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The Bible and Your Conscience
Part 1 – Introduction
Bruce A. Hess
Now today we’re beginning a new four-part series that I have entitled, “The Bible and Your Conscience.” What I find is interesting is, this subject matter of the conscience, in my opinion, is rarely addressed. In fact, I think the subject matter of conscience is one of the least understood and most underappreciated principles in Scripture.
So, as we launch into this series this morning, I want to begin by asking three questions, alright? Are you ready? Are you awake? Are you with me? Okay. Question number one is this: How many of us have ever heard a Bible message on the subject matter of conscience? So, put up your hand if you’ve heard one. Alright, I don’t know…I actually have less people probably in this service than the first one. Maybe fifteen of you put up your hand. It’s kind of unusual to hear a message on the subject of conscience
The second question, now don’t raise your hands on this one, I want you to just reflect on this one: When is the last time you thought about your conscience? Think about that. When is the last time you thought about your conscience?
Now, I have taught on this subject matter in previous years, and as I had an opportunity to do four messages and I was praying about it, I just sensed that the Holy Spirit was saying: it is time to revisit the Biblical subject matter of conscience.
Alright, now here is the third question and this is a Bible quiz so I want you to think about what your answer is. The question is, How often is the word ‘conscience’ mentioned in the New Testament? You have a number of potential answers to choose from: Maybe 0-5 times; maybe 6-10 times; maybe 11-15 times; maybe 16-20 times; or even more times.
So, I want you to just think, if you had to identify and answer, which would be your answer this morning? How often is the word ‘conscience’ mentioned in the New Testament? 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, or “more”? Do you have your answer? You know what the answer is? It is “more,”…”more.” In fact, it is mentioned 29 times in the New Testament, 22 of them by the Apostle Paul.
What I want to do in the next few moments is I just want to sample—we’re not going to look at all 29 of them. But I want to do some sampling of these references that we see in the New Testament.
For example, Acts 23, verse 1, Paul says, “I’ve lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.”
Acts 24:16, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and men.”
Another sampling, Romans, chapter 2, verse 15 says, “The law is written on their hearts…their conscience bearing witness.”
Another passage, 1 Corinthians, chapter 8, verse 12 talks about “Sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience.” Have you thought recently about the potential of wounding somebody else in their conscience?
We’re just sampling here. 2 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 12, “Our boast [ proud confidence] is this, the testimony of our conscience.”
1 Timothy 1:5, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience.”
Later on in the same chapter, “Wage the good warfare holding faith and a good conscience.”
Now, we’re just sampling here. Chapter 3 of verse 9 of 1 Timothy, “They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.”
2 Timothy 1:3, “I thank God, whom I serve…with a clear conscience.”
Then Titus, chapter 1, verse 15, we’re just sampling some of the passages here, “To the pure all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.”
Then, we jump into the book of Hebrews, which was not written by Paul. We don’t really know who it was written by, but in Hebrews, chapter 9, verse 14, “How much more will the blood of Christ…purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
We’re just sampling some of the passages. Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 22, “Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.”
Then, a final sampling, chapter 13 of Hebrews, verse 18, “Pray for us, pray for us, …that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.” When is the last time you prayed a prayer like that where you asked someone to pray that prayer for you?
Now, this is just a sampling of verses in the New Testament on this subject matter of conscience. If you’re like me, when I look through that sampling of passages, my response is…you know what…maybe I need to lean into this series and really look more closely at what the Bible has to say about conscience.
It’s interesting, you saw some of this in the passages that we sampled, the Bible speaks of a Good Conscience; a Blameless Conscience; a Clear Conscience; a Weak Conscience; a Defiled Conscience; an Evil Conscience; and it speaks of a Cleansed Conscience. I just want you to look at that list for a minute…and just a reflective question to ask yourself personally. What kind of a conscience do I have right now, today, as I sit here in this room? What kind of conscience do you have today?
