A Good Conscience

Sometimes the greatest challenge to our faith is often intellectual. Instead of using our intellect to accept what we know is right, we use it to invent clever excuses for having done the wrong thing. It was when God confronted Adam and Eve in the Garden after they had sinned that the blame-shifting game began which has plagued humanity since. Adam attempted to excuse himself saying, “The woman made me do it.” Eve rationalized, “But the serpent made me do it.” At this point, I would like to borrow the wag’s line who said, “And when God came to the ol’ serpent he didn’t have a leg to stand on.” But alas! I digress.

We need to understand that how we think affects how we behave. The convictions of our faith have to do with our conscience and, like Paul, those who are spiritually alive “strive always to keep [their] consciences clear before God and men” (Acts 24:16). It is Paul who keeps his conscience – not Paul’s conscience that keeps him – pleasing to God.

We must not confuse the function of the conscience with that of faith. The function of the conscience is merely to approve or disprove of our thoughts and actions. The function of the conscience is not to guide, whether that conscience is mine or someone else’s. Christians are to walk by faith, not by their conscience (2 Corinthians 5:7). The Christian’s conscience properly functions as it approves of that which is pleasing to God but it can only do that if it is trained – that is to say, if the Christian is walking by faith (Romans 10:17). Be faithful to God. That is the aim of our faith and the means of keeping our conscience clear before God and man.