The Bible and Your Conscience
Part 2, Some Anatomy of our Conscience
Bruce A. Hess
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We are so excited to have an opportunity to spend some time with you today as we gather around the Word of God. Isn’t it a great privilege to be able to assemble together to do that? What I want to do is, I want to invite you to take out the Word of God right now and turn in it, in the New Testament, to the Book of Romans, and chapter number 9; Romans, chapter 9.
Now, today we are launching into the second part of a four-part series we began last Sunday, entitled, “The Bible and Your Conscience.” As maybe you are getting to Romans, chapter 9, I just want to remind you of something that has been a little bit of a phenomenon in American culture. And that is: how many of you can remember the Disney animated movie, Pinocchio? Anyone remember that movie? Yeah, absolutely! It was a movie that was filmed originally in 1940 and re-released in 1945, 1954, 1962, 1971, 1978, 1984, and 1992. I understand that there was a new movie released in 2022, but I haven’t seen the new movie. To me, when I think of Pinocchio, I think of the classic movie.
You remember the story…it is a story of Geppetto, who was a wood carver and he has carved this puppet, Pinocchio. And Pinocchio dreams of becoming a real boy. Remember, a key part of the story is that there is another character and that is the character of Jiminy Cricket. And Jiminy Cricket is assigned to be the conscience of Pinocchio.
In fact, Jiminy sings this song in the movie, where part of the line is, to Pinocchio, “always let your conscience be your guide.” If you remember the story, Pinocchio starts to hang around some with the wrong crowd. When he tells a lie, his nose grows longer, remember that? And, over time, he actually starts to turn into a donkey. In fact, without him even knowing it, suddenly a ‘hee-haw’ comes out of his mouth, remember that? He grows some donkey ears and a donkey tail. And the more he ignores his conscience in the movie, the more he becomes like a beast, where he is less truly human.
I don’t know if you’ve ever really caught it while watching the movie, but there is indeed a grown-up moral in Pinocchio, and that is this: that when we disregard our conscience, we slowly become an…[Bruce hesitates with the audience expectation the next word will be…’ass’]…we slowly become a donkey, okay [note, in English, a donkey can also be called an ‘ass’] ? If we ignore our conscience long enough that’s what will happen.
J.I. Packer said this, he said, “An educated, sensitive conscience is God’s monitor. It alerts us to the moral quality of what we do or plan to do. Satan’s strategy is to corrupt, desensitize, and if possible, kill our consciences.”
Last time we began giving an introduction to this whole subject matter and we were basically asking and answering the question, What is the Conscience? If you missed that message, I would encourage you, you can go to our YouTube page; you can go to our Facebook page, the video is linked there. You can go to our website, wildwoodchurch.org, and the audio is located there. But I would encourage you to listen to that first message. We were asking the question, What is the Conscience?
During that introduction, just to give you a little review, I gave a definition I put together about the conscience. I said, “It is an intuitive sense of rightness and wrongness regarding our words, attitudes and actions.”
There are several things that we noted in that very first introduction message. One is that the Conscience is Universal, the conscience is in every human being. It is in every human heart. Another thing we noted in that first message is that Our Conscience, as we’ve been saying, is our Moral Warning System and it is based on standards that we are aware of.
So, as we are talking about the conscience, in some ways a conscience is like the parking sensors on some of the newer cars. You know, when you are parking and maybe backing up it will beep to alert you before you hit another car, or you hit a wall. Yet, when you’re parking and there’s no beep, you know all is good.
We said last time, regarding the conscience, that if we Violate our Conscience, it condemns us. We might have feelings where we sense, experience, shame, regret and anxiety. We also said last time that if we Follow our Conscience, it commends us, and we may be experiencing then joy and peace and affirmation.
Now, I want to give you some examples of how our conscience might prompt us. We might have this thought: “deep inside I knew it was the right thing to do.” Another way our conscience might prompt us would be like this: “I feel terrible about how I talked to him.” Another example of how our conscience might prompt us: “it seems wrong to respond to her post on the internet that way.” Another way our conscience might prompt us: “I guess our date went okay, but somehow, inside, I sense something’s not right.”
So, it is very important to remember Conscience is Universal; it is a Moral Warning System. We did an introduction last time, today what we want to do is, we want to look at Some Anatomy of our Conscience. We want to just break it down a little bit more, go a little bit deeper, and we want to look at some anatomy of our conscience.
