THE CONSCIENCE: NOT A GUIDE NOR STANDARD

THE CONSCIENCE: NOT A GUIDE NOR STANDARD

There is in every man some sense of God’s claim on him; this sense is conscience, and exists in proportion as God’s claim is known, therefore there is more conscience in some than in others. But besides this, the conscience may become enlightened; that is, it may get a clearer perception of the claims of God. These two are distinct, the one from the other. The first is a sense innate in man, and is found as much, and often more, in the untaught pagan than in the most cultivated religionist. This is the sense of what God claims, but the answer to this sense is according to the intelligence and enlightenment. The pagan answers to this sense often in a more self-denying way than the nominal christian, though the latter has the greater intelligence.

Let us examine how each of these can be increased, how the conscience can be made more sensitive and more enlightened. It is made more sensitive by the conviction of what God is in Himself, and it becomes more enlightened by divine instruction. The one depends on what my sense of God is; the other, on the instruction which I have received as to the way in which the claim must be answered. The sense of claim is ^[p. 185] increased as God in His reality comes before me, and my intelligence as to how I must meet Him is increased as I am truly instructed, that is, instructed by His own revelation. Instruction of itself does not help conscience; but the word of God, bringing home to the soul the sense of His reality, does arouse the conscience and increase its sensitiveness, and at the same time instructs it perfectly how to answer to the God who has awakened a deeper sense of His own claim in the soul; and hence the word of God in power controls and directs the conscience. The sense of claim is not enough in itself, for with it there may be great ignorance as to the nature and extent of the claim, nor is there a sufficient sense in any one of what is due to God. No one of himself can acquire this. Only the Spirit of God, who knows God, can acquaint me with — give me a true sense of — what is due to God; and it is plain that it is God only who can tell me how I am to behave myself so as to answer to His claim. An unconverted man has a conscience, but his sense of God’s claim cannot be beyond the vague one that he is under judgment. He has the sense that the Supreme Being has a claim on him; but it must be the work of God’s Spirit to give any true idea of the nature of the claim, and there must be a revelation from God to set forth how it should be met. The conscience in itself cannot have a true sense of what is due to God. How could it, unless equal to God? ^† Nor can it answer to God’s claim unless it knows what would meet His mind, and this cannot be without revelation. Thus it is evident that without the Spirit of God and the word of God the conscience must always be defective. Man is fallen from God. If he were not fallen, he could not bear the distance in which he is naturally; and thus, while having a sense of God’s

^†Even in ordinary life I cannot apprehend the mind of my superior in intelligence, nor can I tell how he feels any offence I may have offered him, unless he tell me. My sense may be keen enough for myself, but in order to meet him, it is not enough for me that I have my own sense. I need to know his, if I would answer to it. And if this be true in common life, how much more from the creature to the ever blessed God?

^[p. 186] claim on him, he needs a power to reinstate him in ability, if in nothing else, to meet God in His claim. Hence in every case, when any one has obtained a right sense of God’s claim, it has been by the word of God, and not simply by the light of conscience. Abel by faith — by a power entirely outside the range and ken of man — offered to God. Cain, on the other hand, offered according to his conscience, unaided and untaught by the Spirit of God; and therefore in no way outside or independent of human ideas. God’s claim is only apprehended from Cain’s point of view, from man’s side. It was not that he had no conscience, but his conscience had no true sense of God’s claim, because he had no power outside conscience to enable it to reach up to God’s claim; while Abel by faith has not only a true sense, but he is also taught the true way, in figure, to meet the claim of God. Whatever be the sense of claim, there is no power to comprehend either the nature of it or the manner of answering to it, without intervention on the part of God. The fall proved man’s incapacity to remain in innocence and answer to God; and now in the fall there must be a new power, a power from God, to give the true sense, and with it the instruction how to answer to it. Hence in every case the conscience is defective as a guide, when these two things, faith — the gift of God in the soul — and the word of God as its light, do not go hand in hand.

The sense that there is a God great in power, even when that power is acknowledged and known, will not save one from the most mistaken course, apart from the action of faith — His power in the soul.

