The Judge Within Us Part 2
Guest Post written by Daniel Guzman
For Part One, please click here
The Anatomy of Conscience
“The old woman is of no consequence,” he thought, hotly and incoherently. “The old woman was a mistake, perhaps, but she is not what matters! The old woman was only an illness. . . . I was in a hurry to overstep. . . . I didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the principal, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side. . . . I was only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that . . . Principle? ... And what shows that I am utterly a louse,” he added, grinding his teeth, “is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. Can anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The abjectness!”
This is Raskolnikov, the main character in the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He once believed that if he killed someone that everyone despised, like the Übermensch, like Napoleon, he would be a hero for everyone and would be praised. Unfortunately for him, even though there were no direct witnesses to his murder, there was one who saw it all, himself, and even though he was convinced he was above moral rules and could do the unthinkable, killing one for the sake of many, throughout the novel, he has to realize something. Not only is he not the perfect murderer, but he’s also not above morality; he can’t escape the law written on his heart, he cannot escape the judge within him that know all the truth and that condemns him as guilty.
In this small inner monologue, after being called a murderer by someone in the street and going back to his small room, he tries to justify his crimes; he didn’t do anything evil, he just did what was best. He didn’t kill a person, he killed a “principle”. Unfortunately for him, in his inner self, even in the end, he admits something, maybe he is even more vile, more evil than the evil person he killed. Not even within himself, he’s the hero, he’s just the vilest of them all, he’s worse than the worst person he knew, the one he planned to kill.
Contrary to the postmodern discourse he had received, we are not our own masters and the builders of our own morality. Once he committed a murder, he was unable to be the same; his behaviours changed, he started to be suspicious of everyone, he couldn’t trust anyone, he couldn’t even love the people he loved the most, he came to despise them, and to despise himself, he was more sweaty, unable to sleep and much more.
Conscience is Ruthless and Merciless
Most of us have never committed a single murder, but this story illustrates a biblical truth. Once the conscience is awakened and the inner judge is sitting on the stand and judging us internally because we are guilty, it will be a cause of physical and psychological horror. As a judge, the conscience is ruthless and merciless; it will not acquit us, it will not let us free, it will not let us rest. The accusations and condemnations of conscience are terrible, or cause terror beyond all expression.
We’ve all experienced this in one way or another. As little children, when we did something wrong for the first time, even though we didn’t know it was wrong, we ran, we felt shame, and we tried to erase the evidence of our evil deeds. Unfortunately for us, there was a witness of our misdeeds, ourselves, and we started to act weird; we believed we were acting as our normal selves, but that was not the case. We were suspicious, we were looking around to see if there was any evidence of the food that we threw in the trash because we didn’t like it, the plate we broke, the lie we told, etc. We were sweaty, we were wondering in our inner self if somebody maybe had seen, we were restless, our heart accelerated, even our pupils were of a different shape and size (something many of us were not aware of when we were young). The conscience is so ruthless that it won’t let us escape. It won’t let us run away; we will get caught, eventually. When we were small children, we were more easily found, and we learned to make it harder as we grew, but even grown adults cannot escape the judge within them.
We see many examples of this in the Bible. When David was confronted by Nathan, he knew the man who sinned deserved to die. When he was confronted, we can see his conscience breaking him. In Psalm 51, we see his contrite heart; his sin was no small thing. He even prayed for God not to remove His Spirit from him.
We see it in Joseph’s brothers when they see they are no longer safe, they are foreigners In a country needing food, and they all are confronted by their conscience, they saw their brother’s distress and need and they still did nothing, they sold him as a slave and got rid of him just because of jealousy, because of his annoying dreams and because he was the favorite of their father. Now they see their distress and understand to the core of their being that they are just as guilty.
But no better example we can see of the horrors of the accusations of the conscience than those of Judas Iscariot. He walked with the Lord throughout His ministry; he witnessed the miracles, the great works; he was there in all of Christ’s great sermons; he was a member of the twelve, the inner circle of disciples of the Master. He was there when Lazarus rose from the dead, in the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand, he was there when Jesus asked them, “Who do you say that I am?” and with the Twelve (represented by Peter), he proclaimed you are the Christ. But he was also taking money from the bag every time that he could; under his apparent piety, he looked for his own benefit. When the woman spent a very expensive perfume on Jesus, he was mad because that “could’ve fed the poor”.
