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To give thanks seems like such a simple matter. From the time they’re little, we teach our children to say “Thank you” to someone who gives them something or does something for them.
Yet at certain times in our lives, giving thanks to the Lord can be hard for us. In this post, we’ll see the secret from the Bible of giving thanks in all things, and how giving thanks is a crucial part of our Christian experience.
The Bible has a lot to say about giving thanks. The word thank appears in some form a multitude of times throughout both the Old and New Testaments.
In the New Testament alone, the apostle Paul wrote about giving thanks at least 46 times. Surely this indicates that giving thanks to God is something important.
Perhaps Paul’s most challenging charge to believers is in 1 Thessalonians 5:18:
“In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
“In everything”—this is the challenge. When we “count our blessings,” it’s easy for us to happily give thanks for the things the Lord has done for us or supplied us with. But it’s harder for us to thank Him when it seems as if the blessings have run out, or when our situation doesn’t look very positive. When confronted with difficulties, we may not feel thankful. Instead we may bemoan our situation and complain about it to God and to everyone else.
Yet Paul says giving thanks in everything is God’s will for us. Was Paul speaking only in theory, or from his personal experience?
We know from reading the book of Acts that Paul’s life was far from being trouble free. He was imprisoned, persecuted, beaten, and shipwrecked. Yet even while suffering such difficult circumstances, Paul was full of thanks.
So when Paul said in everything give thanks, he wasn’t speaking theoretically; he was talking about something he actually practiced, even in the most awful of situations. He gave genuine thanks to the Lord amid the most trying conditions.
How did Paul do it? Was he some kind of “super Christian”? Actually, from Ephesians 3:8, we know that Paul considered himself “less than the least of all saints.” So how was Paul able to give thanks in everything?
[[Free Study Bible]]
Paul’s secret for giving thanks in any situation can be found in a short phrase in Ephesians 5:20:
“Giving thanks at all times for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father.”
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—this is the secret to giving thanks to God not only in good times but at all times, not only for good things but for all things.
Note 2 on this verse in the New Testament Recovery Version helps us understand what this means:
“The reality of the name of the Lord is His person. To be in the Lord’s name is to be in His person, in Himself. This implies that we should be one with the Lord in giving thanks to God.”
Now let’s also read Colossians 3:17, a sister verse to Ephesians 5:20:
“And whatever you do in word or in deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
And note 1 on this verse says:
“The name denotes the person. The Lord’s person is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17a). To do things in the name of the Lord is to act in the Spirit. This is to live Christ.”
In Philippians 1:21, Paul said:
“For to me, to live is Christ.”
Note 1 on this verse is extremely helpful in seeing what it means to live Christ:
“Paul’s life was to live Christ. To him, to live was Christ, not the law or circumcision. He would not live the law but would live Christ, not be found in the law but be found in Christ (3:9). Christ was not only his life but also his living. He lived Christ because Christ lived in him (Gal. 2:20). He was one with Christ in both life and living. He and Christ had one life and one living. They lived together as one person. Christ lived within Paul as Paul’s life, and Paul lived Christ without as Christ’s living. The normal experience of Christ is to live Him, and to live Him is to magnify Him always, regardless of the circumstances.”
In ourselves, we have no ability to genuinely thank God for everything, including the distressing, troubling, and unpleasant things. But when we live Christ, who lives in us, we can thank God for all things just like Paul did. This kind of living isn’t reserved for “super Christians”; it’s how God wants every believer to live.
Practically speaking, to live Christ we simply need to contact Him in our spirit by praying and calling on His name. When we contact Him in this way, we enjoy having one life and one living with Him. And spontaneously, our prayers will be filled with praise and thanks to God for all things.
If you live in the US, you can order a free copy of the New Testament Recovery Version here to read all the verses mentioned in this post, together with their eye-opening commentary.
It seems increasingly rare to hear the word conscience nowadays. People simply decide what’s good and what’s bad according to their own views, and the conscience doesn’t seem to factor in at all. But God doesn’t want us to live that way, especially once we’re saved. After all, He created us with a conscience, which has a very important role in our lives both before and after we receive the Lord.
So it’s important for us to see what the Bible reveals about the conscience, and why having a good conscience is so crucial when it comes to our relationship with the Lord.
