God and Conscience...
- White Stone
- 16 hours ago
- 9 min read
What kind of great witness could the church be if its people were willing to reason with God to come to what the reality of truth is and align their minds to that which is revealed? When we are humble enough to hear and secure enough in our identity in Christ to be wrong, we are modeling a law of love that pursues the kingdom of God through “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. If we really want unity in the church, we have to be humble enough to learn from other believers that may see something scripturally that we do not. And that means hearing. Really hearing, not for flaws in the argument, but for understanding. Conscience is a gift from God. But it’s not God. Can conscience grow with truth when one is fully convinced in her or his own mind or can it be better achieved with the mind of Christ? What are we offering to God? The Holy Spirit is specifically assigned to aid our growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and having our minds renewed by the Spirit of God. He will also speak to us when our thinking becomes contrary to God’s will. Suppressing this prompting is ignoring the voice of God through your conscience. God does speak through His Spirit.
God creates us with a capacity to know and love him, and we have a natural desire to seek the truth about him. We don't search for God unaided; he calls us to himself to help us draw closer to him. Conscience helps us hear the voice of God; it helps us recognize the truth about God and the truth about how we ought to live. Conscience is "a judgment of reason" by which we determine whether an action is right or wrong. Hearing God deepens our relationship with Christ by following him, and in doing so, we become more fully ourselves. Wherever we are on our journey with Christ, we can grow deeper with him by
continuing the work of forming our consciences well, so that we may follow him ever more closely. The conscience is the God-given inner voice that either accuses or excuses us in terms of what we do. It is the “divine sense” that God puts into every person, and that divine sense is a significant aspect of God’s revelation to us. God’s revelation may be common revelation or unique revelation. Unique revelation refers to that information given to us in the scriptures. Not everyone in the world possesses this information. Those who have heard it have had the benefit of hearing specific information about God and his plan of redemption. Common revelation refers to the revelation that God makes available to every human being on earth. It’s common in the sense that it’s not limited to any specific group of people. It’s global, and it can extend to every human being. The audience is general, and the information given is general as well. It doesn’t have the same level of detail that sacred scripture does. But here’s a mystery of knowledge to better understand the conscience. With common revelation, we must distinguish between interceding common revelation and direct common revelation. Intercessory revelation refers to the revelation that God gives through a mediator: creation, in which God reveals his invisible attributes. Common revelation mediated through creation is clear enough that every single person knows God exists and, therefore, is without excuse as stated in the book of Romans. Unique revelation is revelation that is transmitted to without external assistance. It’s internal. It’s the revelation God plants in the soul. God reveals his law in the mind by framing a conscience within each of us. The crisis here is that we learn how to turn the volume of our conscience down so that our ethics align with how we want to live and not how God tells us we should live. We prefer silence from God rather than being reminded that what we do is under the condemnation of Almighty God. Here is the supreme irony and tragedy of sin: the more we repeat our sins, the greater the guilt we incur, but the less sensitive we become to the pangs of guilt in our consciences. This is how we store up wrath for ourselves. Some people have so seared their consciences that they believe it really doesn’t matter what they do as long as it is consensual, and they can see no harm. In a deluded fashion we find new ways to accept sinful behavior, both as individuals and as a culture. There is no collective conscience left in this country. We practice things deserving death and approve of others who practice them as well. When people destroy their own consciences, they do everything in their power to destroy the consciences of others. It is so important to keep our hearts tender to the testimony of God’s word in our conscience. Our minds must be in captivity to the scriptures.
The only antidote is knowing the mind of Christ. We need men and women whose consciences have been captured by the word of God. Thank God for his word. It exposes the ploys of the enemy. A taste of judgment is now in part, through our consciences, as a gift from the God who desires all would come to repentance. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, and with that conviction comes a certain tender mercy that leads us to repentance and forgiveness so that we might walk in his presence.
It is the blood of Christ that gives the true believer a clear conscience – hence the admonition: let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. If we know the free grace of Christ in acquitting us before God, and then his ongoing grace each day, we will possess something very precious – a clear conscience. So important is the conscience that even one that is ill-informed is to be respected. Conscience is not our final authority; there is something above it - for if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. All humanity possesses a conscience bearing witness to the law of God which is written upon all our hearts. Even those who refuse to believe the claims of Christ are not devoid of conscience. Conscience can provide us with the capacity for accurate self-examination, particularly when used in the light of God's truth. We should realize that it is not a dictator of our beliefs, but a response that reflects our current values. Conscience means “with knowledge”. The conscience is not an audible voice, but it is a sense that echoes responsibility and obligation to do right. It can be a wise counselor. Do not permit imagination to muffle the conscience. As the Spirit educates the believer’s conscience with the things of God, the personal standard formed by the conscience begins to align with the standard of revealed truth. As a result, the renewed inner man becomes increasingly in tune with the will of God. An important question arises, though. If the nourishment of God’s Word by the Spirit is the means through which our conscience is properly trained, then how do we discern whether or not we are indeed being illumined by the Spirit? Answer: by comparing what we believe the Spirit to be communicating with what God has said in His Word. This is how we know that something truly is from God – comparing scripture with
scripture. We take what we believe the Spirit to be teaching us, and weigh it in the balance with God’s Word. This is the way in which the Spirit teaches, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual”. Our conscience is to be in agreement with godliness…confident that we are in His will.