Today we are just introducing this series on The Bible and your Conscience. There’s going to be three more parts to come. We’re just introducing ourselves to the subject matter that we’re going to be addressing over this four-part series.
Now, of course I have a plan for today. The plan for today is to do two things. Number one, I want to ask and answer the question, What is the Conscience?, what is the conscience? Then, the second thing I want to do—which is very important to me—is I want to talk about The Universal Necessity of a Cleansed Conscience. This is an indisputable need for every human being. The second one is where a relationship with God begins.
So, we are going to look at the two things, ask and answer the question, What is the Conscience, then we are going to look at The Universal Necessity of a Cleansed Conscience.
So, let’s begin by asking and answering the question, What is the Conscience, what is it? It is talking about it…referring to it… but what is it? There are a few descriptives or mini definitions that have been given of the conscience. Some would say, well, the conscience is man’s moral overseer. Ohers might put it this way, it is the voice in your head. Maybe someone would describe it as your inner moral compass. Or, we might say, it is the ‘spiritual check’ in your soul. Or someone else might say, it is the innate sense of ‘ought’ or ‘ought not.’ I ought to do this, or I ought not to do that. What is the conscience??
I am going to give you a definition that Kevin DeYoung has. He says, “The conscience is the moral faculty within human beings that assesses what is good and what is bad.” I like that definition, that is a good definition of the conscience.
Now, because I am the guy speaking 😉, I’ve put together my own definition of conscience and it goes like this: “Conscience is an intuitive sense of rightness and wrongness regarding our words, attitudes and actions.” An intuitive sense of the rightness or wrongness regarding our words, attitudes and actions.
Here is what is interesting about conscience: conscience attaches itself to the highest standard a person is aware of. It attaches itself to the highest standard a person is aware of. Then, the conscience weighs the internal sense of right and wrong. But it attaches itself to the highest standard that a person is aware of. It may not be God’s standard, but it is the highest standard of which they are aware.
Let me give you an illustration of what I am talking about. Many of you know the story of the Sawi people from Papua, New Guinea…you might know, the story of The Peace Child came out of that. The Sawi were a cannibalistic tribe of people. One of the values that they held high in their society was the value of treachery. They thought it was an incredibly cool thing to befriend, maybe another tribe, to act like you were being friends with them. But you wanted to deceive them and ultimately you were going to kill them and virtually eat them.
So, they thought treachery was a high value, a high standard of operating. In fact, when the missionaries first went to the Sawi people and they were telling them the story of Jesus, when they got to the account of Judas Iscariot—who in a treacherous way deceives Jesus, which ultimately led to His murder—they were standing and clapping for Judas. Because, you see, our conscience attaches itself to the highest standard the person is aware of, but it may not be God’s standard.
What the Sawi needed to do was they needed to have their conscience cleansed, and that is exactly what happened when they finally understood the whole message of Jesus Christ. When they came to trust in Him, God recalibrated their conscience to God’s Word, to God’s standards. They no longer gave applause to Judas, but today rather, many of their tribe have gone as missionaries to other tribes in New Guinea to share the message of Jesus Christ. So, you see, the conscience attaches itself to the highest standard a person is aware of, but it may or may not be God’s standard.
So, we are in the middle of asking this question, What is the Conscience? Here is what is important for us to understand: from the beginning of humanity, the concept of conscience was placed in every human heart. All throughout history, starting with Adam and Eve and on, the conscience is placed in every human heart.
We see this very, very clearly illustrated in the story of Adam and Eve. You don’t need to turn to Genesis, but I am going to simply work our way through some passages here. You’ll see how this works. Watch this carefully.
When you go to Genesis, chapter 2, verses 16 and 17, it says, “The Lord God commanded the man…” and He said to the man, to Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Now, right here, what is the highest standard that Adam is aware of? What God just told him in chapter 2, verses 16 and 17: you can eat of every tree but of this one tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, and in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die, which is very strongly worded in the original language. It literally says, you will die—die. It means you are absolutely, positively going to die if you eat of that tree.
