Needed: An Effective Guidance System—3

This three-part discussion started with my telling a story about how the steering wheel, brakes and appropriate driving skills combined to create an effective guidance system for my father’s John Deere 730 diesel tractor—until they didn’t. I compared the tractor’s guidance system to the guidance system we as humans have been given: the voice of conscience. 

Last week, I examined the first biblical reference to conscience—which, incidentally, didn’t come from a prophet or a God follower but from a pagan king.

In this installment, I want to look at a few more passages of scripture that talk about conscience and the positive impact a well-tuned conscience can make—and the negative results that can come from an ignored or resisted conscience.

Most of us are familiar with the admonition to “let your conscience be your guide.” But what exactly is our conscience? One online definition puts it this way: “Conscience is the inner moral sense or compass that dictates what is right and wrong. It guides your thoughts and actions and often generates feelings of remorse or guilt when you violate your own ethical or moral principles.”

While understandings of the working of conscience may vary, the foregoing definition seems to fit in quite well with references to conscience in both the Old and New Testaments. 

When a churlish, mean-spirited, self-centered rich man named Nabal showed extreme contempt toward David and his band of supporters who were fleeing from King Saul’s wrath, David became so angry that he resolved to kill Nabal. When Nabal’s exceedingly beautiful wife, Abigail, intervened, seeking to undo the harm her husband had done, David began to cool down. Abigail told him how happy she was that his rage against her husband had abated, meaning that David would “not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself” (1 Samuel 25:31).

In that same verse, we read that Abigail said: “And when the Lord your God has brought my lord [David] success, remember your servant [Abigail].” David did just that. When her husband died shortly thereafter, he quickly arranged for Abigail to become his wife. 

Throughout the Bible, a clear conscience is a sought-after commodity. The apostle Paul, when brought before the spiritual leaders of his day, “looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, ‘My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience . . .’” (Acts 23:1). 

Paul was making it clear that he wasn’t ashamed of anything he had done or said in his zeal to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to both Jew and Gentile. He was at total peace with who he was. There was congruity between the mission he felt God had assigned to him and what he was doing in response to that call—no matter how much his actions might diverge from the traditions of his upbringing.

Even when explaining in detail to the Roman governor Felix about his belief in Christ, and the actions those beliefs had led him to take, and why it all meant so much to him, Paul declared: “. . . I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man” (Acts 24: 16).

In his letter to the Romans, in which he provides his most comprehensive outline of his spiritual worldview, Paul argues that conscience is nearly universal. Even among people who haven’t had the benefit of religious instruction, there are some who seem to innately sense what is morally right. “They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts,” he says in Romans 2:15, “their consciences also bearing witness, . . . .” 

In the same verse, Paul goes on to describe that sometimes their innate consciences “accuse them,” making it clear that they’re on the wrong track. But at other times those same innate consciences affirm the course of action they’re taking. Whether the conscience, at any given moment, is accusing or affirming, it is a remarkable—though difficult to fully understand or explain—human guidance system.

But not everyone pays attention to that inner voice of guidance. In 1 Timothy 1:19, Paul talks to his young protege Timothy about “holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith.” 

In 1 Timothy 4:2, Paul speaks of “hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” And in Titus 1:15 he points out that for some people, “both their minds and their consciences are corrupted.”

But despite the fact that some consciences have been corrupted, Paul promises that there’s hope. Change can come. Forgiveness can be experienced. Our acceptance can be assured. We can possess a clear conscience once again. 

In Hebrews 9:9, Paul says, referring to the Old Testament’s sacrificial system, that “the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper.” But in verse 14, he offers a solution, assuring his readers that “the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, [will] cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”

On that high note of assurance that a clear conscience can be ours again, I’ll conclude this meandering discussion—which began with an ordinary story about a John Deere 730 diesel tractor and our human need for an effective guidance system in whatever life situation we may find ourselves.