Your Conscience


One of the God's gift to man is conscience. It is the part of His personhood. The conscience is a God-enabled function of your being. You as a person have in escapable conscience. So your own conscience becomes witness to you from God (Rom 9:1, 1:12).

Conscience is born in you as part of your inner nature, but its function and training are gradual and lifelong.

Your conscience might be compared to a computer. The computer makes calculation on the basis of the information fed into it. If the incorrect data are fed into the computer, it will give incorrect answer. Similarly, if your conscience has received incorrect human opinions, misinterpretations of scriptures, or inadequate Bible teaching, it can misled you. Your conscience may condemn you when it should not, or it may be silent when it sought to speak.

  1. The Mind and the Conscience

The Bible makes a clear distinction between your inner being (your heart) and your conscience (Rom 2: 15: Titus 1:15)

  1. A Three-fold function of Conscience :
    1. Your conscience recognizes the different between right and wrong.
    2. Your conscience motivates you to do right and avoid wrong (Rom 13:5)
    3. Your conscience judges you and gives inner sense of approval and peace when you do right.

  1. Sin & the Conscience

Since the conscience is a witnesses you from God, without the conscience you could not be held accountable for your sin.  ( 2 Cor 1: 12)

The green word for Conscience is SUBEIDESIS, which literally means “a knowing with”. So it is co-knowledge. God gives you conscience to be your special resource in making decision. But is a secondary resource, not a primary one, because it is always dependent on that which constitutes your standard and authority. If you area sprit-filled Christian, it can depend on and agree with God, Scripture, and the Spirit’s inner voice.

The conscience of a person who is sanctified to the will of God and filled with the Holy Spirit will be the faithful guide to the extent that it is saturated with the Word of God and the mind of Christ and trained in nature Spiritual discernment

  1. Four Description of a Christina Conscience

    1. The Weak Conscience ( 1 Cor 8:17 -21)

It is the conscience of a Christian who is inadequately informed about the Word of God and the will of God. A weak conscience is conscience in bondage to man’s traditions, to other people’s opinions, and sometimes to Satan’s accusations. It is not a safe guide.

      1. The Careless Conscience
    The opposite of the weak conscience is the careless conscience. He is so casual in his obedience to Christ and so accepting of almost any conduct or belief that he lowers biblical standards of conduct to a level unacceptable to God. It is not a safe guide. 
      1. The Good Conscience  
    The confident and victorious testimony of Paul was. ' i strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man" (Acts 24:16; II Tm 1:3). He urges the deacons, ‘keep hold of the deep truth of the faith with a clear conscience’ ( I Tim 3:9).
    Thus your conscience should testify clearly 2 things: Your doctrine and your conduct. 
    5. Three Descriptions of Conscience of the unsaved
    1. The Guilty Conscience
    Hebrew 10:2 speaks of feelings guilty for sins committed (The GK uses the word for ‘conscience’). It is normal for sinner to feel guilty for their sins.
    In the NT dispensation, the Holy Spirit convicts  our guilt ( John 16:8) and, when repent and confess our  sins to Him and trust in Christ for forgiveness, the Holy Spirit gives us the blessed inner testimony of our forgiveness and salvation to our clear forgiven conscience.
    This is called, the witness of the spirit (Rom 8:16; 2 Cor 1:22, Eph 1:13). The Spirit bears testimony within us because the blood of Christ cleanses our consciences. (Heb 9:14).
    1. The Corrupted Conscience
    Paul teaches that corrupted people who do not believes cannot make proper moral judgments and decision I Titus 1:15). The corrupted leads one deeper and deeper into moral darkness and perversity.
    1. The Seared Conscience
    This refer to a person whose conscience has become so corrupted that he deliberately teaches people to believe what he knows to be errors and to do what he knows to be sin ( I Tim 4:2)
    If you repeated disregard the voice of your conscience in some matter, its voice will become weaker and weaker until you do not even hear it speaking. Another way to describe this is to say that your conscience can be come so accustomed or hard by repeating failures to obey it that it becomes insensitive. Paul says a conscience can be seared as if by a hot iron.  ( I Tim 4:2)
      
    Conclusion
    How can we as Christian train our conscience so that we will never be misled? How can we train it to serve as our secondary but very important resources in driving judgment?
    Conscience is only as safe as its source of authority and training given to it ultimately God and His word are the only sound authority for our conscience. Paul testifies
    ‘ My consignee is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me’ (I Cor 4:4)
    Thank God a guilty or corrupted conscience can be cleansed and forgiven through the atonement work of Jesus Christ.
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