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. Well, that's Dr. Erwin Lutzer. He was our guest last time on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, talking about the importance of having a clear conscience before God and man. He's back with us again today.
Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. You know, John, I'm always thrilled to talk to Dr. Erwin Lutzer because everybody connects with him. He's certainly a pastor, and all of that training and the searching of the Word and understanding the Word has really given him tremendous wisdom in Christ. And I enjoy talking with him.
It just flows. And last time we talked about the definition of conscience, what it means, where did it come from, how does God use it, how does Satan use it against us, and then how do we free ourselves from the bondage of those whispers, and where does God want us to improve? What's that Holy Spirit conscious awakening that we need to be alert as Christians for?
We're going to continue this discussion today, and let me just frame it this way. The Bible says, His grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. But let me ask, do you really believe that? I think we, even as the Christian community, struggle embracing that, really. We want to kind of express power that we're all together, that we're perfect on the outside. When in reality, God's saying, you know what, show your weakness, and I'll make you perfect in me.
That's good insight and a great reminder about what God sees when he sees us. Well, Dr. Lutzer is a pastor emeritus of the Moody Church in Chicago, and he served there as senior pastor for 36 years. He's written a number of books. Jim, as you said, he's a very popular guest here, and we're glad to have him back. The book that forms the foundation about our conversation is The Power of a Clear Conscience Let God Free You from Your Past, and we've got copies of that here at the ministry.
Just stop by the show notes for the links. Dr. Lutzer, welcome back. Glad to be with you again. It's fun.
I so enjoy it. I mean, it is. It's like sitting and getting a meal that's filling the spiritual tummy, if I could say it that way.
Well, thank you. And you know, doctrine has to be applied to life or else it's irrelevant, right? And one of the things that we need to understand is that we have a God who understands human need and is willing to meet us wherever we are at. Yeah, and that is life, right? That is what this whole thing is probably about. I love it when the author gives personal examples, because that's so refreshing, because you're not trying to project yourself as the perfect human, and I so appreciate that.
I think so many in Christian leadership, we do ourselves such a disservice and more the gospel of disservice to try to pretend that we're all together. You had a story, I think, about anger sitting in a parking lot before you're going to give a sermon. Oh, did I include that in the book?
You might have, or our producer picked it up in his talks with you. But the bottom line was, I love it. Tell us what happened. So here I am. I'm to speak at a conference.
I'm having a difficult time finding a parking space. And somehow I am overwhelmed with guilt, a sense of inadequacy. And immediately I began to recognize that this comes from Satan and not from God.
So in the car, I was alone, and it's best to do this when you are alone in the car. I said, Begone, Satan, for it is written, Who shall lay any charge to God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemned?
It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, and is even now on the right hand of the throne of God who maketh intercession for us. Jim, calmness came over my soul. I found a parking space.
Fifteen minutes later, I stood up to speak, and all was well. You see, what I believe Satan was trying to do is to confuse me, to bring guilt upon me. Convict you.
Convict me. And I took a stand against it. And by the way, if there are people who are listening and they say, Well, where did that passage of scripture come from? Well, that's Romans chapter 8. Jesus, when he was there in the desert three times, begone Satan, for it is written. And I believe that there are times when we should speak to the devil, so to speak.
Martin Luther certainly did that. And what we have to do is to recognize that we are listening to his voice, and it is a voice of deception. It is a voice of condemnation.
And this is the way you tell the difference. When Satan speaks to you about your sin, he is trying to drive you away from God. When the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin, he is driving you toward God for forgiveness.
That is so true. I want to read a Spurgeon quote and have you just respond to it. Spurgeon, of course, one of the great theologians, he said, Man piles a mountain of sin, but God will match it, and he raises up a loftier mountain of grace. Abundant sin is no barrier to the superabundant grace of God. Do we believe that as Christians?
Well, you know, as a pastor, I used to receive an awful lot of mail from people. And one of the questions I was always asked, I mean, not always, but frequently, is did I commit the unpardonable sin? So if there's anyone out there who believes that they have committed the unpardonable sin, the answer is no, you have not. If you have a desire to be forgiven, you can be forgiven. The unpardonable sin was committed in the New Testament when Jesus did miracles and the nation turned against him. But there is an unpardonable sin, and that is people who do not want forgiveness, they do not seek forgiveness, and so they harden their hearts and they go the wrong direction. Now, since we're talking about stories, one day a man writes to me from prison, and he says, I violated four women. I've destroyed their lives.
