Our Conscience and The Holy Spirit

We are all familiar with the expression, let your conscience be your guide when it comes to making all kinds of life decisions, both the little ones as well as the big ones. Our conscience is part of our unique human endowment designed to inform us of whether the choices we make are right or wrong, good or bad. In other words, our conscience serves as a sort of natural, internal, moral guidance system. However, how reliable is our conscience? Can we always trust our conscience? How do Christians differentiate between their conscience and the Holy Spirit?

To begin, it is important for us to acknowledge the key role our conscience plays in our lives. If we were to stop for a moment and think what our life would be like without our conscience - it would be a life without any sense of morals, and collectively, we probably would not survive for long. Despite the key role the conscience plays, it is also fallen and does not always function the way it is supposed to. We see this back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve’s focus shifted from pleasing God to pleasing themselves. The conscience must therefore be trained and guarded. The apostle Paul recognized the fallen state of his conscience as expressed in his struggle to do good (Romans 7: 15-25). For the Christian, this is where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in as our Helper, and Guide to have ‘a good conscience.’

The term ‘good conscience’ is used in Acts 23:1 when the apostle Paul addresses the Sanhedrin: “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” In his charge to Timothy, the apostle Paul describes a love “which comes from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and a sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5). Later in the same chapter, he warns Timothy of the consequences for neither continuing in the faith nor having a good conscience: 

“...holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith.” (1 Timothy 1:19).  

So as we make decisions and choices in our daily life, let us seek to maintain a good conscience, a pure heart, and a sincere faith, looking to the leading of the Holy Spirit to empower us to do the good we struggle to do on our own. Finally, let us not forget to be thankful to God: “Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25a)

Denny Barnett