One of the great wonders of the redemption of God’s people by the blood of Jesus Christ is a free and clear conscience. Apart from his precious blood, there is only the accusing testimony of an evil conscience, the conscience of the first father of the human race, Adam. Finding his self-wrought garment of fig leaves wholly inadequate for the covering of his nakedness before the voice of the Lord God, Adam hid himself among the trees of the garden.
Much of the subsequent history of the human race is the continued fruitless effort to hide from God. Men continue to sew their fig leaves. They band together to proclaim their goodness to one another. They pride themselves on their self-fabricated morality. In that morality they may even acknowledge some help from God along the way, making religion their crutch. They find refuge in their own laws and their own inventions, approving of themselves before one another. Or men flee the voice of the Lord God. They take refuge in pills or the bottle, in cannabis or powder. They distract themselves with building empires, chasing trends, or pursuing licentiousness. In their lust, greed, and covetousness, they sear their consciences as with a hot iron. More sophisticated men of a philosophical bent explain to themselves that their consciences are formed only by the mores of their society and culture. On the other end of the spectrum are those who demonstrate an entire lack of any conscience by their horrific crimes. We observe more and more those who speak and act without any sense of shame whatever, parading their immorality for all the world to see.
What is the conscience?
Generally speaking, the conscience is an integral part of man’s nature as a rational, moral creature. The operation of the conscience involves ongoing comparison and judgment. The conscience first apprehends a standard, an ethical system. This standard of an ethical system may be consistent or inconsistent. The point is that the conscience understands the standard as a system that exists outside the conduct of the individual. Then the conscience compares the conduct of the individual to that standard to determine how the individual’s thoughts, words, and deeds compare to that established standard. He will find some results of conformance, which may give him personal, inward honor, exoneration, and vindication. He will find some results of nonconformance, which may cause him shame, sorrow, and change of behavior. Or as a result the individual may determine to quiet some part of his conscience. Keep in mind that, while conscience is chiefly an individual matter, conscience also often functions among groups and societies.
According to Romans 2:15, all men in general have this kind of conscience. “Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.” The Belgic Confession, in article 37, speaks of the consciences of men being opened in the day of judgment. “Then the books (that is to say, the consciences) shall be opened, and the dead judged according to what they shall have done in this world, whether it be good or evil” (Confessions and Church Order, 77). The consciences of the reprobate wicked will be their own damnation!
What a marvel of redemption that the consciences of the redeemed are set truly free! The redemption of the cross of Calvary is the redemption of all the consciences of the elect. With his precious blood Jesus Christ has taken away the guilt of their consciences. He has purchased the right for the consciences of the elect to be purged from the guilt of all their sins. He has purchased the right of every conscience of his redeemed to operate in freedom before God’s face and to be their proper guidance by the sanctifying operation of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of the Son.
The pathway to the believer’s free exercise of his conscience is the application of the gospel by faith through the working of the Holy Spirit. This most fundamental application is the believer’s justification by faith. It must be the proper ground of all his relationship to God. According to Lord’s Day 23, the knowledge of his full and free justification before God is the silencing of the accusation of his conscience that he has broken all the commandments of God and that he is still inclined to all evil. According to the Belgic Confession, article 23, it is the freedom of his conscience from all trouble.
This is sufficient to cover all our iniquities, and to give us confidence in approaching to God; freeing the conscience of fear, terror, and dread, without following the example of our first father, Adam, who, trembling, attempted to cover himself with fig leaves. And, verily, if we should appear before God, relying on ourselves or on any other creature, though ever so little, we should, alas! be consumed. (Confessions and Church Order, 51–52)
According to Hebrews 10:22, this is the confidence of approach to the holy throne of God, also signified and sealed by holy baptism: “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”
Only and always through faith, apprehending the complete righteousness of Jesus Christ as his righteousness, does the believer have a free and clear conscience. To this possession he applies himself over the course of his whole life. As he sins daily against his God, he defiles and pollutes his conscience. His conscience accuses him. He flees to the cross in repentance and faith, receives again the knowledge of his justification before God, and is renewed in the freedom of his conscience before God.
By the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, the believer delights to have the perfect law of God as the standard for his conscience. There can be no other substitute. Nor can he desire to see that law in any way that would compromise its perfection. Psalm 119 addresses the believer’s spiritual delight in the law of God exactly because of its glorious perfection. The psalm is filled with expressions of the believer’s ardent desire that the perfection of the law alone fill and control his conscience. Scripture, God’s perfect word, and scripture alone, the child of God desires to be the controlling and regulating law of his whole being and nature. He has no other room and no other use for any other law.
