The Christian Conscience
The matter of the conscience is an important topic addressed in Scripture in multiple places. Tragically it has been and is still abused by some. One brilliant brother in Christ and friend Dr. David Wenkel recently did an excellent talk on the Christian's conscience which you can check out here.
In his little but very helpful book "How Can I Develop a Christian Conscience” the late R.C. Sproul wrote:
"The Hebrew term translated into the English as “conscience” occurs in the Old Testament, but very sparsely. However in the New Testament, there seems to be a fuller awareness of the importance of the function of conscience in the Christian life. The Greek word for conscience appears in the New Testament thirty-one times, and it seems to have a two-fold dimension, as the medieval scholars argued. It involves the idea of accusing as well as the idea of excusing. When we sin, the conscience is troubled. It accuses us. The conscience is the tool that God the Holy Spirit uses to convict us, bring us to repentance, and to receive the healing of forgiveness that flows from the gospel."
Sproul goes on to say:
"We see in the New Testament that the conscience is not the final ethical authority for human conduct because the conscience is capable of change. Whereas God’s principles don’t change, our consciences vacillate and develop. These changes can be positive or negative. For example, the prophets in the Old Testament thundered God’s judgment upon the people of Israel who had grown accustomed to sin. One of the great indictments that came upon Israel in the days of King Ahab was that they had grown so numb and accustomed to evil that the people tolerated King Ahab’s wickedness. Hardness of the heart had set in. The consciences of the Israelites were seared and calloused. Think about this reality in your life, about the ideals that you had as a child. Consider the pangs of conscience that may have intruded into your life when you first experimented with certain things that you knew were wrong. You were overwhelmed and shaken. Perhaps you even became physically ill. But the power of sin can erode the conscience to the point where it becomes a faint voice in the deepest recesses of your soul. By this, our consciences become hardened and callous, condemning what is right and excusing what is wrong.
It’s interesting that we can always find someone who will give an articulate and persuasive defense for the ethical legitimacy of some of the activities that God has judged to be an outrage to Him. As humans, our ability to defend ourselves from moral culpability is quite developed and nuanced. We become a culture in trouble when we begin to call evil good and good evil. To do that, we must distort the conscience, and, in essence, make man the final authority in life. All one has to do is to adjust his conscience to suit his ethic. Then we can live life with peace of mind, thinking that we are living in a state of righteousness."
- R. C. Sproul, How Can I Develop a Christian Conscience?, First edition., The Crucial Questions Series (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2013), 6–7.
May we be those whose consciences are under Christ's Lordship and as such are calibrated by the written Word of the living and Holy God alone. No matter the cost socially following Christ as Lord without shame is vital for the true believer. We live in a society dominated by doing what is "our personal choice or preference" and where "feeling good" and "looking good" is elevated far above honoring God as supreme. No matter what we feel or think if we have rejected God's Word in favor of what we feel inside or what others have told us this is not a conscience that pleases God. Repentance is in order and contrition before our Holy God who guides us by His truth which is supreme and not by our feelings. A Christ confessing covenant community of born again, Spirit-filled, God-fearing Christians that knows loves and obeys the sufficient Word of God can greatly help us avoid the trap of isolation and arrogance. Sadly those are in very short order in our day. May it please God to raise up more and more of them in the Chicagoland area and around the world SDG...