In this blog post, we’ll read some key verses and study notes from the Recovery Version on this important subject.
First, let’s talk about what the conscience is. Many verses in the Bible speak of the conscience. Every human being, whether they’re saved or unsaved, and regardless of their culture, ethnicity, or background, has a conscience. God created us with a conscience so that we would know right from wrong, what He approves of and what He judges.
Romans 2:14 and 15 say:
“For when Gentiles, who have no law, do by nature the things of the law, though they have no law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness with it and their reasonings, one with the other, accusing or even excusing them.”
In verse 14, note 1 on by nature in the New Testament Recovery Version says:
“The nature of man, as created by God, was originally good and corresponded with God and with His law. Although it was poisoned by the fall, this good nature remains within man. Hence, if anyone lives according to his nature and does by his nature the things of the law, the evil in him will be restricted.”
Now let’s read note 1 in verse 15 on conscience, which explains the relationship of this God-created nature with the conscience:
“Man’s conscience corresponds with the God-created human nature and enables man to know what God justifies and what He condemns.”
By their conscience, people can perceive what God justifies, or approves of, and what He condemns. Even without knowing God or the Bible, their conscience enables them to know right from wrong.
This is how a person can know he’s a sinner.
When we were still unsaved, at some point we heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through those words, our conscience convicted us that we were sinful and needed to be saved. So we repented to God and accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior.
When we repented and received the Lord Jesus, He came to live in us, and our conscience became more sensitive and active than before.
It’s important to know that although we’re saved, we still have our sinful flesh and fallen nature. This means we still commit sins despite our best intentions. Our conscience lets us know when we’ve offended God by sinning or disobeying Him.
To illustrate, our conscience is like a smoke detector installed in a building. If there’s a fire in the building, the detector sounds an alarm. But if all is well, it remains quiet. In the same way, our conscience alerts us when we’ve done something wrong and remains quiet when God has no problem with us.
We’ve all experienced these “alerts” from our conscience whenever we do something that doesn’t correspond with God’s holy and righteous nature. For instance, if we lose our temper or say something unkind to someone, our conscience fulfills its role to sound the alarm. And no matter how we try to reason it away, our conscience persists in condemning us.
This is actually a good thing! Without our conscience alerting us, we’d be like a burning building without a smoke detector. We’d be unaware when we’ve incurred God’s disapproval, and our relationship with the Lord would suffer.
Just like we need to take action when we hear a smoke detector, we need to respond to, not ignore, the alert from our conscience when we’ve done something wrong.
How we respond to the feeling from our conscience determines whether or not we have a good conscience.
The phrase a good conscience is used in 1 Timothy 1:5:
“But the end of the charge is love out of a pure heart and out of a good conscience and out of unfeigned faith.”
Part of note 3 on this verse in the Recovery Version explains what a good conscience is:
“A good conscience is a conscience without offense (Acts 24:16).”
This note references Acts 24:16, which is part of the apostle Paul’s testimony when he was brought before Felix the governor. Paul declared:
“Because of this I also exercise myself to always have a conscience without offense toward God and men.”
So a good conscience is a conscience without offense, that is, one that doesn’t condemn us for offending God.
[[Free Study Bible]]
So what should we do when our conscience alerts us that we’ve offended God? How can we remove the offense that triggered the alarm?
Our conscience certainly won’t be quieted by excuses. And making up our mind to be better or doing good deeds can’t outweigh or remove an offense either.
Only one thing can completely expunge that offense and purify our conscience: the precious blood of Christ.
Hebrews 9:14 says:
“How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
Our conscience can only be purified by the blood of Christ. To experience this purifying, we must confess our sins and wrongdoings to God. When we confess, God immediately forgives us, and the blood of Jesus cleanses away the stain of sin. God is satisfied with the blood of Jesus, and we feel peaceful because we have a good conscience once more.
Of course, after we’ve confessed our sin to God, we also need to apologize to anyone we hurt or offended.
When we’ve offended the Lord, our fellowship with Him is interrupted, and we no longer have peace with God. And if we ignore the voice of our conscience, we have no way to go on in our relationship with the Lord.
