Uche Aligwekwe xxx
Having faith and a good conscience, which some having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck. – 1 Timothy 1:19 NKJV
Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked. 1 Timothy 1:19 NLT
To sear the skin of an animal means to brand or scorch it with heat until it becomes hard, thick and calloused, losing all sensitivity to touch or even to pain.
Your faith is a ship and like any ship it can be wrecked, that is, damaged beyond easy or economical repair. Your faith is a ship because it carries your life, your baggage, your family and other people God has connected you with, from destination to destination in this life. It can be wrecked because it can be irrecoverably damaged.
Synonyms of the word wreck include to sink, capsize, run aground, break up, ruin, destroy, sabotage. Such are the vulnerabilities of faith. There is enemy who is out to sink, capsize, run aground, break up, ruin, destroy and sabotage our faith. But he can’t do it on his own, he needs our cooperation to destroy our own faith.
How does this happen?
Our scripture above, 1 Timothy 5:19 says that it happens when we fail to, “cling to your faith in Christ, and keep our conscience clear”; when we, “deliberately violate our consciences”. As a a result of these, we shipwreck our faith.
What does it mean to violate your conscience? It means to continue to do things that your conscience tells you are wrong. It means to desensitize your conscience to the truth.
Many people in the times that we are living in today are not just immoral, they are amoral! To be immoral means you understand right and wrong, but you choose to do wrong. Your conscience troubles you all through. You know that you’re doing wrong!You may even ask God for forgiveness.
When a man or woman becomes ammoral though, he or she has lost their sense of right and wrong, their internal moral compass has lost its bearings and ceased to work.
On the compass of their conscience there is no true north, instead, north is pointing south, and south is pointing east (Isaiah 5:20)!
Relying on such a conscience or lack thereof to guide you from point A to B could end you up in Antarctica… or somewhere infernally hotter (Luke 16:24)!
The bible calls it,
Having their conscience seared with a hot iron
1 Timothy 4:2
To sear the skin of an animal means to brand or scorch it with heat until it becomes hard, thick and calloused, losing all sensitivity to touch or even to pain. That is the imagery of this passage. It is what is known medically as third-degree burns, where the skin or body membrane is deeply branded with a red-hot metal instrument so that the skin layers in that area literally die and lose all feeling.
This is what has happened to some people’s consciences. The New Living Translation puts it this way, “their consciences are dead”; the MSG says, “they have lost their capacity for truth” and the AMP says their “consciences are… cauterized”. They have become ‘past feeling’ (Ephesians 4:19).
Violating ones conscience is to transition from immorality to amorality – shipwreck! Like a ship with no lighthouse guiding it in, they no longer see the dangerous reefs or jagged rocks, and plough right into and onto them puncturing their hull and sinking with all souls and all cargo lost.
It takes repeated violation of ones conscience for it to become seared and eventually lose its tenderness, becoming hard, cold and unresponsive as described in Matthew 13:15, Acts 28:27 and other Bible passages mentioned below.
To varying degrees Romans 1:18 – 32 has happened to them; 2 Thessalonians 2:10 – 12 has happened to them.
They have become destitute of the truth (1 Timothy 6:5).
Their understanding has become darkened (Ephesians 4:18 – 19).
They are dead to righteousness (1 Corinthians 15:34).
So, Christian, cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. If we are going to reform or transform society, we must hold onto… a good conscience so that we can continue to serve as the moral compass of society, a lighthouse, the light of the world, a city set upon a hill, guiding the ships of this world, mens’ souls into safe harbour and sanctuary from the coming Storm (the Day of the Lord) as well as the already constantly ongoing storms of this present life.
The earthly government of the day does not define what morality and right and wrong are; our God does! The norms of human life and society are not what the prevailing trends of the current age define them to be, but what the Word of God says they are. True North remains true North, whatever the government may say or try to redefine it to be.
Is there hope? Yes of course there is. There always will be! Our God is the God of hope!
We must not hate or vilify such people (Exodus 22:28; 1 Peter 2:17).
Instead, we must pray for them (1 Timothy 2:1 – 2). That is our duty before God!
Let us close with prayer:
Lord, let my heart remain tender and sensitive before you (Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:12 – 17)
xxx
