For the Church

1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. “

Encouragement is when we impart courage to each other. Just as discouragement is when we take courage away.

Maybe we can think of courage this way, “the willingness to take the next step in light of overwhelming obstacles.”

Compassion is wonderful for a moment but it always needs to be married to something else — an action. For instance, if a friend has compassion and that’s it...well, you will eventually need them to do something for you. Compassion is most stark when it is lacking and when it is alone. When someone acts and does not have compassion, the action feels harsh and unloving. But if it is alone, compassion feels useless and tepid.

Most of the time, we need encouragement — that is an action that compassion can produce. 

But if we assume that courage will arise from within ourselves, we will find that well dry. As with everything in the Christian life — what we lack has to come from outside of ourselves.

Zion Presbyterian Church — www.zioncolumbia.org

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” and promised that “the truth will set you free” — made in the image of God — we were made to live under the objective truth that comes from the Creators mouth — Jesus said, “humanity can’t live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Nobody simply dismisses this dynamic — everyone lives by truth claims.

And, in my estimation, the swing from postmodernism’s insistence that truth is socially constructed has not led to lesser conflict, but greater conflict — greater conflict where tribes launch “truth grenades” across social media platforms and words are seen as the place of social activism (often because it costs us nothing).

So as the followers of Jesus try to navigate these waters — the question for today is: “What does it mean for the followers of Jesus to speak the truth in love?”

Ephesians 4:15–16: Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. “

Zion Presbyterian Church — www.zioncolumbia.org

The conscience is our moral sense. It accuses us and excuses us according to an external standard.

What is the freedom of the conscience? The freedom of the conscience is earned by the cross and thus must be shaped by the cross. One of the things the freedom of the conscience is meant to do is allow us to make compromises — compromises for community and compromises for the mission of Jesus.

Zion Presbyterian Church — www.zioncolumbia.org

The conscience seems to be a hot topic in this cultural moment. So we wanted to enter into the conversations around the conscience.

The conscience is a moral sense — it alerts us to guilt and innocence. The Puritans would call the conscience “God’s spy in the bosom.” Calvin called it an awareness of a thousand witnesses (3.19.16). And I like both of those because instead of being a wild-card to do what I want, it gives us the sense that it makes us aware of our guilt or innocence before God (this emphasis is important).

Recommended Resources:
10 Statements on the Conscience

Andy Naselli and JD Crowley,  Conscience.

Zion Presbyterian Church — www.zioncolumbia.org