I'm sitting in this cell, and I'm listening to you. Can I be forgiven? Now, Jim, there was something within me that thought, no, you deserve hell.
But then it dawned on me that biblically all of us deserve hell, so I wrote back and I said this. I said, I want you to visualize two trails. One trail is really messy. I mean, you know, there's ruts all over the road.
There's another trail that is very well traveled, but then 18 inches of snow falls and covers both trails. Can you tell the difference? No. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. And the righteousness that he receives through repentance and faith is the same righteousness that you, Jim, have received and you, John, have received and that I have received.
It is the righteousness of God, and it is capable of covering the most horrendous sins. You know, and that is absolutely true and accurate. Yet I can feel that in people's hearts, it's hard to absorb that that person that you described that wrote you from prison. Yeah, many will still say, I hope you go to hell. And you know, how do we process that? How do we get on the right side of God on that?
That's a very interesting way to put it. How do we get on the right side of God? I think that all of us always want to be on the right side of God, right?
I would hope. What we have to do is to magnify grace. You know, let me give you an illustration of Martin Luther. Luther struggled with sin. He, of course, did all that the church required.
It was never enough. The belief was that they are saved by grace, but you have to make yourself worthy of grace. So he did all the rituals, and there was no satisfaction for his sin, no easing of the conscience until he uncovered the gospel that it is indeed a gift of faith. And then he said, it was as if I walked through the doors of paradise, because now it didn't matter how high God's standard was as long as I didn't have to meet it.
Jesus met it for me, and my sins belong to Jesus. So what Luther does is he doesn't minimize the sin. He magnifies grace, because he understood.
And maybe I've said this before, but it has to be shouted. He understood that the issue is not the greatness of the sin. The issue is the quality of the righteousness that has been attributed to those who believe the gospel. And that righteousness is given to all people equally who repent, and that became the basis of the priesthood of the believer, because now anyone who belongs to God can come to God directly, because we all have the righteousness of Christ. Erwin, I'm thinking the early church struggled with this a bit, because Paul addresses it. And he, again, since we're paraphrasing, he said something in effect like, this doesn't mean that you go on sinning. Like, we could translate that to say, okay, God forgives our sin. Therefore, I'll be forgiven if I commit this sin. And Paul was addressing that, saying, no, no, no. No, he said, God forbid.
Right. So speak to that question, because some might be thinking, okay, well, if God's grace is that sufficient, then it's all covered. So if I sin, no big deal.
And it is a big deal. And the way it becomes a big deal is that God disciplines his children who commit sin willingly and do so from a standpoint of knowledge and who think that they are going to have an advantage because of God's grace. So we have to hold that intention. But if there's anyone listening who says to himself or herself, well, you know, I can then sin greatly because I can be forgiven, you will discover that there is a payment that is to be made for sin. There are certain consequences that we can't control. But more than that, God is going to discipline you. It says in the book of Hebrews, if you're not disciplined, you're not a child of God. So on the one hand, we preach grace.
On the other hand, we don't preach the kind of grace that gives people license to sin. That's a very important point that has to be made. Dr. Lutzer, the essence of your book is really here, five steps to deal with the conscience. And so in the last half of this program, we've got to cover at least as many as we can.
Let's get to it. I think the first is understanding the healing power of God's light. And I love that metaphor. How does that relate to a clear conscience? All right, very quickly, I base that on 1 John 1. First of all, the Bible says that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. And yet at the same time, it goes on to say that we are darkness.
So the question is, how do we who are darkness get in touch with God who is only light? And the answer actually is found there in verse 9 that we've referenced before where it says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now the word confess means to agree together with God. So we agree that we have sinned. We also agree that God has a right to take this sin from us forever. There's a surrender, there's a repentance there, and then God forgives us. So then what we need to do is to ask ourselves the question also, how do we deal with those whom we have wronged?