So, we move from chapter 2 over to chapter 3, verses 1-7. You remember this story, “So the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. The serpent says to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” He’s doing the same tactic he does even in our day, which is to cast doubt on God’s standards…are you sure you heard that right? It goes on to say, “The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” Now, she’s already downgrading God’s words. Remember God said, you will die—die. You will surely, absolutely, positively, die. And she simply says, God says we’re gonna die. It’s not as strongly worded as God put it.
Then, notice what happens next, “The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” That was a lie, a total lie. Then, he goes on to say, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened…knowing good and evil.” That is true, it is actually what happens—they get introduced to evil through their rebellion. That was a true statement. “And you will be like God.” That was another lie. That is the way Satan works. It’s never a hundred percent lies, it’s just a little bit of truth with lies mixed in. So, there was a lie, a truth, and a lie and so, “She took and ate and gave to her husband who was with her.”
Watch how this works, chapter 3, verses 8 to 11, “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Remember this? What happens next? Well, “Then the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And the man replied, “I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”” How does God respond? “Who told you that you were naked?” There are no other people around. Who told you that you were naked? You know what the answer to that question is? Conscience told him he was naked. See, God has put conscience into every human heart. It is universal, starting with the very first human beings right up to today.
So, we’re basically asking the question, What is the Conscience? It is a universal thing. Well, here is another way to look at it. Before we do something or say something, the conscience would say to us, don’t do it or do it…it’s the right thing to do. So, the conscience operates before we take action. And After we take action, the conscience may say: you know that was wrong, you shouldn’t have or it might say, what you said or did was right. See the way it works? There is a before action of the conscience, there is an after action of the conscience.
Now, what I want to do is—we’re trying to understand What is the Conscience?—so I want to zoom in a little bit more, okay? What is interesting is the term ‘conscience’ only occurs in the New Testament, not in the Old Testament, only in the New Testament. I just want you to see, as we answer the question, What is the Conscience, in the Greek, which is what the original New Testament was written in, the word for ‘conscience’ is suneidesis. It is just simply the word for knowledge, oida, o-i-d-a in Greek, and a preposition ‘with’ put together with it. So, you literally have ‘knowledge with’, knowledge with.
When we look at the English word, conscience, it is basically structured the same way. By the way, if you’ve ever wondered how to spell it in English, it’s con—science. Science refers to ‘knowledge’ and ‘c-o-n’ is a preposition that means ‘with.’ So, whether you are talking the English word, conscience, or you’re talking the Greek word, suneidesis, it just simply means—literally: knowledge with. It is talking about moral knowledge within us.
You might be thinking, well, goodness, it seems strange that you wouldn’t see the word ‘conscience’ in the Old Testament. Well, the concept IS in the Old Testament, but in the Old Testament it does things a little differently. It uses the imagery of the heart, the imagery of the heart. I’m going to give you a couple of examples of this. If you want to, you can turn with me to 1 Samuel, chapter number 24. We’re going to look at verses 1-6 there. It is a story of King David and you might remember that Saul was the first king of Israel. David was already anointed to be the second king, but Saul was still king and Saul didn’t like the fact that David was going to be succeeding him, so he decided to go on a rampage and try to kill David. That was the plan.
In 1 Samuel 24 it says, “Saul returned from following the Philistines and he was told, hey, David is in the wilderness of Engedi. Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went after him. They came to the front of the Wildgoats’ Rocks.” Verse 3 says, “He came to the sheepfolds by the way where there was a cave.” David and his men were hiding inside of this cave. I love this in 1 Samuel, I love the way the Bible reads, it says, “Saul went in to relieve himself,” as it says in the ESV. Literally, what it says is, he went in ‘to cover his feet.’ Now, think about it, when a man is going to be relieving himself, how does he cover his feet? He pulls his pants all the way down. Now we know what he went in there to do, okay? That is the business that he was going to be accomplishing in the cave.
