Perhaps when you were a small child, your mother told you not to take a cookie from the cookie jar, but you couldn’t resist the smell of those freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and you took one. Then there was that little voice inside that told you you’d done wrong.
Perhaps it may have been when you crossed the border and told the customs official you had nothing to declare. You knew you’d hidden a little parcel under the front seat so it wouldn’t be seen. Although you got through without being caught, a voice inside told you that you had done wrong.
Conscience! We’ve all experienced that troublesome voice inside us, At times it screams at us and we wish it would be silent but its voice speaks to us. Many people view the conscience as a fun-killing intrusion and would like relief from it.
John Calvin said, “The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.” And the conscience seems to work at the most inopportune times. It can rob us of rest, disrupt our plans and cause inner turmoil but a healthy conscience is a good friend.
A TROUBLED CONSCIENCE AFFECTS YOUR ABILITY TO COPE
When your conscience gets going, it can hassle you and you can’t get away from it. It speaks when you’re driving your car, watching TV and it really gets going at night when you’re trying to go to sleep.
A troubled conscience robs you of peace of mind and can make you an emotional wreck.
A bad conscience affects your relationships. When your conscience speaks, there are some folk you just don’t want to face.
Most seriously, a troubled conscience affects your relationship with God. It keeps some people from attending church, stops other people from praying and keeps others from
reading the Bible.
The Bible talks about the conscience of a man and teaches how the conscience works. It also gives examples about how a person can be troubled by his conscience.
DAVID’S CONSCIENCE
Do you remember the story of David? He had been anointed to be the next king but Saul, who was still king, was jealous of David. He tried to take his life. Once, David and a few friends were inside a large cave. Without knowing that David was deep inside the cave, Saul also entered the cave where he and his men slept.
David was mischievous. He quietly slipped up to Saul and cut the corner of his robe off while Saul slept. Then he slipped out of the cave and escaped, but his conscience was working. He knew he shouldn’t have cut the king’s robe. True, Saul was trying to kill David but Saul was still the rightful king. David’s turn to be king would come later. David couldn’t shake the little voice inside him. He’d done wrong and he knew it.
Afterward, David was conscience stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe. He said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, or lift my hand against him; for he is the anointed of the Lord. (1 Samuel 24:5 6).
David, conscience stricken, called out to Saul across the valley and asked Saul to forgive him.
We can identify with David. We’ve all heard that little voice speaking to us.
WHAT IS CONSCIENCE?
There’s a lot of misunderstanding about conscience. People aren’t sure how it works or whether it’s reliable.
The Bible teaches that everyone has a conscience. Paul spoke of every man’s conscience (2 Corinthians 4:2). It’s sometimes called an inner voice and sometimes it’s confused with the voice of the Holy Spirit.
The root meaning of the word conscience comes from two words, “together with” or “to line up together.”
A few years ago, an official in charge of calibrating the compasses on ocean-going ships, asked me to go with him one night to work on a large ship. He directed the ship out into the middle of the harbor and then had the ship go around in circles. There were lights on the buildings on shore that were markers. He lined up a series of lights so they were in a straight line and the compasses were adjusted accordingly.
That’s how conscience works. Conscience is like a compass. It tells us if we’re lined up correctly with the markers. One marker is God’s law and God’s standard. The other marker is our behavior, our thought life, our attitude and motives.
Two markers: first, what God wants and expects and second, what we are and what we do. When they don’t line up, that little voice inside screams out. When the two markers are out of synch, the conscience goes to work. Conscience tries to line up our behavior with the biblical standard.
YOUR CONSCIENCE IS VERY USEFUL
Conscience works before we do something wrong. It tries to keep us from doing wrong and prompts us to do right. Conscience works before we do wrong to protect us.
Conscience works while we’re doing wrong. This is when conscience is weakest but it’s still there and lessens your enjoyment. Have you ever gone some place you shouldn’t? Perhaps you didn’t have the strength to resist the temptation but all the time you were there, your conscience was working so that you felt uncomfortable and really didn’t enjoy yourself.
