The Habit of a Good Conscience
The Habit of a Good Conscience
Having a good conscience. 1 Peter 3:16
We hear it said that conscience is the voice of God, but logically that is easily proved to be absurd. Paul said—“I verily thought within myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth”; Paul was obeying his conscience when he hated Jesus Christ and put His followers to death; and our Lord said that “whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” If conscience were the voice of God it would be the most contradictory voice human ears ever listened to. Conscience is the eye of the soul; and how it records depends entirely upon the light thrown upon God. The God Whom Saul of Tarsus knew had the light of Judaism upon Him, and Paul’s conscience recording in that light brought him to the conclusion that he should hate Jesus and persecute His followers. Immediately the white light of our Lord was thrown upon God, Saul’s conscience recorded differently—“and he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” Saul had not another conscience, but it recorded differently, and the result was a tremendous disturbance in his life. Conscience is the faculty of the spirit that fits itself on to the highest a man knows, whether he be an agnostic or a Christian; every man has a conscience, although every man does not know God.
1. The Sensitive Conscience
And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men. (Acts 24:16)
If I am in the habit of steadily and persistently facing myself with God, my conscience will always introduce God’s perfect law to me; the question then is will I do what my conscience makes me understand clearly I should do? When conscience has been enlightened by the Son of God being formed in me, I have to make an effort to keep my conscience so sensitive that I obey that which I perceive to be God’s will. I have to be so keen in the scent of the Lord, so sensitive to the tiniest touch of His Spirit, that I know what I should do. If I keep my soul inwardly open to God, then when I come in contact with the affairs of life outside, I know immediately what I should do; if I do not, I am to blame. I should be living in such perfect sensitiveness to God, in such perfect sympathy with His Son that in every circumstance I am in, the spirit of my mind is renewed, and I prove, i.e. make out, what is God’s will, the thing that is good, and acceptable, and perfect.†
We avoid forming a sensitive conscience when we say—“Oh well, God cannot expect me to do this thing, He has not told me to do it.” How do we expect God to tell us? The word is “not in heaven . . . neither is it beyond the sea . . . but the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it” (Deuteronomy 30:12-14). If we are Christians that is where the word of God is—in our hearts.
In the engineering of our circumstances, God gives us opportunities to form a sensitive conscience, and in this way He educates us down to the scruple. When we come to a crisis it is easy to get direction, but it is a different matter to live in such perfect oneness with God that in the ordinary occurrences of life we always do the right thing. Is my conscience so sensitive that it needs neither terrible crime nor sublime holiness to awaken it, but the ordinary occurrences of life will awaken it? “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.” He does not come with a voice of thunder, but with a voice so gentle that it is easy to ignore it. The one thing that keeps the conscience sensitive is the continual habit of seeing that I am open to God within. Whenever there is debate, quit. “Why shouldn’t I do this?” You are on the wrong track. When conscience speaks there must be no debate whatever. In a crisis human nature is put on the strain, and we usually know what to do; but the sensitive conscience of the Christian is realised in the ordinary things of life, the humdrum things. We are apt to think of conscience only in connection with something outrageous. The sensitiveness of conscience is maintained by the habit of always being open towards God. At the peril of your soul you allow one thing to obscure your inner communion with God. Drop it, whatever it is, and see that you keep your inner vision clear.
2. The Seared Conscience
Having their conscience seared with a hot iron. (1 Timothy 4:2)
The conscience referred to here has been damaged by some terrific iron cramp. Conscience is the eye of the soul recording what it looks at, but if what Ruskin calls “the innocence of the eye” is lost, then the recording of conscience may be distorted. If I continually twist the organ of my soul’s recording, it will become perverted. If I do a wrong thing often enough, I cease to realise the wrong in it. A bad man can be perfectly happy in his badness. That is what a seared conscience means.
Our critical faculties are given us for the purpose of self-examination, and the way to examine ourselves under the control of the Spirit of God is to ask ourselves—“Am I less sensitive than I used to be to the indications of God’s will, less sensitive regarding purity, uprightness, goodness, honesty and truth?” If I realise that I am, I may be perfectly certain that something I have done (not something done to me) has seared my conscience. It has given me, so to speak, a bloodshot eye of the soul and I cannot see aright.
Conscience may be seared by means of a desperate crime as in the case of Herod. Herod ordered the voice of God to be silent in his life (see Mark 6:16-28†), and when Jesus Christ stood before him we read that “He answered him nothing” (Luke 23:8-9).
The human eye may be damaged by gazing too much on intense whiteness, as in the case of snow blindness when men remain blind for months. And conscience may be damaged by tampering with the occult side of things, giving too much time to speculation; then when we turn to human life we are as blind as bats. It may be all right for angels to spend their time in visions and meditation, but if I am a Christian I find God in the ordinary occurrences of my life. The special times of prayer are of a different order. If I sequester myself and press my mind on one line of things and forget my relation to human life, when I do turn to human affairs I am morally blind. Am I trying to embrace a sensation of God spiritually for myself? When God has saved and sanctified us there is a danger that we are unwilling to let the vision fade; we refuse to take up our ordinary work, and soon we will be completely at a loss because we have hugged an experience to our souls instead of maintaining a right relationship to God Who gave us the experience.
My mortal flesh does not come in contact with God, it comes in contact with other mortal flesh, with earthly things, and I have to manifest the Son of God there by putting on the new man† in connection with all these things. Am I doing it? Have I formed the habit of keeping my conscience sensitive to God on the inside and equally sensitive to man on the outside by always working out what God works in? God engineers our circumstances and He brings across our paths some extraordinary people, viz., embodiments of ourselves in so many forms, and it is part of the humour of the situation that we recognise ourselves. Now, God says, exhibit the attitude to them that I showed to you. This is the one way of keeping a conscience void of offence toward God and man.
3. The Saintly Conscience
Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. (Hebrews 10:22)
Can God readjust a seared conscience and make it sensitive again? He can, and it is done by the vicarious Atonement of our Lord. “How much more shall the blood of Christ . . . purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:14). When the Holy Spirit comes into me, my whole nature is in a desperate turmoil because immediately a man sees Jesus and understands Who He is, that instant he is criticised and self-condemned. If the Holy Spirit is obeyed He will make the Atonement of the Lord efficacious in me so that the blood of Christ cleanses my conscience from dead works and I become readjusted to God. The experimental element that works this transforming mystery of the Atonement becoming my vital life is repentance wrought in me by the Holy Spirit. The deepest repentance is not in the sinner, but in the saint. Repentance means not only sorrow for sin, it involves the possession of a new disposition that will never do the thing again. The only truly repentant man is the holy man. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” To admit instead of confess is to trample the blood of the Son of God under foot, but immediately we allow the Holy Spirit to give us the gift of repentance, the shed blood of Christ will purge our conscience from dead works and send us into heart-spending service for God with a passionate devotion.
If I allow the saintly conscience to have way in me it will mean that I keep my own life steadfastly open towards God and keep steadfastly related to Him on the line of intercessory prayer for others. The clearing house for a guilty conscience is that by our intercession Jesus repairs the damage done to other lives, and the consolation to our conscience is amazing. The saintly conscience means that I maintain an open scrutiny before God, and that I carry out the sensitiveness gained there all through my life.