The first thing I want us to see about the Anatomy of our Conscience is that The Holy Spirit is Not our Conscience, the Holy Spirit is not our conscience. If you have your Bibles open to Romans, chapter 9, I want you to look at verse 1. Paul says there, “I am speaking the truth in Christ.” He says, “I’m not lying, my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit.” See, the Holy Spirit is not our conscience. It is interesting, when you look at that phraseology, my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, it says in the ESV. If you have a Holman Christian Standard Bible, it translates the phrase this way, “My conscience is testifying to me with the Holy Spirit.” I really like the New Living Translation of this phrase. It says, “My conscience and the Holy Spirit confirm it.”
See, the Holy Spirit fills us, we learn that from Ephesians 5:18. The Holy Spirit leads us, we learn that from Romans, chapter 8, verse 14 and Galatians 5, verse 18. But here is the way it works, the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with, we could say in tandem with, the conscience. In other words, the conscience is a tool that the Holy Spirit uses in our life.
So, we are looking at understanding more deeply this Anatomy of the Conscience. The first thing we’ve seen is that The Holy Spirit is not our Conscience. The second thing I want us to see is that Our Conscience Attaches to the Highest Standard it Knows. We talked about this a little bit in our Introduction.
We looked at Adam and Eve back in the garden and when God gave them the principle ‘you can eat of all the trees except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it,’ that became the highest standard that they knew. Then, when they disobeyed, we saw a response of conscience: they felt the shame and the guilt from it.
We further illustrated it with the Sawi tribe in New Guinea. Remember, when they were these cannibals, their highest value was that of treachery, to deceive someone, ultimately to kill them, and ultimately eat them. They thought that was the highest standard of their culture and their conscience. Then, of course, they come to Christ and their conscience gets cleansed and recalibrated and now they’re sending missionaries out to share the message of Jesus with other tribes. Treachery is no longer a high value.
So, the Conscience Attaches to the Highest Standard it Knows. Let me illustrate it another way. Think about the Apostle Paul. Who was the Apostle Paul known as before he became known as the Apostle Paul? He known by his Jewish name of Saul, right? Now, here is what I want you to think about him as Saul: what was the highest standard he was operating within his conscience? Well, before he knew Jesus, before Christ, his conscience directed him to pursue; to arrest; to persecute; to torture and to kill the followers of Jesus. That’s what his conscience was telling him to do.
In his conscience it was the right thing to do because the followers of Jesus (in his mind) were the enemies of the Hebrew god. If you want to be reminded of what he did before he came to know Jesus, you can go to Acts, chapter 9; Acts, chapter 22; Acts, chapter 26, where he delineates all those things.
But what happens to Saul when he is on the road to Damascus? Jesus suddenly appears to him and Jesus cleanses his conscience and he goes from being the number one persecutor of all things Jesus, to being the number one proclaimer of all things Jesus. He now had a higher standard and his conscience attached to that higher standard.
We are just looking at Some Anatomy of our Conscience. We’ve first seen that The Holy Spirit is Not our Conscience. Secondly, Our Conscience Attaches to the Highest Standard it Knows. Thirdly, this comes out of number two, Our Conscience Needs to be Calibrated to God’s Standards. Our conscience needs to be educated, it needs to be retrained, which is exactly what happened to the Apostle Paul.
Now, I can give you a number of illustrations of this, I want to share a few with you. The first one I want to share would be the Apostle Peter, the example of Peter. Now, remember, Peter was raised a Jew, right? He grew up practicing the strict dietary rules of the Old Testament economy. He always ate the foods he was supposed to eat and he didn’t eat other foods. He was raised believing that a Gentile was an unclean person…and yet Peter had to have his conscience recalibrated to God’s standards. He had to be retrained.
Turn to Acts, chapter 10, I want to just show you a little bit of how this happened in his life, Acts, chapter 10. We’re going to just skip our way through the chapter. I want you to notice verse 9. It says that “Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray and he became hungry wanting something to eat, but while people were preparing it, he fell into a trance and he saw the heavens opened up and something like a giant sheet, a great sheet, descending, being let down by its four corners upon the earth. In it were all kinds of animals and reptiles and birds of the air,” foods that in the Old Testament economy had been forbidden to be eaten. “There came a voice out of heaven,” verse 13, “that said to him, ‘Rise Peter, kill and eat.’ But, Peter said, ‘By no means, Lord,” my conscience won’t let me do that, “for I’ve never eaten anything that is common or unclean.”
These were the foods that were forbidden in the Old Testament economy. Notice then the voice came to him a second time, “What God has made clean do not call common.” Notice it says there in verse 16 that this happened three times, because Peter was struggling with recalibrating his conscience.