Conscience works after we’ve done wrong. This is when your conscience speaks the loudest. It says, “guilty, guilty” and “you really blew it this time, you really blew it this time.”
Your conscience is really useful. It’s an internal warning system to protect you from doing wrong and keep you from sin. It’s a way of showing you your need of salvation and forgiveness. Your conscience should be your greatest friend.
YOUR CONSCIENCE IS NOT ALWAYS ACCURATE
You can’t always trust your conscience; it isn’t always trustworthy. Just because your conscience doesn’t bother you, doesn’t mean you’re living the way God wants and just because your conscience bothers you, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done wrong.
Your conscience is the voice that speaks when two things don’t line up: God’s standard and your behavior. For conscience to be accurate, the marker’s have to be accurate. If my understanding of God’s word and standard isn’t correct, then one marker is out of kilter and my conscience won’t be accurate.
This is the problem with many people today. We live in a society where there is little knowledge of God’s word. People don’t know the Bible and what God expects. As a result, people do things that are clearly morally wrong and say, “My conscience doesn’t bother me.”
Other people have deadened or seared their consciences. When a person persists in doing what is wrong, eventually he can become numb or deaf to that inner voice. Some are so caught in the habits of sin, they don’t see the wrongness of their behavior any more.
Still others have perverted their consciences, trying to rationalize and reason with the conscience. They try to justify their behavior. 1 Timothy 4:2 talks about those whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.
So you can’t always rely on conscience as an accurate guide.
Sometimes people feel guilty unnecessarily and it comes from a faulty understanding of God’s word. Conscience can be shaped more by our cultural upbringing than the Bible.
HOW TO HAVE A CLEAR CONSCIENCE
1. Let God bring your conscience alive.
While Paul was preaching in Ephesus, a wealthy, respectable merchant, a lady named Lydia, heard him and the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. (Acts 1614). The word heart is frequently used interchangeably with the word conscience in the Bible. The Lord opened her conscience to what Paul was saying. Paul was putting one of the markers in place.
That’s the first step. Let the Lord open your heart and bring your conscience to life, setting his marker in place.
2. Experience God’s forgiveness.
. . .let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews10:22).
This verse talks about having a guilty conscience. When we do something wrong and the markers are accurately in place, conscience tells us that things aren’t right.
How do we get rid of that guilty conscience? Hebrews 10:22 talks about having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. This is Bible language speaking of the old system of sacrifices and ultimately about what Jesus did on the cross. Faith in Jesus Christ brings cleansing from a guilty conscience. Faith in Jesus Christ brings forgiveness from sin and pardon from guilt. It clears the conscience.
When that little voice speaks to you, telling you of your past wrongs, there’s good news: you can be free from that guilt. Jesus Christ can forgive and set you free. It’s not a question of forgiving yourself, it’s understanding and experiencing God’s forgiveness.
3. Do what you can to set matters right.
When you wrong someone, go and ask for forgiveness. If you’ve robbed someone, go and pay them back. If you’ve smuggled something across the border, go back and own up to it.
This is what King David did. He went to Saul and asked forgiveness. This is what Zacchaeus did. He paid back four fold those he had robbed. Your conscience won’t stop bothering you until you do what you can to set things right!
4. Draw near to God with complete confidence.
Notice Hebrews 10:22 again. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
We are to come close to God with a sincere heart in full assurance. When you come to God, be sincere.
When you have faith in Jesus, you can come with confidence because Jesus says, Neither do I condemn you.
John wrote the same thing. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:19 20). John said, we can set our hearts at rest. In other words, our consciences do not have to bother us because God is greater and he has granted forgiveness.
5. Make your conscience accurate by reading God’s word.
David said, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (Psalm 119:11). David was saying he’d trained his conscience by God’s word.
Read the Bible often. Study what it means and it will move the marker into place. Your conscience will become more accurate and you’ll be able to rely on it as an internal guidance system. You won’t be bothered by unnecessary guilt. As a Christian you’ll be made aware of wrong and will quickly come to your Lord for forgiveness.
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