When the time came and when there was no more profit to be had, when the great Preacher and Master was only talking about his death and how He was to be delivered to sinners to die and rise on the third day, Judas made a choice, he’d make one last profit and abandon the group and Christ forever. He sought the perfect chance to betray him; he took the money from the Jewish leaders, he went to the garden at night, kissed Jesus and delivered him to the Jewish authorities. In his mind, that was the perfect plan. He enjoyed when he could, he stole what he could and now that the Messiah was about to die, he made enough money to live several months while he looked for a new leader to follow, or start his own business, or just leave for a different part of the empire and become more successful.
However, he couldn’t escape the evil he had done. The moment he betrayed Jesus, all his plans changed; he couldn’t just make a quick profit, he couldn’t just run away. The next morning, he went directly to the people who paid him to betray Jesus, and, just by the accusations of his conscience and the remorse he felt, he wanted to return the money they paid him, which they wouldn’t accept. So he just left the money in the Temple, giving it to God as a last piece of charity and left. What did he do afterwards? The guilt, the feelings, the remorse, the judge within him was so strong that he did the only thing he could to make it stop; he killed himself.
The Judge Within Us
We see in our current world that the most successful and rich people tend to abuse drugs, alcohol and all other kinds of vices. We sometimes think that it is an endless pursuit of satisfying the emptiness they have in their heart that only God can satisfy, so they try to fill it with all sorts of pleasure and excess. However, as many are in search of hedonistic pleasure, many as well are just using vices and substances to try to silence the judge within them; they know they’ve sinned and done unimaginable evil things to be as successful, famous and rich as they are, and although nobody else knows, the judge within them knows and won’t stop accusing them from the inside.
Most of us won’t have to deal with the accusations of murdering someone like Raskolnikov or Judas, but when we sin, the judge within us, once awakened, won’t stop reminding us that we’re guilty. Either to lead us, Christ, for forgiveness, or to condemn us so we’re without excuse on the last day, when the Great Judge will judge with perfect justice.
John Owen famously said, "Kill sin or sin will be killing you.” And although we tend to relate how sin wants to kill us only eternally and seek our eternal damnation, sin also wants to kill us temporarily and physically. Sin knows that we have a conscience, and that it is a ruthless judge. Sin knows how it affects us physically and psychologically, how it changes us to the point that we don’t enjoy life, that we lose the will to live, and it will try to do anything in its power so that we lose our way and try to end our lives. We usually relate suicide only to depression, when In fact sometimes is our conscience condemning us the reason we are mentally and physically unstable or ill, we underestimate the judge within us and the reality of sin in our lives, many times we go to modern psychological explanations for what we’re feeling and experiencing and how to control it, which the answer is usually therapy and medications and not go to the Bible and the answers God has for us.
The conscience, the judge within us, can lead us to Christ, both for those who do not believe and have faith in Christ yet, but also to those who do. For those who do not have faith, the judge within them can lead them to the only source of actual forgiveness and deliverance for their sins; only in the cross is there remission of sins. But to those of us who have faith in Christ, the conscience will lead us to confess our sins constantly and to repent before God and to receive absolution, not from a priest with power to forgive, but based on Christ’s sacrifice for us and by His precious blood.
The Conscience is a Great Gift to Christians
The conscience has been given to Christians as a great gift. It will not let us sin freely, it will not let us have the mentality that we can sin so that grace may abound, it will call us to repentance and assure us of remission of sins in Christ’s work on our behalf, on the imputation of His righteousness to us, on our union with Him. We can be certain that we have been forgiven because he has been purchased at a price.
This is why we can confess our sins always and can be absolved always. And we can confess our sins in prayer in the presence of God, but it is also helpful to confess our sins to one another. One of the beautiful realities of the priesthood of all believers is that we can all assure us of the pardon that we have, of the remission of our sins and the complete work on Christ on our behalf, there’s nothing new to be done, no new sacrifice to be made, God has been satisfied by Christ and if I’m in Christ then all the benefits of His work are mine. Many times, confession and the assurance of pardon that we can give one another will deliver us from the accusations of the judge within us, will restore or mental and physical wellness and give us peace and joy, because Christ’s work is true, because the words “It is finished” are true, because his promises are true, if we’re in Him our sins are forgiven.
Let us then confess to God and to one another our sins, listen to our conscience so we can be aware of our evil deeds and our sin and run to Christ to receive forgiveness. If we confess our sin, He’s faithful to forgive us.
Let us worship and praise because what can wash away our sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.