The child of God, through faith in Christ laying hold on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, is free to live according to his conscience, as his conscience is informed by the word of God. This freedom of the gospel was the strength of the Protestant Reformation. The proclamation of the gospel of justification by faith alone without works freed the people of God from the bondage of Rome and the pope. They were not to rely upon their connection with the earthly, temporal head of the Romish church for their salvation. For their salvation they did not need implicit faith in the church and its inconsistent and confusing teachings. They did not need the institution of the church to tell them all the deeds they needed to do for salvation, whether deeds for the recovery of salvation lost by their sins (penance), deeds for their further salvation (infused righteousness or drawn from the treasury of merit), or steps taken in the direction of asceticism or mysticism for assurance of salvation. All they needed was Christ and his righteousness.
The sola doctrines of the Protestant Reformation were all to be applied to the consciences of the people of God, giving them their true freedom in the office of every believer. Never were they to allow their consciences to be brought again under the yoke of men.
The role of the church of Jesus Christ, as a proper instrument of the head of the church, must serve this same freedom of conscience, and must do so by means of the preaching of the gospel according to its heart, the gospel of justification, that is, the forgiveness of sins through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. The central calling of the church is to preach the gospel. The doctrine of justification is the article of a standing or falling church.
For the protection of this cherished freedom of the believer’s conscience before God, the Belgic Confession invokes the principle of scripture alone as a necessary boundary for all the work of the government of the church of Jesus Christ. While granting the necessity of the government of the church for various purposes, the Confession establishes an important point of care in order not to bind the consciences of believers.
In the meantime we believe, though it is useful and beneficial that those who are rulers of the church institute and establish certain ordinances among themselves for maintaining the body of the church, yet they ought studiously to take care that they do not depart from those things which Christ, our only Master, hath instituted. And therefore, we reject all human inventions, and all laws which man would introduce into the worship of God, thereby to bind and compel the conscience in any manner whatever. Therefore we admit only of that which tends to nourish and preserve concord and unity, and to keep all men in obedience to God. For this purpose, excommunication or church discipline is requisite, with the several circumstances belonging to it, according to the Word of God. (Article 32, in Confessions and Church Order, 66–67)
In this article are three points that touch on the freedom of the conscience and join it with the Reformation principle of sola scriptura.
The first point is “Yet they ought studiously to take care that they do not depart from those things which Christ, our only Master, hath instituted.” Christ is “our only Master.” The church is not to make itself a master in any way, which would reject Christ, “our only Master.” The Belgic Confession here makes clear the tendency of men in their government of the church exactly to “depart from those things which Christ, our only Master, hath instituted.” They must therefore not only “take care that they do not depart,” but they must also take that care “studiously.” The word studiously does not mean merely carefully or attentively or even diligently. It means also zealously and ardently. Deliberative assemblies must be governed by a holy delight and zeal to ensure that there is no departure whatever from what Christ has instituted in his word.
The second point is the definite rejection made by the Confession. Rejected are “all human inventions, and all laws which man would introduce into the worship of God.” There is no room for the inventions of men. These “inventions” can be described as speculations or errors or even confusing teachings and statements. “All laws” apply to what might be presented as demanding conformance on the part of the members of the church. Introduction into the worship of God does not mean only innovations in the manner of worship. It means also the teachings that are set out in the preaching in the church which God’s people are expected to believe and follow. The important point made about these “human inventions” and “all laws which man would introduce” is their effect. That effect is “to bind and compel the conscience in any manner whatever.” Such is their damage, and such is the reason they must be rejected. They bind and compel the conscience.
The third point that touches on the freedom of the conscience is the two reasons given in the sentence, “Therefore we admit only of that which tends to nourish and preserve concord and unity, and to keep all men in obedience to God.” The first reason itself is striking because it clearly relates to the boundary that has been carefully defined by the article. “Therefore we admit only…” Nothing else is to be admitted, nothing of human invention or of human law. How easy it is for men to suppose that these inventions or laws are necessary for the sake of concord and unity! The Belgic Confession only knows one kind of concord and unity: spiritual concord and unity that is from Christ, the only master of the church.
Of special importance to the freedom of the conscience is the second reason: “and to keep all men in obedience to God.” The freedom of the Christian conscience is always to be in clear, understandable, and distinguishable obedience to God.
There are three ways in which the truth of sola scriptura can be preserved as the “rulers of the church institute and establish certain ordinances among themselves for maintaining the body of the church.”
