CONSCIENCE

“Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good CONSCIENCE, and from sincere faith” – 1Tim.1:5

CONSCIENCE is the voice of the human spirit soul-ward. The conscience communicates from the spirit to the soul. Conscience is an inner voice of guidance – your spirit talking to your soul. “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom.8:14). What God’s Spirit witnesses to your spirit, it in turn witnesses to your soul. Conscience is the witness of the human spirit for or against the soul. God’s Spirit convicts our conscience and helps us to see sin as it really is (Jh.8:9; 16:8). His Spirit within us, working with our conscience, helps us to recognize and avoid sin. Every man’s spirit has a voice, whether he is saved or unsaved. The difference is that the spirit of the unsaved is “dead in trespasses” (Eph.2:5). The new birth is a rebirth of the human spirit; a reawakening of the faculties of the spirit, including its voice. Romans 2:15 confirms how people “show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.”

God communicates with the spirit and not directly with our reasoning faculties. As a believer in Christ, your spirit has the life and nature of God in it, because the Holy Spirit dwells within you. God communicates with you through your spirit because that is where He is. Learn to obey your spirit. As you constantly do so, you will find that you are obeying the Holy Spirit. Proverbs 20:27 says, “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.” That is, God will use your spirit to guide you. The faculties of the human spirit are meant to be developed from spiritual babyhood to adulthood: “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby” (1Pet.2:2). Just as the human mind can be educated intellectually, so the human spirit can be trained spiritually. It can be built up in strength just as the  body can be built up. The conscience – the inward voice – is a safe guide in Spirit-filled believers because God dwells in us.

Paul said he obeyed his conscience: “…I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day” (Acts 23:1b). He says in Romans 9:1, “I tell you the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my CONSCIENCE also bearing witness in the Holy Spirit.” Paul strove “to have a conscience without offense toward God and men” (Acts 24:16). As your spirit meditates and feeds upon the Word, it becomes increasingly a safe guide, trained in the Word. As you learn to obey the voice of your spirit, you will come to the place where you know what you should do in all phases and spheres of life: “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Pro.3:6). Such a good conscience is the basis of biblical faith: “Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith” (1Tim.1:5, 19). We are to hold “the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience” (1Tim.3:9).

The conscience is however not absolutely dependable. There are believers with “weak” or poorly developed consciences: “but when you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ” (1Cor.8:12). The conscience of the unsaved is often not a safe guide, being “dead” in sin (Eph.2:5). Consciences may be defiled (Tit.1:15), dead (Heb.9:14), evil (Heb.10:22) or seared: “…having their conscience seared with a hot iron” (1Tim.1:2). The latter may be the case with a backslidden believer who has incessantly disobeyed the conscience until it became deadened. Paul said: “For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, and more abundantly toward you” (2Cor.1:12). Beloved, what is the testimony of your conscience?