Yesterday in church we discussed the letter to Philadelphia in Revelation and there the same phrase was used as in the letter to Sardis: “I know your deeds”.
I had pointed out in a previous discussion that there was no elaboration, no further details. The sense of the assertion is that nothing more needs to be said, rather than that little was done.
Yet for the two churches, that knowledge produced completely different conclusions.
For Sardis, “you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead”. You may fool the world around you, in fact the world around you probably loves you because in their eyes you are doing great, but in my eyes you are dead. “I will come to you” holds terror, and for those who have not soiled their clothes, they received Christ’s acknowledgement and were in the book of life, but little more was said.
For Philadelphia, “You have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name”. In the eyes of the world, perhaps in your own eyes, you have not done much and you do not have the stature in and admiration of the world. But I can see that even in those circumstances you have kept my word and carried my name proudly. “I am coming soon” holds joy and much more than having their names in the book of life, they will be pillars in the temple of God bearing the name of God, the name of God’s city and Jesus’ new name.
We need to live in the truth of the all-knowing Jesus. Living our Christian lives under the gaze of our Lord, rather than for the admiration and reward of the world, makes all the difference.
The text tells us that Jesus knows our deeds and I drew the implication that we learn to to live in that truth and leave behind the urge to justify ourselves (or condemn ourselves, as may be). Our job is to abide in him.
There are two other sources that judge us: our community and our conscience and in both cases we must acknowledge the superiority of Jesus. This is not to say that we ignore what our friends (or enemies) say of us or even to us, or we ignore our conscience; they educate us, they bring our attention to what we need to examine, but they are both imperfect at best. None of them love us as perfectly as our Lord; none of them are impartial; none of them know the place we are in in our journey—our history, our struggles, our needs. Only Jesus knows and understands perfectly.
I was asked further about the role of conscience in our lives and here I’d like to expand on my explanation, looking at what 1 John 3:19-24 says:
“This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”
There may be times when we are unable to forgive ourselves because of the extent of our sin. But when we have come before God to receive his forgiveness, we must believe forgiveness is ours because God is greater than our hearts. He knows everything, the truth and the lies that reside in us.
But other than that, we accept the role of our conscience to give us confidence and peace, in the context that we are walking in his ways, walking in close relationship with him. As John tells us: “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”
This is not about the success or failure of decisions we make. All of us may make good or bad decisions. This is about moral choices—right and wrong, good and evil, godly and ungodly—although the bible does teach that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and so moral choices will ultimately affect the result of other choices.
If we are in the wrong and our conscience does not pick it up, our close relationship with our Lord will enable him to communicate with us. But even then, there are situations where our Lord will give us the space to work out these areas in our lives. Ultimately it is he who leads us; not our community, not our conscience.