Conscience, or the capacity of judging good and evil-in its primary exercises, may be considered as a natural faculty. God took care that man should possess it when he departed from God; and man on his part knows he has it. Scripture recognizes the fact, when distinguishing between Gentiles and Jews, in Rom. 2, “for when the Gentiles which have not the law,—do by nature the things contained in the law,... are a law unto themselves—their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts, the mean while, accusing or else excusing one another.” In this state, mankind would have continued, had not God brought in light, for the conscience—partial light at first—but light suited to the position in which men stood with their Creator, and with one another; considered, moreover, as moral creatures. This light was introduced by the law—and the commandments, with which every one is familiar, advanced the range of conscience, according to what the Mosaic claims demanded.
This experiment of law was tried on the Israelites—the nation of which it is geographically written, “when the Most High separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” This nation, He put governmentally under law-and the effect of this standing, as distinct from all surrounding nations, was necessarily two-fold. Morally, as Jews in the flesh, this increase of light on natural. conscience, is described in that well-known chapter, Rom. 7, “the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin” and again, “what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” What could increased light disclose, but this impotency to do the good which the conscience owned, and the enlightened mind desired to reach, but could not and what must be the moral condition which would lead such a one to exclaim “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death.” It is important at this stage to remember that light put into the hand, does not increase the physical strength of the man who holds it and so the law of God might, and did lead many to say “the commandment is holy, just, and good”—but with this confession, “how to perform that which is good, I find not.”
These are the moral results of the law upon the consciences of those under it but we said they were two-fold. The other aspect is important, as connected with external conduct, and the government of God in the midst of Israel; but as this is historical, and manifest in the dispersion of that people on account of their disobedience, when Jehovah took them in hand, it needs no enlargement. The breakdown was complete—morally, as men under the law, they only gained the knowledge of indwelling sin—and governmentally as subjects, they were driven out of Canaan by their transgressions. “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.” We may now pass on from the natural conscience of a Gentile, and from the enlightened one of the Jew, to the inquiry, what is conscience in a Christian? In answering this, it will be necessary to look at the state before God, in which the law left those who were under it, for a command to do a thing, or not to do it, brings no moral power for obedience—and this is an important consideration.
In effect, what could law be to a fallen creature, but condemnation—it detected the sin it forbade, and convicted the man in whom it dwelt as a transgressor, and left him under the curse. Death alone can justify the righteousness of the law given, or the government of God as regards the transgressor—unless there are reserves with God, which can meet the proved emergency, by introducing a Substitute and Sacrifice. It is at this point, when the fullness of the time was come, that God sent forth His Son. Redemption by the blood of Christ has been wrought out for the lost and undone, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” Christianity comes in upon the accomplished work of Christ on the cross where “He was made sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Here we find the elements of Christianity, and of faith towards God, through what His Son has done to separate the holiness of God from all question of sin, the curse, and the law.
The principle of grace is now established (instead of the law) as the new standing with God and a Christian is a man who is saved freely by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. A believer’s conscience, is therefore a conscience “purged by the blood.” Another principle also finds its place and exercise, “the just shall live by faith” so that we read of “holding faith, and a good conscience” as linked together in Christianity, in contrast with the law, and works of Judaism.
Once more as to the believer, he is not only purged from dead works to serve the living God, by the blood of Christ—but he gets the answer of a good conscience before God, “by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Thus we see the conscience of a Christian is a good one, not by the denial of sin committed, nor of indwelling sin; nor by an attempt to reach the good, which is not in him by nature—but by faith, in the sacrifice and death of Christ, who bore the penalties of disobedience in the judgment of God, which the blood satisfied. A Christian is not a man trying to improve his standing before God; how can he do this? “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father,” forbids such a thought. He is a man who has the two essential elements of liberty brought to him life, in a risen Christ, and power by the indwelling spirit. A believer, therefore, made free from the law of sin and death; and free in conscience and heart, to worship in the holiest where God is; and where the Great High Priest has sprinkled the blood, draws near with boldness.
In the increasing discovery of what God is, and what Christ has been made of God to the believer, and what the Holy Ghost is that dwells in him, as the temple of God such a one is called to the new employment of glorifying God “in his body, and in his spirit, which are God’s.” Moreover, the apostle who insists on our standing and security before God, and our fellowship with Christ when taking us back into the spheres of men and things, says if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under law. Another and a different power has taken possession of us: again, “this I say, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” is our real liberty, and emancipation from evil. Such a man will take his place among men as before, but with a conscience of good and evil according to God, and learned in the sanctuary and its balances.
How different is a spirit-taught conscience—one exercised in the word, after the example of Christ: “The end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned”—but this the law could not produce. On the contrary, it disclosed to man the humbling fact, that sin had sunk him below his own perception of good and evil—that “he was sold under sin.”
Christianity reveals to a man the precious fact, that he is redeemed from the corruptions of his own nature, and from the consequences of transgression, by the cross of Christ—that he is a new creature, by being born again of the spirit—and by union with an ascended Christ, in life and righteousness by the Spirit of God. The conscience in such a one, must be elevated according to the ways of God in grace, and therefore, we find “as many as walk according to this rule, (the rules of a new creation) peace be on them.” The Christ who is our life, will be the only example to those who possess life in Him by the Spirit.
Besides this, the light which was introduced by the law to show the man under it, that he could never use it as a title to life—gives place (now that we have life) to the light in which God has displayed Himself, and which He is; our communion with the Father and the Son, is in this light—where no darkness dwells. Light is no longer known as the detector of the causes of wretchedness, in a fallen nature —but as the revealer of what is perfect and unclouded—and we are by grace, where it is “if we walk in the light we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Moreover, we are children of light, and are exhorted as those who are of the day to be “sober, putting on the breast plate of faith and love.” Possessing a life which dwells in light, and displays itself in love, our moral elevation is according to the power which has made us this in Christ—we are carried beyond ourselves by the grace which has established us in this fellowship.
Whatever the law may have wrought in the enlightened conscience, we are very far beyond this, when we see that our new responsibilities run along on the line of our present relationship with the Father and the Son, by the Holy Ghost as “sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life.”
In conclusion, we have seen that conscience in a natural man was confined within its own ranges and instincts—that conscience in a Jew was enlightened, and brought into a larger sphere where God had come in by law, and claimed the devoted love of the creature. Further, that conscience in a Christian, is altogether of another kind, because united to faith, and under the action of. God’s Spirit, which makes a believer one with Christ in a new nature. The man himself is changed; and as long as he lives in consistency with Christ, conscience can only approve. What has it to judge in a man who is led of the Spirit, and who walks in the Spirit? He may fall below his normal and practical condition, and disturb his conscience and compel it to judge him in his steps, upon moral questions of good and evil, which have become mingled in his daily life—but why? because he has sunk lower than conformity to Christ.
One reason why conscience has so much to do with us in our daily walk, is because the life we live in the flesh is not distinctly “by the faith of the Son of God.” When the developments of life in the power of the holy Ghost are manifest, what can the outward expression be, but Christ? When he is not reproduced in the believer, conscience and the grieved Spirit will discover and judge the actings of the flesh, which hinder the springing up of life to the proper height of its fellowship in the light—or the outflowing of life in its true devotedness to Christ—and for Christ’s sake, to those in the darkness. Where all is dead practically in us that has been judicially dealt with in Christ’s death, and kept under the power of death, life is free to develop itself in what is proper to it and according to God. Life in us is then realized to be what Jesus said, “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. B.