In 1 Timothy 1:19, we see the importance of having a good conscience and the serious consequences if we don’t:
“Holding faith and a good conscience, concerning which some, thrusting these away, have become shipwrecked regarding the faith.”
Here, the apostle Paul says that we need to hold not just faith but also a good conscience. The first part of note 1 on this verse explains:
“Faith and a good conscience (see note 53) go together. Whenever there is an offense in our conscience, there will be a leakage, and our faith will leak away.”
None of us want our faith to leak away. Since faith and a good conscience go together, the state of our conscience affects our faith. When we allow an offense to remain undealt with, our faith leaks away. This leakage can cause us to eventually lose faith in the Lord, even to such an extent that we become “shipwrecked” regarding our faith.
Note 2 on shipwrecked explains what this means:
“This shows the seriousness of thrusting away faith and a good conscience. To hold faith and a good conscience is a safeguard for our Christian faith and life. The word shipwrecked implies that the Christian life and the church life are like a ship sailing on a stormy sea, needing to be safeguarded by faith and a good conscience.”
The apostle Paul’s use of this vivid imagery of a shipwreck shows us how dire the consequences are of ignoring the feeling from our conscience. We certainly don't want to become shipwrecked regarding our faith. What a sobering word!
So to go on with the Lord in our Christian life, we must maintain a good conscience by being right with God and man. And when we fail, we simply need to confess our sins to be forgiven and cleansed, so that our conscience has nothing to condemn us about.
Thank the Lord for His clear word in the Bible concerning our conscience! Let’s pay attention to our conscience and learn to live our Christian life holding faith and a good conscience.
If you live in the US, you can order a free copy of the New Testament Recovery Version here. You can also download The Economy of God for free here from anywhere in the world. We highly recommend reading chapters 8 and 10 to learn more about the importance of maintaining a good conscience and how to do it.
In a previous post, we saw that according to the Bible true Christian transformation isn’t brought about by an improvement in behavior, or by acting in a way we think is more Christ-like. Instead, it’s the result of God’s life operating and growing within us.
Second Corinthians 3:18 tells us we’re being transformed as we behold and reflect the Lord like a mirror. As we behold Him, more of Christ is infused into us, resulting in a spiritual “metabolic” process: our old, natural element is replaced with more of Christ, and we spontaneously live according to Him.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at 2 Corinthians 3 with help from notes from the Recovery Version to see the things that can hinder us from being able to behold the Lord and how we can deal with them.
First, let’s read 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.”
Here, the apostle Paul likened us believers to a mirror. A mirror is a surface that both beholds and reflects what’s in front of it. But if the mirror is covered, or veiled, it can’t behold or reflect anything. It has to be unveiled.
In the same way, if we believers are to behold the glory of the Lord—that is, to see Him and gaze upon His beautiful and glorious Person—we must have an unveiled face. So what does it mean to have an unveiled face?
To see what it means to have an unveiled face, we first have to see what a veil is. For this, let’s read 2 Corinthians 3:15:
“Indeed unto this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.”
Here, the apostle Paul was speaking of the Jewish people, who revered the writings of Moses in the Old Testament. It wasn’t the writings of Moses themselves, but what the Jewish people thought they knew about them that became a veil on their heart. Because of this, they couldn’t see that the writings of Moses revealed the Lord Jesus.
We know this from the Lord’s own word in Luke 24. This chapter gives the account of the resurrected Jesus meeting and conversing with two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus. Verse 27 says:
“And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, He explained to them clearly in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”
Jesus made it clear that the writings of Moses and even the entire Old Testament were concerning Himself. These writings revealed not a religion for people to follow but a wonderful Person, Jesus Christ.
Yet the Jewish people couldn’t see this, because Paul said that they had a veil on their heart. Many verses in the Bible reveal that our heart is composed of our mind, emotion, will, and our conscience. Our heart is the organ with which we love God, people, and things. Our heart is also the gateway of our being, determining whether we’re open or closed to particular people and matters.
Our heart is central to our relationship with God, so the condition of our heart is crucial. If we have a veil on our heart, how can we see God? How can He infuse Himself into us? To have a veiled heart is a serious matter.
[[Free Study Bible]]
What about us today? We may think that we know who Jesus is, so Paul’s word in 2 Corinthians 3 doesn’t apply to us.
