Living according to conscience, then, is not a matter of “being faithful to my best self” or “following conscience per se.” It is a matter of conscience’s being informed, shaped, and trained by God’s Word and becoming increasingly sensitive to its assessments. To say that “God alone is Lord of the conscience” is to affirm that God’s Word is paramount in shaping this dimension of our self-consciousness. My Christian responsibility, therefore, is to immerse myself in the doctrines, patterns, and precepts of the Word of God.

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also. —Westminster Confession of Faith 20.2
This is no ivory-tower statement. Many of the delegates to the Westminster Assembly were working pastors and all too familiar with “the real world.” In fact, as they were writing in the 1640s, the real world was caught up in a terrible civil war, behind which lay the very issues that chapter 20 of the confession was written to address: liberty of conscience. A glance at my “seventeenth century” bookshelves reveals such learned works as A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty; William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution; and Christopher Hill, Liberty against the Law. The titles say it all. Like the issue of law and love, the topic of Christian liberty, its nature and its implications, its extent and its limitations, is perennially significant. In seventeenth-century England, it was critical.
The Westminster divines faced both legalism and antinomianism, a false binding of the conscience on the one hand and libertinism on the other. In addition, this was an era of fear: fear of the return of Roman Catholicism and an opposite fear (one that at times seemed equal), the fear of anarchy represented by such quaintly named groups as Quakers, Levellers, Diggers, Mechanic Preachers, and Muggletonians. How freedom and responsibility are balanced in the Christian life was a matter of major concern. Hence, here in chapter 20, section 2, the exposition of Christian liberty in general (section 1) becomes narrowly focused on the issue of liberty of conscience in particular. During the first two years or so of the assembly’s work, the divines labored long and often to compose for their own time a chapter of biblical balance. For that reason, they produced a statement of lasting value. In these brief reflections on their teaching, it may be helpful for us to consider (1) its biblical foundations, (2) its historical relevance, and (3) some aspects of its practical application.
Biblical Foundations
What do we mean when we say, “God alone is Lord of the conscience”? What is “conscience,” and in what sense is God “Lord” of it?
The word conscience (Greek syneidsis) appears around thirty times in the New Testament, with the Apostle Paul using it twice as often as all the other authors combined. In his world, the conscience was seen as a function of human nature in which the self becomes aware of a moral assessment being made on its behavior based on some internally operative standard of judgment. The conscience is thus experienced as an approving or condemning voice that functions both to assess past and to guide present and future behavior.
Paul’s use of conscience, however, needs to be set within a biblical framework. Man (male and female) was created as the image of God in righteousness and holiness (Gen. 1:26; Eph. 4:24). Adam and Eve’s consciences were informed by and aligned with the revealed will of God and functioned to assess and to guide their behavior (Gen. 2:15–17). The result? In their original created condition, to borrow Paul’s expression (Rom. 2:15), their consciences bore witness to their integrity. They experienced an appropriate conscience approval, the evidence of which lay in that “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). God’s will for them and their faithfulness to it aligned. They enjoyed a “good conscience” and the experience of unclouded friendship. But that did not last long. Soon, in the aftermath of their disobedience to God’s Word (3:1–6), their Word-informed consciences were accusing and condemning them.
Genesis 3:7–8 opens the next stage in the human drama: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Thus act 2 began: “And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths . . . , and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.” They tried unsuccessfully to hide their sense of shame from each other (their sense of guilt emerges in the blame game in which they engage in 3:11–13). Nor could they hide from God. Their consciences had declared them to be guilty even before He asked them where they were (vv. 9–11).
Adam and Eve refused to allow “God alone” to be “Lord of the conscience.” In this context, it is easy to sense that the confession’s words sound like an eerie echo of the history of Eden. Adam and Eve were truly free when they lived according to God’s Word. They were in fact “free from the doctrines and commandments . . . which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship.” Their tragic mistake was “to believe such doctrines . . . [and] obey such commands. . . .” But they foolishly listened to the serpent and exercised “implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience.” That process was calculated “to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also” (WCF 20.2).
From where we stand at the other end of the Bible story, we see that the conscience is now no longer perfectly aligned with God’s Word. It is instead an aspect of people whose minds do not and whose wills cannot submit to God’s law (Rom. 8:7). Our regeneration needs to be accompanied by the recalibration of our consciences according to the Word of God. And if that process is to progress, we need to be on our guard against the same pattern of entrapment to which our first parents succumbed in Eden.
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How do we avoid making the same mistakes that they did in Moses’ day and Joshua’s day? Since we’re in danger, what do we do about it? What I love about Hebrews is that the writer doesn’t just give one answer. There’s no single solution to this question. There are a few things that we must do, and this passage mentions some of them.

