THE CONSCIENCE is the automatic warning system by which we become aware of spiritual and moral danger and by which we sense our guilt. It is the innate ability to sense right and wrong. It entreats us to do what is right and to refrain from doing what is wrong. The Puritan Richard Sibbes wrote in the 17th century that it is ‘the soul reflecting on itself.’ It is privy to all our secret thought and motives.
J I Packer defines it as ‘practical moral reason, consciously exercised, growing in insight and sureness of guidance through instruction and use, and bringing inner integration, health and peace to those who obey it.’
The Bible declares that everyone has a conscience (Rom 2:14-15) and that we are to purse a good conscience, stressing that if the mind is defiled it cannot accurately inform the conscience, so conscience cannot warn the person (Titus 1:15). It warns against anything that would defile the conscience (1 Cor 8:7), the dangers of a calloused conscience (1 Cor 8:10), a wounded conscience (1 Cor 8:12) and of a seared conscience (1 Tim 4:2).
Joseph Addison Alexander wrote this helpful poem about the conscience:
There is a time, we know not when,
A place, we know not where;
Which marks the destiny of men
To glory or despair.
There is a line, by us unseen,
Which crosses every path,
Which marks the boundary between
God’s mercy and his wrath.
To pass that limit is to die,
To die as if by stealth;
It does not dim the beaming eye,
Nor pale the glow of health.
The conscience may be still at ease,
The spirit light and gay;
And that which pleases still may please,
And care be thrust away.
But on that forehead God hath set
Indelibly a mark;
Unseen by man, for man as yet,
Is blind and in the dark.
He feels perchance that all is well
And every fear is calmed;
He lives, he dies, he walks in hell,
Not only doomed, but damned!
O, where is that mysterious line
That may by men be crossed,
Beyond which God himself hath sworn,
That he who goes is lost?
An answer from the skies repeats,
“Ye who from God depart.”
Today, O hear His voice,
Today repent and harden not your heart.