscience might whisper to us, that God's paid the price for.
I mean, that's the nutshell of what you've written about. But I want to finish up the first part of our conversation this time with a reminder of God's grace for us as sinners. This one can be a little jarring to the listeners, but you have a story about a chaplain who ministered to Nazi war criminals, and boy, the outcome on the one hand, you go, wow, God's love is that immense. On the other hand, you're going, really?
That could happen? Explain what it is. Erwin Lutzer Yeah, there are going to be many people who are going to be mystified, maybe even angry, but this is the story, and it's found in a book entitled Mission at Nurnberg by Tim Townsend, and people can read it for themselves. The American government believed that a chaplain should be sent to the 21 Nazi prisoners who were in Nurnberg. Six were Catholic, 15 were Protestant. So this man went there with a gospel, and this chaplain explained the gospel, and one of the things, Jim, that he discovered is that these Nazis who attended his services, they were able to quote the Lord's Prayer. They knew many verses of scripture because they were brought up in the church, but he believes that five and possibly as many as seven came to saving faith in Christ.
Now, let's fast forward. The first person to be hung is a man by the name of Ribbentrop, and before he dies, he says, I'm putting my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm paraphrasing, but it's an accurate paraphrase. I'm putting my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who shed his blood for my sins. And then he said to the chaplain, I'll see you later. He said that just before he was hung. Now, we hear that, but what that illustrates is the gospel. God says, I think so much of what Jesus Christ did on the cross when he died for sinners that I can even forgive a Nazi who repents and believes on him, but I cannot forgive a good, sane, tax-paying, decent person who doesn't believe on him. It's an exaltation of grace. Could I take a moment and see if I can just quote a couple of lines of one of my favorite songs?
Of course. Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured, there where the blood of the lamb was spilled. Dark is the stain that we cannot hide. What can avail to wash it away? Look, there's flowing a crimson tide, whiter than snow.
You can be today. Imagine that. The good news of the gospel covering horrendous sins. I mean, that is as well said as it could be. And I think for us, that's the excitement of the faith to be able to encourage, illuminate for that person what Jesus has actually done and for them to respond to it.
It is unnerving. It may show a little bit of our pharisaical nature that we can't really embrace the fact that God could forgive someone, that evil, a Nazi official. I call it the scandal of grace.
Grace is a scandal. But it is like the thief on the cross next to Jesus. That's the same concept here, that the Lord cares for everyone. And to think that that thief had breakfast with his friend, very probably, bad to the bone thieves, and one gets to sup with Christ that very evening. And imagine Jesus on the cross still having that authority. Today, you shall be with me in paradise. That's the same concept here that the Lord cares for. Today, you shall be with me in paradise. That takes your breath away.
Yeah, exactly. Dr. Erwin Lutzer, thank you for being with us on part one. Let's come back and keep this discussion going. There's so much more to learn about the grace of God. It's endless.
And therefore, we need to come back and continue the discussion. I think you're connecting with this. I know you are. I know I am. And man, we wanna get this great resource into your hands, to let God free you from your past.
Who isn't saying yes? I mean, everyone needs that context and that ability to be able to break those shackles and those bonds that we have, those chains that keep us from moving forward in our life in Christ. Get a hold of us.
We'll do it three ways. If you can't afford it, just get in touch with us and we'll get it to you, because we believe in the content that much. If you can help us monthly, that's great. If you can make a one-time gift, that's terrific. We just wanna get this great content into your hands and invite you to be part of the ministry.
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Donate generously as you can, or if you're not in a spot to do that, just let us know that you really need a copy of this book. Our number is 800, the letter A, and the word family. We're stopped by the show notes for details.
And along the way, it might be that we talked about something that's kind of tender for you, maybe some guilt that you just can't shake, some blame, some need for forgiveness. Please know that we have caring Christian counselors here at Focus on the Family, and it'd be a privilege for us to schedule a time for them to give you a call. They'll talk with you. They'll pray with you. They'll offer some resources and maybe even help connect you to somebody in your own area. Our number again for that counseling team is 800, the letter A, and the word family. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we continue the conversation with Dr. Lutzer and once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.
