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Podcast
Conscience
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Hi, I'm Dave DeWitt, and today I'd like to talk a bit about the nature of our conscience.
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First Timothy 1.5 says the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience,
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and a sincere faith.
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The word conscience occurs 28 times in the numeric standard Bible New Testament.
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It's only used once in the Old Testament of 1 Samuel 24, verse 5, where David's conscience
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bothered him after he cut off the edge of Saul's robe in the cave of En Gedi.
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But that word for conscience is the word for heart.
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There's a few other places where the Hebrew word for heart could probably be translated
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conscience, but it's not usually the case.
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The bottom line is, in the Bible, the nature of our conscience is basically a New Testament
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concept.
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Definitions of conscience.
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I think probably there's a biblical one that's good in Hebrews 13.8 that says conscience
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is desiring to conduct ourselves honorably in all things.
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I think I can summarize the definitions by saying conscience is our mental moral compass
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that gives us an understanding of what's right and wrong.
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Now let's talk about the nature of the conscience.
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Our conscience will inevitably follow our understanding of right and wrong.
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If our understanding of right and wrong changes, our conscience changes.
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We can arbitrarily choose to not follow what we understand to be right, but we cannot arbitrarily
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choose to change what we understand to be right.
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Conscience is not a choice, it's a product of our understanding.
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We can choose to not follow it, but we cannot choose to not have it.
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Our conscience and our faith are both tied to our understanding.
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Faith is a decision to trust what we understand to be true.
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Conscience is a mental concept of what we understand to be right.
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Both are tied to our understanding, and both can change.
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The difference is faith is inevitably tied to what we understand to be true.
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Conscience is not.
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Conscience is like a compass that always points north.
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It's a moral compass that points to what's right.
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But unlike faith, it does not dictate our actions.
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Our conscience can understand a certain action to be right, but that does not mean we'll
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follow that action.
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Let's talk about the origin of our conscience.
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Where did our conscience come from?
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Well, the answer is we're born with it, actually conceived with it.
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Our conscience is not something that came from our religion or our teachers or our society.
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These may all strengthen or shape or warp our conscience, weaken it, strengthen it,
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but they didn't give it to us in the first place.
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Our parents passed it along to us as part of our genetic makeup.
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It's hardwired into our brain, and we cannot escape it.
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Scientists at Oxford University have located an aspect of the human brain that seems to
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give us our conscience, and interestingly, they have established that animals don't have it.
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To look into which part of the brain actually controls our superior decision-making, scientists
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have carried out MRI scans on both humans and monkeys, and they found one area of the
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cortex that's not equivalent in monkeys, an area called the lateral frontal pole prefrontal
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cortex, if I'm saying all that right.
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So it's something that's not found in animals, it's found in all humans.
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Now let's talk about the origin of the conscience originally.
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Individually, we receive a conscience from our parents, but where did the human conscience originate?
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Answer, Adam and Eve.
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It appears that when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
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God created or activated something in the human brain that gave us a conscience.
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Here's what happened, Genesis 2, 16 and 17.
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The Lord commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but
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from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.
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Then Genesis 3, 6 and 7, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was
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a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from
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its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
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Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew they were naked, and they sewed
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fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
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And then in Genesis 3, 22, then the Lord said, Behold, the man has become like one of us,
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knowing good and evil.
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Did Adam and Eve have a conscience originally?
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Answer, no, they did not.
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They only knew obedience and disobedience, not right and wrong.
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But then they disobeyed and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and notice
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that what they received from the tree was the concept of good and its contrast, evil,
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whereas before the only moral concept they knew was obedience and its contrast, disobedience.
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I've read more than one preacher comment on this where they said before the fall, Adam
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and Eve knew good but not evil.
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That's impossible.
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The concept of good assumes the contrast to it is evil.
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The eating of the fruit of the garden was presented to Adam and Eve with a restriction.
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He knew a violation was wrong, but it was presented to him the same way you give a command
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to your dog.
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He knows obedience and disobedience without any concept of good and evil.
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The knowledge of good and evil also meant that Adam and Eve and their descendants like
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you and I are not only judged for specific acts of obedience versus disobedience, but
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for the knowledge of good and evil itself.
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For example, if we simply lived according to the obedience-disobedience, we might say,
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Well, the Bible does not tell me I can't do a certain thing, so it's okay for me to do
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that.
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But since we have a conscience, we also have to ask, is doing that thing right or wrong?
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For example, the Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath.
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That's an obedience-disobedience question.
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Jesus asked them, Is it good to do good or evil on the Sabbath?
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That's a good-evil question, which they'll be judged for because they have a conscience.
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Jesus said, You've heard that it was said you should not commit adultery.
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That's an obedience-disobedience.
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But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed
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adultery in his heart.
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That's a good-evil question, which will be judged for because we have a conscience.
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All of us from the fall of Adam and Eve on will be judged for an intermental moral good
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and evil, which comes from our conscience.
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Obedience was never sufficient.
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Even when Israel was given an obedience-disobedience standard of the Mosaic law, God held them
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to a conscience-based standard, cease to do evil, learn to do good, Isaiah chapter 1.
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There's a default position of the conscience.
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In Romans 1, 19 and 20, Paul wrote, Because that which is known about God is evident within
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them, for God made it evident to them.
