guilt from sin

Thoughts on religion (Part 1): Satan’s purposes

OVERVIEW. An essay on religions. This article focuses on the purposes for which Satan has created religions.

“I must admit that I am doctrinally weak.” These were the words that Elisabeth said to me when I had mentioned that some of the beliefs of the Mormons were a bit strange. Elisabeth and I were dating at the time. She was a Mormon, having recently come into that group through her sister’s influence. Through a couple of Mormon “missionaries,” I was being exposed to this group’s teaching and found it pretty hard to believe. And so I made my comment to Elisabeth.

This anecdote serves as an introduction to a series of reflections I had recently about religions and about how these philosophes gain and then maintain their control over men and women. This article is a record of some of these reflections.

BASICS OF RELIGION

Before we get too far along, it will be helpful to establish some basics about religion. All religious systems are conceived by the prince of the demons and are brought into the world as Satan insinuates his ideas into the minds of sinful men.

THE PURPOSES OF RELIGION ARE TWO-FOLD. Since the fall in Genesis 3, when sin entered the world (Romans 5:12-14), all mankind has experienced two great problems from their sin: guilt and death. Religions are Satan’s response to these two great problems, because religions are intentionally designed to deceive people about their guilt from sin and to deceive people about death.

GUILT. One of the purposes of any religious system is to provide its adherents with a way to ignore their conscience so that their guilt is assuaged. Because all men have a conscience and because a complete copy of the Law is written on every man’s conscience (Romans 2:14-15), all people experience guilt every time they violate the moral Law of God. The only way to truly remove the guilt from your sin and to rid your conscience of its shame is by true repentance and by faith in the Lord Jesus. But religions are designed to provide a man-made counterfeit that pretends to remove guilt through man-made works and efforts or through man-made ideas with the result that the religious adherent is deceived into believing their guilt is no more.

DEATH. The second purpose of religious systems is to deceive their adherents regarding the nature of death.

When the LORD God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He warned the man with the most terrifying prohibition possible. The LORD God warned man by threatening death as the consequence of disobedience (Genesis 2:17). Death is the most severe threat man can experience. Thus, the threat of death should be the most terrifying threat to us.

But Satan is the deceiver of mankind. What the LORD God threatens for our good Satan twists so that we will be deceived. And so he said to the woman, “You surely will not die!” (Gen. 3:4). The talking snake convinced Eve that there was some wiggle room in what God had commanded. The snake was persuasive, so the woman was persuaded that the threat of death was not that bad. And, ever since, the serpent of old has been persuading fallen mankind that death is not really that bad and deceiving them that God does not really intend to destroy some of His creatures in the lake of fire. Religion is one of Satan’s primary tools for deceiving man about death.

OBSCURING CHRIST AND THE CROSS

To this point we have spoken of religion as Satan’s means of deceiving mankind about the peril of his situation before a holy God. When presenting the gospel to unbelievers, this explanation of religion as putting a veil over the realities of guilt (sin) and death can be a helpful introduction to proclaiming the atoning death of the Lord Jesus and how it solves our two great problems. So certainly, Satan has created religions for deception and distraction.

But there is an even more significant purpose for the invention of religious systems and philosophies. Satan’s primary purpose for religion is to obscure the cross of Jesus Christ and to remove the glory of the Lord Jesus. Consider 2 Cor. 4:3-4:

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Paul expressly teaches that “the god of this world” (Satan) has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the glory of Christ. Satan hates Christ and he hates the cross and therefore his primary goal is to bury Christ’s triumph on the cross in the deepest depths of Sheol. Religion, consisting in fallen man’s pathetic and futile efforts to achieve his own righteousness, is Satan’s primary means for obtaining this goal. So, religion in all its myriad forms is never a way to gauge your goodness but is, in fact, the primary way Satan blinds your mind and obscures the cross of Christ, which is the only way of salvation (Acts 4:12).

In a future post I will continue my musings about religion and will consider the effects of religion on fallen man. We will also consider ancient religions and “next gen religions.”

Soli Deo gloria            rmb                 5/22/2025                 #717

Do you listen to the Law and the conscience?

INTRODUCTION: This post continues a series of articles that I have been writing lately about the workings of the Law and the conscience and how those two diagnose sin and restrain sin. RMB

GENTILE SINS AND JEWISH SINS

It is obvious from history and from reading Romans 1:18-3:9 that the sins of the Gentiles were more flagrant and more frequent that the sins of the Jews. Read Romans 1:18-32 and observe that the type of sin and the degree of sin among the Gentiles are quite different from the sins among the Jews in Romans 2:1-3:9. (An interesting exercise is to read the prophet Amos 1:3-2:8 and see a similar thing taking place in that passage. The LORD first judges the pagan nations for their sins (1:3-2:3), which are barbaric and heinous, but He then judges Judah and Israel for their sins, which are milder by comparison, but are more abominable before the LORD because these are people who are supposed to be obedient to the LORD and who have the Law and the covenants to guide them.) This difference in the nature of the sins of Gentiles compared to the sins of the Jewish people is explained in part by the fact that the Jews had their conscience plus God’s Law to restrain their sinful behavior, while the Gentiles had only their consciences.

THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW AND THE CONSCIENCE

There is more to say about this, but before we do that, we should remember that the function of both the Law and the conscience is to warn a person of their own sin. God has graciously given every person a conscience so that they can sense when they have violated God’s holy Law (Rom. 2:14-15) and can confess that sin and repent. The Lord also by His grace gave the Jews the privilege of possessing His holy Law (Rom. 3:1-2). But as gracious as both the conscience and the Law were, neither one had any real power to restrain sin. The Law and the conscience could help someone know about their sin, but they are powerless to prevent sin or to atone for sin. Unless and until a person is converted and becomes a new creation by faith in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17), they remain a slave of sin and are no match for the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. So, the Law and the conscience are diagnostic instruments given to reveal a person’s sin so that the person can confess their sin and repent.

RESPONSES TO THE LAW AND THE CONSCIENCE

THE CONSCIENCE: We have stated that, while the conscience is given to bring awareness of sin, it has no power to restrain sin . . . directly. But by creating an awareness of sin, the conscience can restrain sin indirectly through the guilt and shame that comes from an awareness of sin. The conscience is that inner voice within a man or woman which acts like the Law of God and cries out “Sinner!” The one who has sinned has now been accused, and to relieve their feelings of guilt, they may cease from their sinful behavior. In this indirect way, the conscience can help restrain a person’s sin.

What is the problem with this theory? The problem is not with the operation of the conscience but is with the sinner’s ability to ignore and silence the conscience’s warnings. In the unconverted person, the desire of the flesh to sin coupled with the person’s love of sin and their slavery to sin all work together to drive their behavior toward sin. A person may start out in life with a conscience that is tender and sensitive, and which creates feelings of guilt when the person sins, but as they grow into childhood and adolescence and adulthood, their ability to sin and their love of sin continue to grow while the voice of the conscience remains at the same volume. The unconverted person learns to ignore the voice of their conscience and becomes skilled at smothering any feelings of guilt generated by the conscience. In this way, the conscience is soon rendered useless both as a warning mechanism and as a restraining influence in the life of the unbeliever. This means that the Gentile of Romans 1:18-32 and the modern-day American who has never been exposed to the moral teachings of the Bible only need to silence the small voice of the conscience in order to sin with impunity.

That describes the unbeliever’s response to the conscience. But what about those people who are like the Jews described in Romans 2:1-3:9 who, in addition to their conscience, also have the Law? Are they restrained by the Law of God, by the commandments that reveal the holiness of the God of Israel?

THE LAW: The teaching of the New Testament is that the Law of God is His primary diagnostic instrument. While all people possess a conscience, almost all people also learn to sear their consciences as with a branding iron (1 Timothy 4:2), but the Law is explicitly stated to be the revealer of sin. Romans 3:20 and Romans 7:7 declare that the Law brings the knowledge of sin, so we would expect that the Law would be a better restrainer of sin than the conscience. Also, the person who knew the Law would seem to have two restrainers of sin, the restraint that every person has from their conscience, but also the added restraint of the Law. Does this theory agree with what we see in life and in Scripture?

No, it does not. The Law is a better revealer of sin, but the Law is not a better restrainer of sin. The unconverted person who has their sin revealed by the Law feels more guilt, but instead of regretting that sin and repenting of that sin, the unbelieving sinner will typically reframe the sin so they can eliminate the feelings of guilt and shame. In 1 Samuel 15, Saul is caught in a direct violation of the LORD’s command, yet he shrugs it off as unimportant and something that the people made him do. In the Garden of Eden, instead of confessing and repenting, Eve blamed the serpent and Adam blamed Eve. This is the pattern for the unconverted. Although obviously guilty of sin based on the revealed will of God, he denies his culpability and maintains his innocence because “the Law doesn’t apply to him” or because “he didn’t really break the Law.”

HATING AND RESENTING THE LAW AND THE CONSCIENCE

What the Law and the conscience have in common is that both these gracious gifts from God that help the sinner see his sin are hated and resisted by the unconverted sinner. As soon in life as possible, the unbeliever learns to silence and smother the conscience, because he does not want anything restricting his freedom to enjoy his sin. Likewise, the unbeliever who has fallen into the unpleasant situation of being exposed to the Law, either in its true form as the commandments of Scripture or in its twisted form as commandments from a form of religion (e.g., Catholicism), detests and resents that Law. The Law is perceived as simply the means the powerful use to control those under their thumb.

The next post will be about how the believer views the Law and the conscience.

SDG                 rmb                 12/3/2021                   #463