Now that's a separate question, but I need to speak to it very briefly. To all those who are out there who are asking, what do I have to confess to others, what don't I have to confess, I'm going to just give a very general answer. But Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 5. He says, if you are taking your gift to the altar and you remember that your brother has ought against you, leave your gift there, go reconcile with your brother, and then offer the gift. What Jesus is saying is that reconciliation is incredibly important, and what you need to do is to make sure that you've done all you possibly can to be reconciled because it even precedes worship. Come and worship after you are reconciled. Now to all those who are out there, I want to say that I'm not going to tell you what needs to be confessed to somebody else and what doesn't, because that's a matter of individuality.
I suggest that you go to a counselor. I suggest that you go to a pastor, someone who's wise, who helps you process that. There's something else I want to mention, and that is that a lot of things have to be confessed in the presence of another person. For example, when I was the pastor of Moody Church, a couple came to me, and she confessed to her husband that their fourth child was not his.
So you can imagine it was best that she confessed that with me present rather than doing it alone. So my burden for everyone who is listening is you have to take care of your conscience. You have to deal with issues before God and before man and then enjoy God. Enjoy God.
It's so good. Let me ask this because I think it's important. I feel like there's two big billboards in the New Testament, salvation through Christ and Christ alone, and don't become a Pharisee. I mean, those are clearly screaming at us as we read the New Testament. But in fairness, the Pharisees were trying to live up to perfection. They were trying to live to the law, do everything correctly. And I think even today, Erwin, we have people in the Christian faith who live it well.
They do a good job living to the commandments, you know, minor, to your point earlier, kind of minor sins that they probably look at and say, Lord, please forgive me that I said that or thought that about that person. But the downside of that is it allows your heart to look critically at others who are not as good as you. And now we're squarely in the Pharisaical heart.
All right. How do we avoid that? I want everyone to take a deep breath. This is going to be a means, I believe, of bringing some truth to people that I hope will be transforming.
I pray that it will be. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter 9 that the rituals of the Old Testament had some value, some value as rituals. But then it says, How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Jim, what you've described are dead works. And they cannot cleanse the conscience.
So, let's list some dead works out there. One of them is your description of people doing good. You know, they think to themselves, I have to balance the scale.
I had a friend who said whenever he came home from school and mowed the lawn without being asked, his mother used to say, well, what have you been up to now? In other words, you know, we all want to balance the scale and so we do good works. Or we have religious rituals, which is to your point, the Pharisees. I speak with a heavy heart because there may be people who are listening and they are committing a dead work of self-harm, cutting.
Why? There's something within them that says, I have to pay for my sin. And because I have to pay for my sin, I have to do this and this and this and I have to suffer. Now, think of the scripture that I just quoted. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses our conscience from dead works. So, you're delivered from this whole idea that righteousness comes because of what you do.
It comes because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And I say to all those who are out there who are trying to even the scale, you cannot even the scale. Only Christ evens the scale and that's why he came and that's why he died.
Yeah, so true. Dr. Lutzer, in covering one, I think we've covered a number of the five, if not all five, but let's state them clearly so the listener can understand those five steps to dealing with your conscience. Number one, realize that God is light.
Number two, realize that we are dark. Number three, confession. Number four, receiving cleansing, that God is willing not only to forgive your sin but to be cleansed from all unrighteousness. And number five is to enjoy God. Let's take a few minutes and concentrate on that one, to enjoy God. It almost feels irreligious or disrespectful.
What does that mean? Help the person to say, I don't enjoy God, I respect and revere him. You know, the older I get, Jim, the more time I spend just enjoying God and the way I do it is to give him praise and to give him worship and to remind him of something that he already knows, namely that I am his and that he is mine. But it's a matter of learning to enjoy him by giving him praise and it also releases you from a lot of burdens because you begin to realize that his shoulders are big enough to carry them. After all, if the governments of the world are going to be upon his shoulders, he certainly is strong enough to bear our burdens.
And we therefore are excited. You know, there's a story of a woman who was walking along with a very heavy suitcase. A bus came along and she got onto the bus and she continued to stand in the aisle holding the suitcase. Somebody said, why don't you put the suitcase down?
She said, well, I'm glad that the bus is carrying me. I can't expect it to carry the suitcase too. So I use that illustration to say to Christians, if you're a believer, you're on the bus, put your suitcase down.
God is strong enough to carry it. And that kind of fits with the next question I wanted to ask you, which is when we don't hold onto God's promises, it can cause us to hide or be silent instead of sharing Christ with confidence. How does shame and guilt affect our witness and how can we respond in a healthy way?