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For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature
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have been clearly seen being understood through what's been made, so they're without excuse.
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He went on to say in Romans 2, 14 and 15, For when Gentiles who do not have the law
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do instinctively the things of the law, these not having the law are a lot of themselves,
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in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing
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witness and their thoughts alternatively accusing or else defending them.
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The human conscience understands actual right and wrong to the extent that people who have
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never heard the Bible have the divine nature of God in the form of a conscience.
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It functions as an inter-mental accuser when they're wrong and a defender when they're right.
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Conscience is like an old-style screen door with a spring on it.
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Left to itself, it swings shut in the direction of the divine nature of God.
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For example, if someone has never heard of the Ten Commandments, their conscience left
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to itself will be alternatively accusing them when they break one of them or else defend
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them when they're keeping them.
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This is evidenced by the fact that all societies of our world throughout history have developed
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a moral code with similarities that are far greater than the differences from one another.
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Also, no one can keep their own belief system.
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Progressives would like you to believe that your morality is only imposed on you from
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your social structures, but that's not so.
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If you honestly come up with your own set of moral principles, say your own Ten Commandments,
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you can't keep them.
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Where does that come from?
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Where did you get the idea of a morality you can't keep?
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Animals can keep their standards just fine.
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Why can't you?
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That's your conscience.
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I want to talk about rejecting conscience, because the conscience can be rejected, Paul
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says, branded or defiled.
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We've established that all humans inherited a conscience from Adam and Eve, and that conscience
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knows good and evil.
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The problem is we have also inherited a sin nature by which our conscience can have its
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understanding weakened, but it can go further than that.
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Conscience can also be perverted to where, at a certain point, it becomes what Paul called
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rejected, branded or defiled, although the conscience never goes away.
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Either we can weaken it to the point where it does not give us a signal like a weak battery
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or we can become detached from it.
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Titus 1.15, to the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving
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nothing is pure.
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Both their mind and their conscience are defiled.
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First Timothy 1.19 and 20, keeping faith in a good conscience which some have rejected
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and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.
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Among these are Ammonas and Alexander, who I've handed over to Satan, so they will be
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taught not to blaspheme.
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In First Timothy 4, 1 and 2, but the Spirit especially says in the latter times some will
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fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons
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by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared or branded in their own conscience as with
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a branding iron.
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A person can only violate their moral understanding so long.
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At a certain point, their understanding, right and wrong itself changes.
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Historically when that happens, God gave them over to the lust of their hearts, to impurities,
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to degrading passions in Romans 1.
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For example, when God destroyed the people at the time of Noah's flood, we read in Genesis
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6.5, then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every
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intent of the thought of his heart, and the word heart is the same word that can be translated
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conscience, every intent of the thought of his heart or conscience was only evil continually.
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At a certain point, God gives people over to a perverted conscience that's no longer
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able to provide a path back to what's right.
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So we can have a Genghis Khan raping and pillaging his way throughout the East because
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every intent of the thought of his heart is only evil continually.
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The individual nature of the conscience.
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Let's go back to Romans 2 to notice something else about Paul's description of the conscience.
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Gentiles, who do not have the law, do instinctively the things of the law.
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These not having the law are a lot of themselves, their conscience bearing witness.
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The conscience is an individual morality.
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We will not feel guilty if we break laws we don't believe are right, but the conscience
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is an individual moral compass that is not established by Congress, nor can it be policed
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by corporate leaders.
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The last thing I'd like to look at is the conscience and our personal peace.
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Violating our conscience results in a loss of peace and a path towards depression.
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Back to 1 Timothy 24 verse 5, came about the afterword that David's conscience bothered
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him because he had cut off the edge of Saul's robe.
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If we violate our conscience, it'll bother us.
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If we continue to do that, it'll take away our personal peace of mind, and over a period
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of time, it can lead to conditions like depression.
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Paul was able to maintain peace under persecution because he functioned with a good conscience.
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He said things like, Acts 23 1, I've lived my life in a perfectly good conscience before
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God up to this day, Acts 24 16, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience
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before God and before men, Romans 9 1.
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My conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit.
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Paul was making the point that he had no inner mental anxiety over what he'd done because
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he acted consistent with his conscience.
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Violating our conscience will sacrifice our inner peace, replacing it with anxiety, which
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if it continues will lead to depression.
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Conversely, living consistently with a good conscience leads to rejoicing.
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David drove it Psalm 19 verse 8, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
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Again, that's the word that can be translated conscience.
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Psalm 119, 165, those who love your law have great peace and nothing causes them to stumble.
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So as a conclusion, the conscience is that part of the human brain not found in animals,
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which understands good and evil.
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It was initiated by Adam and Eve, eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and
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then passing it on to all of us.
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We come out of the womb with an understanding of good and evil, but we also come out of
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the womb with a sin nature.
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So the conscience can be strengthened, weakened, or rejected completely.
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And we're held responsible not just for what we do, but what we do about our conscience.
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The main application is we need to keep strengthening our conscience with an understanding of good
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and evil obtained from the word of God.
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Psalm 119, 163, I hate and despise falsehood, but I love your law.
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Thank you for listening.
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A longer paper on this subject with footnotes for the quotes and scriptures is available
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on our website relationalconcepts.org.