The first way is an exercise of restraint, having respect to the boundary of scripture alone distinguished in article 32. This exercise of restraint is similar to article 30 of the Church Order. That article stipulates that only ecclesiastical matters are to be treated, and that in an ecclesiastical manner. Not every matter is to be taken up by a deliberative assembly and judgment made concerning it. Deliberative assemblies can be tempted into thinking that by making decisions they can take care of every problem presenting itself in the church. A consistory can be drawn deeper and deeper into an issue, trying to deal with all the facets and persons involved. The elders can soon find themselves making all kinds of decisions to seal off different possibilities. In doing so they can forget the boundary of maintaining the rule of scripture and begin violating the conscience.
To avoid this temptation, the rulers of the church must be able clearly to ground their decisions in the word of God. No matter how tempting it may be to exercise their authority through mere decision-making, they may not make any decision that cannot be grounded in the word of God.
The second way is similar but enters more deeply into the matter of honoring the conscience of the believer in the way in which decisions are written and presented. Deliberative assemblies may have in their collective minds how scripture indicates both the necessity of a decision and the way a decision must be taken to maintain sole obedience to Jesus Christ. But mindfulness itself is not sufficient. Decisions must not merely quote scripture. They must lay out a definite, clear line from scripture to the issue being decided. Is the decision so clearly the testimony of scripture that the child of God reading the decision will understand how it is the rule of Christ? Will he find it no burden at all to submit to the decision because he clearly understands it to be the rule of Christ expressed to him? Will he delight to conform because he knows it to be the rule of his Savior over him?
Deliberative assemblies must not be confusing in their decisions. They may not present any kind of mixture of man’s authority and the authority of God’s word. They may not require an implicit faith in the church’s own authority. (See Belgic Confession 7.) Deliberative assemblies may not abuse Acts 15:28—“For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us”—to puff up their own authority. They may not present God’s flock with decisions that do invoke various passages of scripture but then demand implicit faith for the actual application of those passages to the specific issue at hand. They may not bind the believer’s conscience by requiring submission to decisions that fail to carry the word of God all the way through to their end.
The third way of preserving the truth of sola scriptura is ultimate. This has to do with the calling that is presented to believers to join themselves to the true church of Jesus Christ wheresoever it is found (Belgic Confession 28), as well as the calling to separate from the false church. This way is also founded on the truth of the call of Jesus Christ to believe on him alone and that church membership in a certain institution is entirely voluntary and may not be a matter of compulsion or coercion.
Can we go so far as to say that compulsion or coercion concerning church membership is the fundamental power that brings about spiritual and ecclesiastical abuse of every kind? Is it possible to go even further: where members are no longer free to withdraw their membership for reasons of conscience, is that itself ecclesiastical abuse? This is not to say that elders are not to do any kind of work in explaining to persons why they ought to reconsider their decision to withdraw membership. Nor is it to say that persons who are considering withdrawing from a congregation ought not listen to the elders when they come to speak to them. But especially in cases of conscience, elders must understand the importance that those under their care follow Christ freely, according to the conviction of their consciences. It is all too easy in such work to bind the consciences of God’s people.
It is noteworthy that the Belgic Confession, in articles 28 and 29, does not make any claim to identify any specific group as the “true church” of Jesus Christ. It only describes how the true church may be known. Only on account of that knowledge is the believer obligated to join that true church wherever it may be found. When a church or churches must specifically identify themselves as the “true church” of Jesus Christ, thus demanding membership and continuing membership in it rather than in another, there may already be consciences bound to what is not the rule of Christ in the church. Far better it is for churches by virtue of their simple, clear, open operation “according to the pure Word of God” to demonstrate their identity as true churches. Sola scriptura may not be just a slogan mouthed by the rulers of the church. It must control their whole manner in the church of Jesus Christ.
However, the importance of this third way does not have mainly to do with the ultimate question of church membership, where one decides conscientiously to maintain himself under the care of Christ. It rather has to do with how the matter of church membership affects the work of the rulers of the church. Does their work truly serve the flock of Jesus Christ, so that the members of the church understand very clearly that their membership is simply and clearly an expression of what it means faithfully to follow their Lord and Savior? Perhaps even more simply: do the people of God have their consciences free by virtue of their membership to be the sheep of the sheepfold of Christ? Of course, this does not mean that the rulers of the church stop being rulers of the church. But it does mean that deliberative assemblies of the church and churches represent the rule of Christ so clearly and completely that its members are convinced in their consciences that they are following Christ alone as proper members of the church. The alternative, the rule of Christ compromised by the rules of men, binds the conscience and makes church membership a great evil and burden rather than a blessed good. Conscientious church members are then forced always to choose between Christ and the church.
May faithful churches of Jesus Christ steadfastly labor for God’s word alone in the service of Christ alone! May God’s people rejoice to know their places in such churches, their consciences free to worship and serve their Savior alone!
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