Now, just remember, part of what is going on here is that for years the church was made up of only Jews, only Jews. In chapter 8 of Acts the church adds the Samaritans into it, which were the semi-half Jews. In chapter 10, what is about to happen, under the story of Cornelius here, is that God is going to add a Gentile into the church for the very first time.
Look down at verse 19, “While Peter was pondering this vision,” I mean, how am I going to process all of this? “The Spirit said to him, look there are three men who are looking for you.” These are three men who’ve come from Cornelius, the Gentile. “Rise and go down and accompany them without hesitation for I have sent them.” So, Peter goes down to the men. He doesn’t really know what’s going on, but he says, “I am the one you are looking for. What is the reason for your coming?” In verse 22 they say, “Cornelius, a centurion, is a Gentile, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well-spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.”
Then, drop down to verse 34. He goes to the house and there are Gentiles there, there is food there, Gentile food. And in verse 34, “Peter opens up his mouth and says, I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.”
Go down to verse 44. So, he is beginning to share the gospel message with them, verse 44, “While Peter was still saying these things the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word and the believers from among the circumcised, who had come with Peter, were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles.” Verse 47, so then the response is, “Could anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we the Jews have? So, he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain in that Gentile home for a number of days.” God is doing some recalibrating with Peter’s conscience through all this.
You’ll notice what happens in chapter 11, verse 2, “When Peter then came back to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him saying, ‘You went to uncircumcised men Gentiles and you ate their food?’” Are you kidding me? How can that be? “Peter began and explained to them in order all the events in the order that they happened.” Notice the ultimate outcome of all this is: the conclusion, chapter 11, verse 17, “If then God gave the same gift to them as He gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way? So, when they heard all these things, the whole story, they fell silent and they glorified God saying, then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” Peter had to have his conscience recalibrated to God’s new standards.
You see that in the life of Peter, it is easy to see it also in the life of Paul. Think about Paul, just think about Paul. Philippians 3 tells us he was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was a zealous Pharisee. He had—we learn in the book of Acts—been educated by Gamaliel. He was the top trainer of the Pharisees.
So, what does that mean for Paul when he was living as Saul? He was trained—think about this—literally in multiple hundreds of Pharisaical rules. Then he comes to know Jesus, and there had to have been a major recalibration that had to happen in Paul’s life. Our Conscience Needs to be Calibrated to God’s Standards.
We see that in example Paul, and I want to share with you a little bit of an example in my own life of how I had to go through some recalibration. I’m going to tell you a little bit of a story about my conscience at the time when I was just barely growing as a Christian. Now, don’t laugh at this because this is the way I was taught. I was taught that when you came into the church “sanctuary” that you were not to laugh in the “sanctuary.” You were not to raise your voice in [Bruce whispers with a holy whisper] “the sanctuary.” So, my conscience, when I came into the “sanctuary” was, well, you don’t want to laugh; you don’t want to raise your voice; because, you know, that’s where God resided in a special way in [Bruce whispers again with a holy whisper] the “sanctuary.“
Now, you know we don’t call this [Sunday gathering room] the sanctuary, we call this a worship center. And, I can still remember my conscience, when God began to recalibrate it, and I began to grow and I began to learn things and I began to find out that God does not reside in some building’s “sanctuary.” In fact, I learned that God takes up residence inside of a believer. I learned from Scripture that we are His temple, His sanctuary…that the Holy Spirit dwells inside of us as it says in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 19. My conscience needed to be calibrated to God’s standards.
I’ll give you another illustration of this. When I first really started to grow spiritually—and this is just a little bit of an analogy—I kind of looked around in my life and I saw some big boulder issues that I knew I would have to address before the Lord. I was thinking at the time—as the Lord and I worked through these big boulder issues in my life—when all that’s done, I will have arrived spiritually.
But as we worked our way through some of those big boulder issues, after the big boulders were out of the way, I noticed there were a number of small boulders there. Then, I’m thinking, oh my gosh, we’ve got to work through some small boulder issues. We’ve got to understand Scripture better. Then, as some of those were beginning to disappear, then I saw a lot of sizable rocks everywhere. See, that is the picture: we need to always be learning; we need to always be growing. It never ends. We never come to the end of having our conscience needing to be calibrated to God’s standards. This is all part of the process of recalibrating, it’s what we call growing spiritually, developing spiritually.
Now, I want to share with you a verse out of the Book of Acts, where Paul says in chapter 24, verse 16, he says, “I always,” always, no matter where I am in my spiritual growth, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” I always take pains to do that. If you have a New American Standard Bible it says, “I do my best to maintain a clear conscience.” The Phillips translation says, “I do my utmost to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” The verb in the original language is askeo, a-s-k-e-o. It means to practice something, to exercise, to drill, to engage in this kind of action. What he is basically saying in this verse is: I am consistently dedicated to calibrating my conscience and keeping it clear.
