A reintroduction to the believer’s conscience
Welcome to another entry here at deposition of our faith. Thank you for joining us!
This is Week 24.
(Although you can start from anywhere, we encourage you to read up on previous posts as well as some articles lead into the next one).
Scripture Reading: Hebrews 10:26
Many believers of today’s world have abused the purpose of their conscience. Many have even used scriptural affirmation to kill or disarm conscience.
In today’s world, it is ubiquitous to see people overemphasise certain things over other things to placate their guilt.
Many have even added to the meaning of grace and made it a tool to convince themselves one’s actions and behaviour don’t matter to their salvation and Christianity, that God’s grace covers their sin, and so on.
These things are true, but it is also true that we are expected to walk as Christ walked (1 John 2:6), to be perfect as our Heavenly Father (Matthew 5:48), to watch and pray so that we don’t fall into temptation (Mark 14:38), and to live in accordance with the truth (Ephesians 5:8).
But many ignore the rest of scripture because it’s too hard to follow. Many put a full stop behind “your sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:48) and then use their left hand to cover “go and sin no more” (John 8:11).
And why do they do that? Because their conscience disturbs them every time they do something wrong. They don’t like that feeling that comes with doing something wrong, so they’d rather make the feeling stop instead of stopping whatever is causing the feeling.
Meanwhile, that’s one of the gifts of our salvation! As new creatures, we have a renewed conscience, which we are meant to keep pure. We have the spirit of God, and our conscience is awakened. We were once dull and cold because we had a defiled/dead conscience, and in new birth, our new nature gives us a good conscience.
So, when you do wrongly now, you intrinsically cannot feel good about it. And that’s a good thing.
Think about the concept of pain.
Pain does not exist to punish us. There are many reasons we have nociceptors in our sensory system.
Pain is a measure of growth sometimes; in fact, there are bodybuilders and physical trainers that tell people not to start counting their reps until it starts to hurt. Because for most, the point it starts to hurt is when you know you are about to cross a threshold.
But that’s not what we are referring to today. Another use of pain is for diagnostics. That’s the example I want to focus on today.
Conscience pangs
When you crack your heel or sprain your ankle, it hurts to put weight on it. That pain lets you know the seriousness of the injury, and because you don’t want to feel that pain, you put less pressure on that foot. Meanwhile, putting less strain on that foot is good for you because it means you don’t aggravate your injury.
If you have pain in your gut, it could indicate that you need medical attention. If we couldn’t feel pain, we would walk on our sprained ankles, and broken heels like nothing ever happened until the day the foot is finally condemned because there are too many shattered bones. The doctor is now recommending an amputation instead of aspirin to our bewilderment.
Why did I bring this example?
We feel guilt or internal disturbance when we sin because we are good people who did something bad. If we didn’t feel bad about what we did, it might signify that our conscience is dead.
Imagine a killer whose hands trembled for days after his first kill. He couldn’t sleep. He cried every night because of the guilt that consumed him. But, by his 100th kill, he thoughtlessly reaches for his handkerchief to wipe the blood off his weapon like he’s just blowing his nose. He knows the routine. He dismembers the corpse and puts it in a body bag, dumps it in the ocean and goes home in time for dinner and playtime with his wife and kids.
The problem with this generation is that we don’t have the honesty to confess that it gets easier to do it the next time when we indulge in our sins. Your actions don’t condemn you to hell. But, when they continue unchecked, they will rob you of your salvation (Hebrews 10:26–30).
Nowadays, many believers have a very convenient approach to Christianity. We stop doing good because we don’t get a physical medal, and we continue doing evil regardless of how it affects us spiritually, all because we want to obey the ‘you do you’ mantra.
Paul said, “know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?” (1 Corinthians 6:9–11)
Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
Grace has never been an excuse for sin. And your conscience knows that, so stop silencing it by going ahead with your dead works when you’ve been forewarned.
But what of when we sin, and we are sorry?
When this happens, it means our disturbed conscience has done its job. The discomfort we feel is solely a response triggered by a pure conscience.
However, when pain has already identified the discrepancy in your health, there’s no purpose for it anymore. This is why we use scripture to address our guilt.
As believers, we use scriptural affirmations to stop the devil from taking advantage of our guilt to condemn us. The devil does this because he’s in the habit of making medicine into poison.
The devil wants to manipulate even our conscience, to make us cancer to ourselves. So, not only are his condemning comments making us hate ourselves, but he also tries to use our conscience as cancer that condemns us from within, without our knowledge.
God’s Word is supposed to purify us, and it makes us clean (John 15:3). And when we are sanctified, we are expected to leave our bad habits behind and march on in purity.
But, what many believers do is use the scripture as our painkiller and continue in our bad habits.
The Problem with Painkillers
Painkillers are good. Sometimes, pain can be very irrelevant, and it is always uncomfortable. You don’t want to experience pain during surgery because it doesn’t teach you anything. You use anaesthetics because you want to bypass that unnecessary experience.
But, as you’ve already guessed, there are some problems with using painkillers.
Painkillers don’t precisely address the cause of pain. People use it when they want to work through, sleep through, or live through the pain. Unfortunately, not feeling pain when you put pressure on a bad foot doesn’t mean it couldn’t still lead to dire consequences later.
The lesson here is simple: don’t use provisions of scripture to bypass your conscience.
Letting your conscience do its job
David was a good man who did many bad things.
But, when he became aware of his evil deeds, he always retired to God and asked for forgiveness and mercy. He knew that he was a good man who had done a bad thing.
Often when we do bad things, and our conscience is disturbed, we start saying things like, “I’m guilty. I feel worthless. I’m filthy. I’m unworthy. I don’t think there’s a point in pretending to be something I’m not. I am not a good person.”
Meanwhile, the point of your conscience is to say to you, “you’ve done something wrong. Something against your new nature. You should stop doing it if you want to stop feeling this way.”
Thank God for the Word of God. Thank God we don’t have to feel guilt when we repent of our sins because we are already forgiven (1 John 1:9).
Because as we said earlier, sometimes, the same feeling that was supposed to draw your attention to your deficiencies may start to condemn you.
Many Christians today know just how toxic it feels to be condemned by one’s conscience. Hence they kill their conscience or ignore it till they are numb to signal. They train themselves to ignore their conscience instead of addressing their shortcomings. Unfortunately, Hebrews 3:13 shows us that we can be hardened by sin, which eventually brings death (James 1:15).
Don’t kill your conscience.
Killing your conscience because it makes you uncomfortable is what the devil wants you to do. And when you kill your conscience, you don’t feel anything when you do wrongly.
When I have an eye exam, the optician gives me this anaesthetic eye drop that removes all forms of feeling from my eye. When they finish with the exam, it still takes a few minutes for the numbing effect of the eye drop to leave. As a young, daring adolescent, I would often place my dirty, unsterilised finger on my delicate eyeball directly and squeal in excitement and astonishment because I couldn’t feel a thing.
The thing is, just because I didn’t feel anything when I poked my eye after having the eye drop doesn’t mean I wasn’t risking damaging the eye and introducing impurities to it by touching it with my dirty hand.
In the same way, using pseudo-Christianity to circumvent your conscience is what the devil wants you to do. When you do that, your sin hardens you over time, and your conscience dies off on its own. It becomes like a screaming child in a room with a parent who has earplugs on. The poor child will cry and scream till she falls asleep.
This is why we should always be careful about the doctrine we ingest. Grace is never an excuse for corruption. Grace is the reason we can even call ourselves holy and blameless in the first place. But it is never an excuse to play in the mud.