Underneath our actions, thoughts and emotions, in a quiet mode, there is an utterance that continually attempts to guide us towards love and spiritual influence. Oh, to sense the wind of this whisper. The more knowledge of God’s Word, the more sensitive the conscience is to sin. Conscience is a most important part of our inward man, and plays a most prominent part in our spiritual history as we pray to have our minds enlightened by the Holy Spirit. It is our principle within. No longer as a true believer can we sin with impunity. Let conscience open its ears and eternal hope sounds the refrain of heaven. The strongest evidence of God's eternal truth, is the universal conscience of mankind. It is that clear understanding of who is our peace. Christ answers every accusation. He calms every fear. No thought of past sins and present failings and future judgment can refute blood of Jesus. Scarcely anything seems to approach the work of grace so nearly as the deepest convictions of conscience bringing a divine power into the heart. Peace of conscience is a fruit of reconciliation with God. The blood which reconciles, when sprinkled on the conscience, produces a sweet peace which can be obtained in no other way. If the atonement of Christ satisfies the law which condemned us, and we are assured that this atonement is accepted for us, conscience, which before condemned, as being the echo of the law, is now pacified. We have peace with God.
The conscience must be continually enlightened and developed by an exposure to God’s Word. By it is the judgment which we pronounce on our own conduct. Conscience singles us out as though nobody else existed. God has given us a faithful witness inside of our own being. It is able to single a man out and reveal his loneliness, the loneliness of a single soul in the universe going on to meet an omniscient God. That’s the terror of the conscience. Conscience never deals with theories. Conscience always deals with right and wrong and the relation of the individual to that which is right or wrong. Remember the conscience is always on God’s side! It judges conduct in the light of the moral law, and as the scripture says, excuses or accuses. The conscience of man, when he is really quickened and awakened by the Holy Spirit, speaks the truth. It’s that barking dog. Turn over to sleep if you like but that dog barks again and again, the wrath to come...the wrath to come...the wrath
to come!
Let’s lay this revelation out. Not a soul needs to witness our sin. Not a soul needs to know of it. We cannot hide the truth from the eyes of our conscience. In the end, what is important is not that other people know, but that we ourselves know. And heaven will know. Conscience is knowledge together with oneself. That is to say, our conscience knows our inner motives and true thoughts. It is above reason and beyond intellect. We can rationalize, trying to justify ourself in our own mind, but a violated conscience will not be easily convinced. God calls a people who sins neither in thought nor deed, and is fair and just, who gains enormous courage and strength to stand every fiery trial. The convictions of their mind are encouraged and sharpened in accordance with God's Word. The wise wants to grasp biblical truth so that the conscience is completely informed and judges right to co-operate fully and in accord with true holiness. Conscience is a thing that is inseparably united to the soul, and is essential to it. In what part of the soul is this conscience seated? It has a place not only in the understanding, in the will. The place of conscience is in the whole soul, in what we say references the body—that it is wholly in the whole, and wholly in every part. That which may be truly said of conscience in reference to the soul, is that it is not only a part of the whole, but wholly in every part. Conscience is in the understanding and acts there. It is in the will and checks there. It is in the affections and governs there. It is in the memory and records there. Conscience makes the understanding practical, and the will obedient, the affections spiritual, and the memory faithful. These are all the workhouse of conscience. Here it sits, here it acts, and from here it sends forth its influences into all the actions of a man's life. It extends itself over the whole man, and is concerned in every interest, and every motion, from first to last. Conscience, it runs through all our duties and practices. Faith looks to the promises, fear looks to the threatenings, obedience looks to the commands, repentance looks to sins, but conscience looks to all. Conscience has a very high and solemn power in its respect of God. Conscience is God's repository, where the revealed will of God is kept and preserved.
God wrote his law on tables of stone, and he writes it also on the fleshly tables of man's heart. This is the book of record. God never revealed more of his will, than he has written in conscience. The declaration of his will in the moral law, is no more than what was written on Adam's conscience. And the declaration of God's will in the covenant of grace, is no more than what is written in the believer's conscience. As conscience takes counsel of God, and we take counsel of conscience, we are led into the divine presence. Conscience is a witness of God's own appointing. God has ordained it, and set it up to give evidence both to the found and to the lost. It is a faithful witness that will not lie. Conscience stands indifferent between God and man, and therefore more fit to be a witness. Self-interest leads to partiality, but that which is indifferent, is the more likely to be for the equity of the cause. Conscience is a thing between both parties; it is not so of God, but it has something of man. Neither is it so of man, but it has something of God in it, and therefore the fittest to give evidence. Divine irradiation is that book of conscience in the last day. It is a solemn and fearful consideration—that every sin is written in the book of conscience, and that book must be opened in the great day of judgment. We are in the day where we must hold communion with our own consciences and do search that acquits us from hypocrisy and reigning sin. Then we have confidence towards God and liberty of access now, and boldness in the day of judgment. The consolations of conscience are most sweet…but its condemnations are very terrible and dreadful. Thank God for a tender conscience.
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