So, we are just trying to understand some of The Anatomy of our Conscience. We’ve seen The Holy Spirit is Not our Conscience; Our Conscience attaches to the Highest Standard it Knows; Our Conscience Needs to be Calibrated. Fourth, we want to see, as we look at this anatomy, is that Our Conscience is Not Infallible. Our conscience can be ignored; our conscience can be hardened; our conscience can be seared; and our conscience can be overly sensitive. It can be overly sensitive.
Take, for example, the example of Chuck. Chuck was walking down a sidewalk when he saw a broken bottle on the sidewalk. He walked past it, but he felt a pang of conscience. What if someone comes along and falls and cuts themselves? he was thinking. Then, it would be my fault because I saw it and I didn’t pick it up. He walked on a little farther. Then, he stopped and he struggled with his conscience, walked on a little farther, but finally gave in and came back and picked up the bottle.
So, was there anything wrong with picking up the bottle? No. Was it a thoughtful act? Yes. But here is the deal: Chuck experienced this predicament dozens of times a day. He might come across nails, or a piece of wood, or a slick spot on the floor, and countless other minor things that would distract and trouble his conscience.
So, what was happening is, his conscientiousness was actually paralyzing him because he thought he had to correct every problem that he might come across, or he would suffer guilt. Chuck needed his conscience to be recalibrated, to be recalibrated.
So, again, we’ve seen that The Holy Spirit is Not our Conscience; Our Conscience Attaches to the Highest Standard it Knows; Our Conscience Needs to be Calibrated; and Our Conscience is Not Infallible. Lastly, we want to see that Our Conscience can have a Tri-focal Orientation, a tri-focal orientation.
What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that our conscience can have a Now Focus, where it’s focused on what we are doing or saying currently. It can have a Past Focus, where it’s focused on what we have done or said in the past, it’s looking backward. Then, our conscience can have a Forward Focus, where it is focused on what we should do or say as we contemplate the future and future circumstances that might come upon us. So, it has this Tri-Focus Orientation.
Particularly I want to mention something with a Past Focus, where we are focusing on something we’ve done or said in the past, where we are looking backward. If there is something going on with our conscience where it is looking backward, we should be careful to review that. It may be there is something that God desires for us to go back and make right.
Here is what we’ve been doing, we’ve been looking at Some Anatomy of our Conscience. I want to, in the last few minutes we have together, I want to look at Some Conditions of Conscience that are described in Scripture, some conditions of conscience.
The first one we want to see is, Scripture talks about a Clear Conscience. 2 Timothy 1:3, Paul says, “I thank God, whom I serve, with a clear conscience,” a clear conscience. Then, we’ve seen that Acts 24:16, “I take pains to have a clear conscience.” Another passage that we can see is Hebrews 13:18—which has become one of my new favorite verses: “Pray for us that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.”
Now, sometimes some synonyms are used that are describing the same condition of a conscience, and that would be a Good Conscience. Paul speaks in Acts 23:1 of living life with a good conscience. Also in 1 Timothy 1:5, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith,”
Another passage is verse 19. It talks about, “Holding faith and a good conscience and by rejecting this,” seeking to have good conscience, “some have made shipwreck of their faith.” Some people have undergone a spiritual pratfall if you will, there’s been some spiritual catastrophe that has happened in their life. I think, even though you have different terms, but I believe it is essentially talking about the same thing: a good and clear conscience are the same thing.
We are looking at some of the Conditions of Conscience that are mentioned in Scripture. The second one I want to look at is an Evil Conscience, a contaminated conscience. We have a passage in Hebrews 10, verse 22 and I want you to realize these words are written to believers, you can go back and look at the context. He says, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.” What does it mean to have an evil conscience? Well, we have an evil conscience when we are aware of sin but we’re not seeking cleansing from that sin.
Here is what is interesting about having an evil conscience: if one tolerates that evil, that contamination, in our conscience long enough—if we do that consistently enough, if we’re doing what we know we shouldn’t do—the ultimate long-term outcome of that is we become like the spiritual leaders of the nation of Judah. If we harbor an evil conscience long enough, we become like the spiritual leaders of the nation of Judah. They are described in Isaiah, chapter 5, verses 20 and 21, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes.” When we harbor an evil conscience, God will bring discipline into our life.
Now, there is a third condition that we want to just mention that is in Scripture regarding our conscience, and that would be a Weak Conscience, a weak conscience. A weak conscience is an undeveloped, or less developed, conscience. We’re not going to talk about it right now because next time that’s what we’re really going to delve into, looking at the idea of a Weak Conscience.