David’s men are whispering to David and they said, this is it, this is your opportunity to take out Saul. I mean, you can take him out [kill him]. David says, I’m not going to do that, I’m not going to do that. In fact, down in verse 6 he says, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to the Lord’s anointed.” I’m not going to ‘take him out.’ But what he did decide to do is sneak over, because Saul had taken off his robe also—who wants to get anything on the robe, you know. He sneaks over there and he cuts off a corner of Saul’s robe. He very stealthily does that, but here is what is interesting: in verse 5 of 1 Samuel 24, it says this, “Afterward David’s heart struck him.”
That is literally what the Hebrew says, but it is actually referring to David’s conscience. In fact, the NIV translates it: ‘afterward David’s conscience strickened him.’ Several other of our key translations of the Old Testament translate it as his conscience bothered him afterward. So, while we don’t actually have the word ‘conscience’, we have the concept in the Old Testament, which is connected more with the imagery of the heart.
I’ll just give you one other passage you can look at later, 2 Chronicles 34:27, talking about King Josiah, one of the kings of Judah. And what had happened is God was pronouncing judgments on Judah and Josiah heard about these judgments and was just broken. It says there in verse 27, “Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before God when you heard His words against this place and its inhabitants…” He is talking about how his heart was tender, what’s he really discussing here? It is this concept of the conscience; your conscience was sensitive. Because you responded, I’m going to bless you in some ways.
So, when we’re talking about What is the Conscience, we’re talking about it being a warning system based on the standards that we are aware of. Just to give you a better feel for it, the idea is this: if we violate our conscience, it condemns us. What do we mean by that? It means that it will elicit from us a sense of shame and regret and anxiety. We’ve all said things and we’ve all done things that have elicited this idea of some shame and regret and anxiety, maybe even over what we said or what we did. If we violate our conscience, it condemns us. If we follow our conscience, it commends us. We’ll have this response of maybe joy or peace or affirmation in some way.
So, a good way to understand it, it is a warning system based on the standards we are aware of. If we violate it, it tends to condemn us, maybe there is shame, regret, anxiety over that. If we follow it, it commends us and there can be joy and peace and affirmation.
Now, there is a lot more we are going to have to learn. That’s why we have four parts in this series. Today is simply just an Introduction to what is the conscience. As I said, we are first going to talk about What is the Conscience. The second thing I feel burdened to talk about is The Universal Necessity of a Cleansed Conscience. This is the indisputable need of every human being. This is where a relationship with God begins.
You know, as I look out at this room—and I don’t who all in the future may be listening to this message. I must admit, I don’t know all of your spiritual stories. I don’t know where each of you are on your spiritual journey, but I want us to understand ‘the necessity of a cleansed conscience.’ What do I mean by that?
Well, each of us was born with a defiled conscience. What do I mean by a defiled conscience? A conscience that was marred and deformed by sin. We read Titus, chapter 1, verse 15, which talks about the unbelieving. It says the unbelieving—those people who do not know God yet—have both their mind and their conscience defiled. Each of us was born with a defiled conscience and each of us was inflicted with a deadly disease called sin. It’s just what the Bible tells us about.
Romans 3:23, “All have sinned.” How many are included in ‘all?’ All people have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, the holy standards of God. Now, this is a problem that everyone needs to be aware of. Each of us is born with a defiled conscience, each of us is inflicted with a deadly disease called sin, and sin carries with it serious consequences. Romans 6:23 tells us that, “The wages of sin is death.” What is a wage? A wage is something that we earn and the wages of sin in our life is death…a slow death in this life and an eternal death in the next life.
So, we’ve got some problems as a human being. How do we solve this problem? Well, I want to introduce to you the number one lie of all time. It is the number one lie in multiple religions. We could just list them all, up and down on the wall here. It is the number one lie of multiple religions; it is the number one lie of parts of Christianity. The number one lie of all time is: how we solve this problem of a defiled conscience and the ramifications of sin is that—what we need to do is—we need to be good. We need to do good. We need to find a way to stack up enough good in our life that we can earn our way into a cleansed conscience.