Big Idea: Israel only got a sample of what we get to enjoy, so don’t miss out on Jesus and all that he’s given us.
I feel like I know you well enough to share a fairy advanced Bible reading technique for the Hebrew Scriptures. It goes by the acronym HCTBSS. Sound complicated? Here’s what it means: How could they be so stupid?
Here’s how it works. We read a story in the Old Testament. For instance, we read in Numbers 13 about the time that Israel approached the land that God had promised them from the south. They sent in spies, and 10 of the 12 spies came back and said they couldn’t take the land. They’d just watched God rescue them from slavery from the one of the most powerful empires in the world. They’d watched God perform miracle after miracle to set them free, and now they were terrified of some tall people.
The HCTBSS method of interpreting Scripture is to shake our heads and say, “How could they be so stupid?” We know we would do better. This is such a versatile technique for reading Scripture that we can use it in the New Testament too. For instance, whenever the disciples blow it with Jesus — and there are plenty of examples — we can shake our heads and think, “How could they have been so stupid!” and think that we would have done a lot better.
Today’s passage introduces us to a better technique for reading Scripture, particularly when we read about when people get it wrong. Here’s the technique that this passage teaches us: WITSD. It stands for “We’re in the same danger.” Whenever we’re tempted to read Scripture and think, “How could they be so stupid?” we should actually be thinking, “We’re in the same danger.” We’re not better than the people of Scripture. In fact, we’re just like them. We need to learn from their mistakes because we’re in danger of making the exact same ones ourselves.
I want to show you this from the passage we just read. Here’s what I want to show you: two examples of disobedience, and then how to avoid making the same mistake ourselves.
Two Examples of Disobedience
Here are the two examples of mistakes that people made in the past in Scripture.
The first has to do with Moses.
Moses is a great figure in the Hebrew Scriptures. He led Israel from Egypt to the brink of the Promised Land. He built the tabernacle. God gave the law through Moses. God spoke to Moses face to face (Exodus 33:11). It would be hard to think of many people in the history of redemption who loom larger than Moses.
But how did Israel do under Moses leadership? Not that well. In verses 7 to 11, the writer to the Hebrews quotes Psalm 95:7-11:
Today, if you hear his voice,do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,on the day of testing in the wilderness,where your fathers put me to the testand saw my works for forty years.Therefore I was provoked with that generation,and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;they have not known my ways.’As I swore in my wrath,‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”
Look at the interpretive technique that the writer uses in the verses that follow:
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12-13)
Do you see what he’s saying? We could make the same mistake! We’re in the same danger that they were.
In fact, the writer argues that we’re in even greater danger. The first part of Hebrews 3 argues that although Israel had a great leader — Moses — we have an even better leader. Verses 1 to 5 argues that Jesus is superior to Moses. Verse 3 says, “Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses.” Moses presided over a house, the tabernacle; Jesus not only built that house but everything. Verse 5 says that Moses was a servant in the house, but Jesus is God’s son over that house. As great as Moses was, Jesus is much greater.
And so the stakes are so much higher for us. They rebelled against Moses, but if we make the same mistake, we’re rebelling against somebody even greater than Moses. We’re rebelling against Jesus! We could make the same mistake they did, except against an even greater person: Jesus himself.
Do you see the writer’s urgency here? He’s not holding a dispassionate theological study. He’s highlighting mistakes from the Hebrew Scriptures and trying to get our attention: we’re in the same danger! We could make the same mistake!
The results were catastrophic for Israel. At the end of chapter 3, he says that every one of the rebels died in the wilderness. The wilderness where Israel wandered for 40 years was littered with bodies not just because people die, but because they rebelled against God and missed out on entering the land that God gave them.
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Consider some recent headlines that really should concern us. One of them says this: “We may have been scammed by asylum seekers, admits Church of England”. Another runs as follows: “Whistleblower Exposes Alleged Asylum Seeker Baptism Scam in Church of England”. The first piece begins this way: The Church of England has admitted for the first time that it may have been “scammed” by asylum seekers falsely claiming to have converted to Christianity to boost their chances of staying in the UK. The Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, conceded it was “very difficult” to look into the hearts of converts and be 100 percent certain that they were genuine.

In the past Christian missionaries in places like India had to be careful of “rice Christians.” These were folks who often pretended to become Christians, but their main aim was to get rice and other goodies from the Western missionaries. Material benefits, and not spiritual ones, was the motivating factor.
It seems we have the same problem today, but in a new form. And this includes asylum seekers who are duping clueless Christians into thinking they have converted to Christ, simply to get free entry into the West. In both cases it was the supposed desire to ‘be like Jesus’ that became part of the problem.
Missionaries back then had to learn to be much more aware and careful as to how they proceeded. The same today.
Contemporary social justice warriors both within and without the church have a tendency to be naïve, gullible and undiscerning when they carry on about how “compassionate” they are. They may think they are being Christlike, but too often they can just be ‘useless idiots’ who serve the causes of various activist groups.
And lest folks think I am making all this up, consider some recent headlines that really should concern us. One of them says this: “We may have been scammed by asylum seekers, admits Church of England”. Another runs as follows: “Whistleblower Exposes Alleged Asylum Seeker Baptism Scam in Church of England”.
The first piece begins this way:
The Church of England has admitted for the first time that it may have been “scammed” by asylum seekers falsely claiming to have converted to Christianity to boost their chances of staying in the UK. The Rt Revd Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, conceded it was “very difficult” to look into the hearts of converts and be 100 per cent certain that they were genuine.
She acknowledged there had been a “small number” of alleged abuses but said the clergy “do the best they can” and it was “ultimately” the job of immigration tribunals and the Home Office to assess and vet the validity of asylum claims. Her comments come after robust denials by the Church of England of claims by senior MPs and whistleblowers that clergy have been routinely supporting “bogus” asylum claims and enabled a “conveyor belt” of thousands of asylum seekers to convert.
Abdul Ezedi, the Clapham chemical attack suspect, was granted asylum after claiming to have converted to Christianity, despite having two convictions in the UK for sex assault and exposure. Friends of Ezedi, an illegal migrant, told The Telegraph that he was a “good Muslim” who bought half a halal sheep every fortnight, despite his apparent conversion. James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, is reviewing the facts of the case to establish if the law needs to be overhauled to prevent such abuses. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/11/we-may-have-been-scammed-by-asylum-seekers-admits-church/

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