Jim, I have to say that I read about a study that said that the reason that Christians do not share their faith is not because they don't know enough. The major reason is because of unconquered sin. They say to themselves, if Jesus has not delivered me from ABCD, how can I share him with others? So that becomes a great barrier because of the guilt that they're carrying, because of their own imperfections, because of their own possible addictions. And that's why dealing with a conscience is so important, not just for our well-being and God's glory, but so that we might be able to witness with a sense of openness and joy. And joy in the Bible is indeed connected with a clear conscience. And so we can witness to other people. We can do so winsomely, yes, but also sometimes directly.
Why? Because we know what Jesus has done for us and that gives us the confidence that we can pass along the faith to others that has been transforming to us. And when you have that sense of joy and faith in God, it's easy to share the faith. And you can do so in many different situations just by asking questions. You don't have to have all the answers, but you have to ask them where they are at. For example, when I witness to people, I always ask them this question, where are you on your spiritual journey? I don't ask whether or not they're a Christian because that word has so many different definitions today.
But I say, where are you on your spiritual journey? And they will say, well, I used to go to church, but I don't anymore or I'm an atheist or something. And then what you do is continue to ask them questions about it.
For example, I was in a European country recently and I was interviewed actually on national television in that particular country. And as I was explaining the Christian faith, one of the interviewers says, yeah, but what about all the evil in the world? Now, that's a difficult question. And of course, it's come up many, many times. Well, such as if God is real, why do babies die?
Right, right. And so he was arguing basically for atheism. But I asked him this question, how does atheism help you solve the problem of evil? It is entirely hopeless if you're an atheist. So what we have to do is we have to take situations, we have to use the opportunities to introduce Christ to people, and at the same time recognize that they will have questions that we might not have all the answers for, but let us give them a testimony of our own faith in Christ and the transformation that he has brought about.
Erwin, right at the end here, I'm thinking of personal application for people, people listening. Maybe that mom, one of the observations I've had is moms and wives carry a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. I'm not the wife I need to be, I'm not the mother I should be, my kids are out of control, as if they're responsible for all of that behavior outside of her ability. The man's situation might be I'm not the husband I should be, I'm not the leader in the home, I'm not spiritually capable. Just fill in all those blanks, but in there is that residue of guilt and shame, which can incapacitate us.
What do you say to them to say, shake it off, this is the way to wake up tomorrow morning? First of all, I want to mention a woman who said to me, my mother owns the Midwest franchise for guilt distribution. So there are parents out there who take their own guilt and they pass it on to their children. Without in any way excusing our shortcomings or the things that we should be doing that we aren't, what we have to do is to let God meet us where we are and say, yes, Lord, you know how I have failed. You know how I have come short. I've not been the parent that I should be. I mean, all of us look back. I look back and I think, wow, I wish I had done A, B, C, D, right? A do-over.
A do-over. But, you know, there are no perfect parents and it is amazing how God's grace makes up for our own failings. I've seen kids come out of homes that I thought to myself, this guy's never going to amount to anything, and yet God is using him mightily. So let's remember the words of Spurgeon that you began with, namely that no matter how high the mountain of sin, God piles a mountain of grace that is higher. Having said that, let no one out there think that we are falling for this modern notion where grace enables us to live however we want to live without any regard for the Bible because there are those out there who want to misuse grace.
That's not where we are going. But at the same time, let us remember that where sin abounded, grace abounded more. Dr. Erwin Lutzer, I mean, this is the meat of the word. Thank you for thinking and living and communing with the Lord in such a way and writing these things in powerful books, not just this one. I hope you realize, wow, this is a resource I should get for myself or maybe somebody in your orbit, a family member, a friend.
The power of a clear conscience let God free you from your past. I can't think of a person that doesn't need this, really, and get a hold of us. We believe in the content so much that if you can't afford to make a gift to focus on the family, just ask for the book and we'll send it for free and we'll trust others, we'll cover the cost of that. If you can support us monthly, that's great.
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Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or you can donate by clicking the link in the show notes. And coming up next time, encouraging husbands to love their wives. Do what friends do. Do what lovers do. Do what you did before you got married. Do what you did when the kids were little. Again, be intentional about just the little things. And again, we're not talking big money.
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