But we need to realize that in principle, a veil can lie on our heart at any time. Sinful things are certainly a problem between us and God, and we need to take care of those things. But from the example Paul used of the Jewish people, we can see that even things related to God and His Word can be a problem to us. Anything that arises from our own preconceived notions or assumptions about the Word is a veil that covers our heart and prevents us from beholding the Lord.
For instance, we may have certain ideas about how we should worship God, how to please God, or how to live the Christian life. These ideas can preoccupy us and prevent us from seeing the Lord.
Not only so, things that seem harmless or unrelated to our Christian walk, such as our personal philosophy or cultural traditions, can also become a veil that covers our heart.
Since this is the case, what can we do? How can we have the veils removed from our heart?
The answer to this question is twofold and involves both our heart and our spirit, our deepest part.
In relation to our heart, 2 Corinthians 3:16 says:
“But whenever their heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”
What an encouraging word! Note 1 on this verse in the Recovery Version tells us:
“This indicates that when their heart is away from the Lord, the veil lies on their heart. When their heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Actually, their turned-away heart is the veil. To turn their heart to the Lord is to take away the veil.”
So we need to ask ourselves, is our heart turned away from the Lord or turned to the Lord?
Whenever we sense that we can’t see the Lord, we must turn away from whatever is occupying us and turn our heart to the Lord. We don’t want to hold onto or treasure any of our own concepts or views; we simply want Him, and we want to see Him as He really is.
To turn our hearts to the Lord, we can pray something like this:
“Lord Jesus, I love You. I don’t want to hold onto any of my own thoughts or assumptions about You. I just want You. I want to behold You, Lord. So I turn my heart to You right now.”
And the Word of God assures us that whenever we turn our heart to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Next, in relation to our spirit, 2 Corinthians 3:17 says:
“And the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
In order for us to experience the freedom mentioned here, it’s crucial for us to realize who Christ is today and where He is. This verse tells us that the resurrected Lord, Christ, is the Spirit.
And where is the Spirit of the Lord? Second Timothy 4:22 says:
“The Lord be with your spirit.”
The day we believed in Him, the Lord as the Spirit came into our spirit and now dwells there.
Since the Lord is in our spirit, we must exercise, or use, our spirit to contact Him. This is how we can experience freedom from everything that preoccupies us.
We can exercise our spirit by praying to Him, reading His Word, and calling upon His name.
When our heart is turned to Him and our spirit is exercised, we experience what is written in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.”
Note 3 on unveiled face in the Recovery Version says:
“In contrast to the veiled mind, the veiled heart (vv. 14-15). That our face is unveiled means that our heart has turned to the Lord, so that the veil has been taken away, and the Lord as the Spirit has freed us from the bondage, the veiling, of the law, so that there is no more insulation between us and the Lord.”
How good it is to be unveiled! When we have no veil on our heart and no insulation between us and the Lord, we can behold the Lord.
This verse also speaks of reflecting. Note 4 explains:
“To behold the glory of the Lord is to see the Lord ourselves; to reflect the glory of the Lord is to enable others to see Him through us.”
As we behold the Lord, something marvelous happens within us. Note 7 on being transformed in 2 Corinthians 3:18 explains:
“When we with unveiled face are beholding and reflecting the glory of the Lord, He infuses us with the elements of what He is and what He has done. Thus we are being transformed metabolically to have His life shape by His life power with His life essence; that is, we are being transfigured, mainly by the renewing of our mind (Rom. 12:2), into His image. Being transformed indicates that we are in the process of transformation.”
By the Lord infusing us with the elements of what He is and what He’s done, a spiritual metabolic process takes place within us: we’re being transformed into the same glorious image of the Lord. As a result of this ongoing process, we will express God, and God’s plan for us will be fulfilled.
As we take the time to gaze upon the Lord and behold Him, His thoughts, feelings, and intentions will gradually become ours, and we’ll reflect Christ to people around us. Let’s all practice turning our hearts to the Lord, spending time in fellowship with Him and exercising our spirits every day so we can experience this wonderful, life-long process.
If you live in the US, you can order a free copy of the New Testament Recovery Version here so you can read all the notes on the verses mentioned in this post.