I remember many decades of ago when I was talking to my to-be wife, which I didn’t know well at the time. And I asked her, if you were to die tonight, do you know where you would go? And she said, I would go to heaven. I said, why would you go to heaven? And what she did is, she started stacking up good: well, I’ve always gone to church; I’ve been in the choir; I don’t do all these bad things; blah, blah, blah [she continued to list good things she’d done]. What she failed to understand is: that is the number one lie of all time. That if we stack up enough good, then we can earn our way in.
I shared with her the principle of Romans 3:20, sin carries with it serious consequences, it says, “By the works of the law, the things that we do, no human being will be justified in His sight.” We cannot stack up enough good to get it done.
So then, the question, we say, well, if we can’t stack up enough good, are we stuck, are we stuck with a mind and a conscience that is defiled? Are we without hope? Are we doomed? And the answer is: No! God did something about it. Romans, 5:6 tells us that when we were utterly helpless—we could never stack up enough good to have a cleansed conscience—Christ came to this planet and died for sinners. He took the penalty of death that we had earned.
Romans 5:8, “God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us, while we were still sinners.” This is the reason why Jesus came to this world. He came to pay the price for our defiled conscience. And while we couldn’t stack up enough good, He had the righteous good that we all needed.
So, we learn from Galatians 2:16 that a person is not justified by works of the law—by the good that we do—but through faith in Jesus Christ. What does that really mean? It means that at some point of time—by the way, this is true for everybody, it doesn’t matter how young you are or how old you are—at some point in time we make the life choice to rest in; to trust in; to rely on what Jesus Christ did on the cross on our behalf.
Every human being, if they want to have a cleansed conscience, if they want to have their sentence of death waived, it is by having faith and trust in Jesus Christ in what He has done. See, here is the idea: while all of us are born with a defiled conscience, the good news is that Jesus wants to cleanse your conscience!
Hebrews, chapter 9, verse 14, it speaks of the blood of Christ. What did Christ do? “Who through the eternal spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God,” and that Christ can cleanse your conscience from dead works, which are just worthless, trying to pile up my good, to serve the living God. Again, I don’t know everybody’s story, but I don’t want anyone to miss this. My appeal to you, I urge you, I implore you, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:20, “Be reconciled to God.” You can have a cleansed conscience by faith, trusting in what He has done. Allow Him, allow Him, please allow Him to cleanse your conscience. I want you to know something. If you make that decision to operate by faith in that regard, you don’t have to walk down an aisle, you don’t have to do jumping jacks, or anything else. Right where you are listening, if you’ve never done that, trust in Him! He will cleanse your conscience, and I want you to know it will be the best decision you ever, ever have made!!
Let’s pray together. Father, again we want to just thank you so much for Your Word. We thank You for the opportunity to go into this series and learn a little bit more about, What is the Conscience? What does the Bible have to say? What does it mean for me? So, we are going to be looking forward to how Your Spirit is going to be teaching and instructing us in the weeks ahead. Thank You for who You are. We thank You for what You’ve done. We thank You for cleansing our conscience, my conscience, by grace, through trusting in Christ. We pray these things in His name, Amen
Questions for Reflection
The Bible and Your Conscience
Message 1- Introduction
1. Have you previously heard a biblical message on the topic of conscience?
When and where did it happen? And what did you learn?
2. Were you surprised (or not surprised) at how frequently conscience is
Mentioned in the New Testament? Explain why.
3. How did Adam and Eve display the presence of their consciences?
4. Share a time where your conscience made you feel good about something you
said or did.
5. Share a time when your conscience might have made you feel uneasy about
something you said or did.
6. Bruce listed several descriptions of conscience and then gave his own
summary. If someone was to ask you, what is the conscience, how would you
answer?
7. Spend some time praying for neighbors, or co-workers, or friends, or family
that the Holy Spirit might stir their conscience regarding the need for a Savior.
.