This final key practice of victorious Christians cannot be overemphasized. It is of the utmost importance, for, as we shall see, our walk and testimony can utterly fail, perhaps even for the balance of our lifetime, if we ignore the voice of the conscience. The conscience is a God-given faculty of our human spirit. It is operative, on a greatly diminished level, even in unbeleivers (Rom. 2:14-15). When a person is born again, his spirit is enlivened, and thus the sensitivity of his conscience is dramatically enhanced (Eph; 4:17-19; Rom. 6:21; Rom. 8:10)
The conscience of man functions to monitor his thoughts, words, motives and actions in light of what the person understands to be good and evil. The conscience testifies to a person whether one is upholding or violating the moral standards he acknowledges as true.
If we violate our accepted standards of good and evil, then we feel uneasiness and guilt. "And it came about afterward that David’s conscience [lit., heart] bothered him because he had cut off the edge of Saul’s robe" (1 Sam 24:5; see also 2 Sam. 24:10; Acts 2:37).
If we live according to our accepted moral code, then we feel affirmed within as being correct. "I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 9:1). "For our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you" (1 Cor. 1:12).
To the believer, then, the conscience is his inward advisor as to whether he is sinning or obeying God. The conscience is very helpful because it not only condemns us after we sin, but it also warns us that we may be about to sin, and thus we have a chance to avert sinning if we take grace from God at that moment.
Sin breaks our fellowship with God, and this is the point that has so much to do with our victory. Our conscience can warn us that we are about to sin, and we can heed that warning and thus be victorious. On the other hand, when we do sin, and we all do, it is vital that the break in our fellowship with God be fully restored. If our fellowship with God is clouded by sin that is not dealt with, then we will surely be on the path to more defeat, perhaps even to the point of losing our faith completely. Therefore, we must make dealing with the issues of our conscience the utmost priority in our practice. Watchman Nee, a victorious and gifted Christian teacher of the last century, puts it this way:
If a child of God desires to be filled with the Spirit, to be sanctified, and to lead a life wholly after God’s will, he must adhere to the voice of the conscience. Should he not grant it its rightful place, he shall fall inescapably into walking after the flesh. To be faithful to one’s conscience is the first step toward sanctification. Following its voice is a sign of true spirituality.1
The apostle Paul was certainly an excellent model for us in this matter. How he dealt with his conscience was one of the secrets of his spiritually powerful life. When he appeared before the chief priests and the Sanhedrin (the council of Jewish leaders) to give his defense, he opened his address with this statement: "Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day" (Acts 23:1, NASB). Then, a short while later he made this statement before the Roman governor, Felix: "In view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men" (Acts 24:16, NASB). In the King James Version this verse reads: "And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God, and toward man" (Acts 24:16, KJV). I think the phrase "void of offense" is helpful.
Paul was saying that he lived by the dictates of his conscience. If his conscience forbade something, he avoided it. If his conscience approved something, then he proceeded. He tried to live "before God" by only doing God’s will. And, he tried to maintain a good conscience toward man by conducting himself honorably in the sight of his fellow man (Rom. 12:17; 2 Cor. 8:20-21; 1 Pet. 2:12). When he sinned, he took immediate steps to clear his conscience of that offense.
In order to have an unclouded communion with God and live in victory, we must clear our conscience of offenses. Regarding dealing with our offenses toward God, this involves a genuine repentance and confession. Most all of us are familiar with First John 1:9. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 Jn. 1:9, NASB). The Greek verb meaning "to confess" is homologeo. In the literal sense it means to speak the same thing or same word.
Our conscience always speaks to us in a specific way, concerning a specific action, word, attitude or thought that is wrong. We must confess, agree, that the specific thing we have done is wrong. General confessions like "Pardon and forgive us all our sins" will not avail before God. We must humble ourselves to accept the condemnation of our conscience in each specific instance. Further, in this agreement with the inward judgment we need an attitude of willingness to pursue a different course. Otherwise, our "confession" is a sham. "He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy" (Pr. 28:13, NKJV).