Then, there is a fourth condition that we want to see that is mentioned in 1 Timothy, chapter 4, and verse 2, and that is a Seared Conscience. What does that mean, a seared conscience? Well, it seems to be a picture of having part of our conscience cauterized, developing some scar tissue in part of our conscience. Not necessarily our whole conscience, but a dimension of our conscience, where we have been rationalizing frequently enough that we deaden an area of our conscience. In other words, there’s spiritual numbness that comes to our conscience.
Christopher Ash says this, “The suppression of conscience has a narcotic effect upon morality. Our moral antennae go to sleep.” What happens is, the scar tissue builds up over time. We can see this illustrated in New Testament times with the person of Judas. You remember that Judas was the guy who was taking care of the money box of the disciples. While we don’t have this described for us, you know this must have been the way that it worked. The first time Judas put his hand into that money box and took out some of the money, he had to have had a twinge of conscience about it. But, then he did it a second time, and then a third time. Each time he was turning down the volume of his conscience. Ultimately, he became seared in his conscience in that arena. We know the outcome of all that was what?—an incredible spiritual shipwreck that he had.
It doesn’t just happen in New Testament times; it also happens in our time. Recently, some news came out that was shocking. Some news about a key spiritual leader in our country, a gentleman who was about my age. He pastored at several churches over the years, but he was recently the main teacher at a very large church. He was also a professor and a dean at a major evangelical seminary.
He is an individual who had written dozens of Christian books on theology and the Bible. He was an individual who was serving on several significant Christian organizational boards. He was an individual who had been married for four decades. Then, it came out that he had had an inappropriate relationship—whatever that fully means—with a woman in her twenties, for at least five years.
Now, I don’t know the details, but I can guarantee you that when he was first having some interaction with this woman, there was an early twinge in his conscience. And each time there was whatever level of interaction there was, he was turning down the volume on his conscience. And eventually, that led to having a seared conscience about this, where he was rationalizing.
You know, you do that frequently enough, it ultimately leads to a spiritual shipwreck and you end up turning into a Pinocchio. You ignore long enough; you rationalize long enough; you turn the volume down long enough; and you become an…[Bruce hesitates with the audience expectation the next word will be…’ass’]…you become a donkey! Our conscience is one of the greatest spiritual allies we can have if…if…if…if we heed it.
I’ve shared this before, but I have several different notes on my credenza. One of them reads this way, “I’m always one step away from stupid.” I need to remember that.
Now, we have more to come in this series. I want to invite you back for the next two. We are going to cover a lot more ground. As we close, I want to close with Two Closing Thoughts. These are pretty important. Closing thought number one is, May Each of us be Like Paul, may each of us guard our hearts like Paul. As Paul says in Acts 24:16, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” I’m always doing my best. I’m not a perfect person but I’m always doing my utmost to have a clear conscience toward God and man. May each of us be like Paul.
Secondly, the second closing thought, May We All Consistently Practice the Prayer of Hebrews 13:18 for Ourselves and for Each Other. “Pray for us that we may have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.” May we consistently practice that prayer for ourselves and for each other.
Let’s pray together. Father, we just thank You so much again for Your Word. It excites me. It is alive and powerful. It instructs us in the way that we should go. Father, may we be men and women who are like Paul, where we are guarding our heart, always doing our utmost to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. And may we all consistently practice that prayer where we are praying to have a clear conscience; desiring to act honorably in all things; for His honor and for His glory, and we pray in His name. Amen.
Questions for Reflection
The Bible and Your Conscience
Message 2 – Some Anatomy of our Conscience
- Bruce mentioned at the beginning of his message the classic movie Pinocchio (first released in 1940, last released in 1992). Assuming you watched the movie somewhere along the line, how much did you grasp about the imagery of “turning into a donkey” by not letting your conscience be your guide?
2. Share a time when your conscience may have made you feel uneasy about something you said or did. How did you handle the situation?
3. Why is it not wise to solely rely on our conscience to guide us in life?
4. Do any examples come to mind of how you once thought something was was acceptable before the Lord, but the Bible gave you
additional insight?
How has your growth in understanding Scripture calibrated your conscience?
5. What are some practical ways we can “take pains to have” (ESV); “do our best to maintain” (NASB) a clear conscience?
6. Christopher Ash was quoted as saying, “The suppression of conscience has a narcotic effect upon morality. Our moral antennae go to
sleep.” Expand on what you think he meant by that.
7. Spend some time praying for one another to have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things (Hebrews 13:18)