Watchman Nee makes an excellent illustration of the conscience, likening it to a window that must be cleaned in order to let in God’s light and to allow unhindered communion with Him:
Conscience is like a window to the believer’s spirit. Through it the rays of heaven shine into the spirit, flooding the whole being with light. Heavenly light shines in through the conscience to expose fault and to condemn failure whenever we wrongfully think or speak or act in a way not becoming saints. If by submitting to its voice and eliminating the sin it condemns we allow it do its work, then the light from heaven will shine brighter next time; but should we not confess or extirpate [i. e., remove completely] the sin, our conscience will be corrupted by it (Titus 1:5), because we have not walked according to the teaching of God’s light. With sin accumulating, conscience as a window becomes increasingly clouded. Light can barely penetrate the spirit. And there finally comes a day when that believer can sin without compunction and with no grief at all, since the conscience has long been paralyzed and the intuition dulled by sin. The more spiritual a believer is the more keenly alert is his inner monitor.2
Watchman Nee also points out that believers may employ two tactics in order to avoid the confession of sin and subsequent submission to God’s will. Firstly, they may engage in a process of reasoning in order to justify their actions. However, as satisfactory as the reasons may be to the mind, they cannot override the protest of the conscience.
It [the conscience] discerns God’s will through intuition and condemns everything which is not according to Him. Conscience speaks for God’s will, not for reason. Christians ought not to walk by reason but by God’s will as disclosed in their intuition. Whenever they disobey any movement there, conscience raises its voice to condemn. Explanation may satisfy the mind but never conscience. As long as the issue condemned is not removed, it shall not cease condemning.3
The second method that Christians may use in order to suppress the protest of the conscience is to do good works in lieu of dealing with the specific point of disobedience. However, this method also fails to satisfy the demands of conscience. What God requires is repentance concerning our disobedience, not additional service to appease Him. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." (1 Sam. 15:22b, KJV)
Once we have made our confession of specific sin, we need to trust in God’s promise in First John 1:9 that He does forgive us and cleanse us. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 Jn. 1:9, NASB). He is faithful to forgive us, because He is faithful to His word concerning forgiveness in Christ (Acts 10:43). He can be righteous in forgiving our sins because of the blood of Jesus (Rom. 3:25-26).
We must place our faith in Jesus’ blood to forgive our every sin. The devil may try to imitate the condemnation of our conscience after our confession. Satan is the accuser of the brethren, and we must reject His accusations after we have truly confessed our sin. We should praise and thank God for the blood of Jesus and His forgiveness when such an attack starts, and we need to resist the devil and tell him that we will not accept his accusation.
We also need to take care of clearing our conscience of offenses toward man. Many times when we mistreat others our conscience will not give us peace just with our confession to God. It is also pressing us to clear up the offense with our fellow man by going to them for forgiveness. An example of this is found in Matthew. "If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering" (Matt. 5:23-24, NASB).
From the context, we can see that in this example the offense toward the brother would be that of calling him a name (see Matt. 5:22). Although Jesus mentions the altar, because at that time the disciples were still practicing Jews, this term would also picture our going to God for fellowship in prayer in the New Testament economy. After doing something offensive to a brother, our conscience may bother us as we approach the throne of grace. This is God’s signal to us that we must clear up the offense by going to that brother and asking for forgiveness (see Luke 17:4). It is only by doing this (and confessing our sin to God) that the offense can be removed from our conscience and we can be at peace. In the same way, we also need to clear up offenses toward unbelievers. Paul testified: "And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men" (Acts 24:16, KJV).
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1
Watchman Nee, The Spiritual Man (New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers, Inc., 1968), Vol. 2, p. 110.2
Ibid, Vol. 2, pp. 113-114.3
Ibid, Vol. 2, p. 111.