We get an example of this in the children of Israel saying to Aaron, “Make ^[p. 187] us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses ... we wot not what is become of him”. It was a conscience itself that made them ask for a representative of a God by whose power they had gained. They had seen the mighty acts of the Lord, but lacking faith the cry of the conscience is, “Make us gods, which shall go before us”. The existence of a God is not denied, and the power of God is not denied; but of the golden calf they say, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt”. This instance the apostle quotes in 1 Corinthians 10, when warning the saints against idolatry, which really consists in getting the conscience satisfied with anything apart from God. Note how much there was here to influence the conscience aright, if any amount of miracles or visible performances could do so. Here is a people led out of Egypt in the most miraculous way, fed in the wilderness daily with manna, a people whose eyes had seen all the mighty acts of the Lord; this very people, with Aaron at their head, fail to comprehend both the nature and the claim of God, and before the law is given to them, they break its very first injunctions. No one can deny that they had conscience, and that if any course of action outside one could influence or affect the conscience, the people of Israel were pre-eminently in that place; and yet we see what a sad picture they present of conscientious religion, that after all they had seen they worship the golden calf! There can be no more convincing evidence that nothing done or given by God to man externally can give his conscience a true idea of Him, than the fact that all God had done for Israel was ineffectual and ended in idolatry. When conscience was made as a guide, apart from God, their acts betrayed the inability of the conscience to see or adopt what was due to God, even after all the miracles and favours shown to them. If all that the children of Israel had seen and gained did not impart a correct idea of what was due to God, what else could? None but the Spirit of God can set aside the will of man, and impart to the soul a true sense of what God is in His nature; and hence the Israelites are not censured for acting without conscience, but because they are so “stiffnecked” that they have not bowed to God as He has been manifested before them.

^[p. 188] Conscience, as we have seen, is a sense in fallen man of God’s claim on him; but this sense itself is liable to be influenced by the prejudices or religious bias in which I am educated; it acquires its tone and line from the order and nature of things which are addressed to it with the object of influencing it. Religion itself addresses the conscience, and governs and sways it according to the power it has over the will of man. The more the will is acted on, the more it subserves; and the will then finds the conscience a great auxiliary in pleasing itself. The stiffneckedness is gratified! No one ever saw a devotee to any religion who was not self-willed; and thus his will finds an object in his religion, and the conscience approves because it has no other idea of what is due to God. The religious notion in every case sways the conscience, and it will obtain such mastery over the man that the most terrible deeds of violence and bloodshed can be done under sanction of the conscience. Saul of Tarsus could say that he had lived in all good conscience before God until this day, though in the sight of God he was chief of sinners; and while he persecuted the church in the most cruel way, he was only acting up to the religious impressions which he had imbibed, and his will found gratification for itself in what his conscience approved. His conscience had been formed in the Jewish religion, and it could rise no higher; and the more it adhered to its impressions, the more was he encouraged to act in direct opposition to the will of God. Surely the conscience was no guide or standard here; and it is plain enough that this man, of highest reputation as to conduct and conscience, required the power of God to convince him of what was due to God, and from His word to learn to act in accordance thereto.

The religion I imbibe colours and sways my conscience in proportion to my will or resoluteness, so that the conscience is never a guide or standard. To be a guide, it must be independent of influence; to be a ^[p. 189] standard, it must be incapable of improvement. If I make the conscience either one or the other, I am under the control of that which is uncertain and imperfect; and if the satisfaction of the conscience is all I seek, I satisfy that which has a very inadequate sense of what is due to God, and a very imperfect or, it may be, mistaken idea of how to answer to it. It is here that souls constantly rest, and stop short as to salvation; if their conscience is satisfied as to their sins, they are content. But if this is all, the will is not broken, and the conscience goes no farther than the light, or supposed light, which has reached it; and hence many even converted souls, who can say that they are sure of forgiveness of sins, according to the measure of their own conscience, yet have very little idea of their sinful nature and will in the sight of God; and simply because it is not God’s estimate of sin which they have a sense of, but one founded on their own conscience. If I speak of the unconverted man, it is evident that his conscience can have no idea of the nature or claim of God, and no intelligence in answering to the sense of God’s claim which he has in himself; but with the converted, who must have both in a measure, there is danger too, If the unconverted can be educated so that this conscience can adopt the most stringent form of action in answer to it, so in like manner the conscience in a converted soul may retain much of the form which it has adopted religiously, or it may adopt new ones more in keeping with the conscience.

In 1 Corinthians 8 we read of a “weak conscience”, one which has not strength enough to overcome the habitual idea of the conscience as to the value of the idol, and in eating what is offered to an idol, “their conscience being weak is defiled”. The conscience must be controlled by a power stronger than the will of man, or it will still rule, even in the converted, and then one is really weak, as we have seen. Where the conscience rules, there cannot be the rule of God’s ^[p. 190] Spirit; and thus we see it in many, as to the state of their souls. They are assured of forgiveness of sins, but they only see sin as it affects their conscience, and the law is the measure of their conduct, for they do not see what the will of the flesh is in the presence of God, but merely what they are as to conduct.

The very fact that it is possible for a converted person to have a weak conscience — one not without a measure of light, but still retaining certain forms and ideas, false and defiling — is enough to warn us against trusting to the conscience as a guide. The danger of the present day is not from idolatry pure and simple, but from the systems of religion which bind the conscience even when there is true conversion; and hence a retention of much to hinder and defile it. The light of grace is not strong enough in the soul to dispel the experiments of the conscience. The nearer the system of religion comes to the truth, the more injurious it is, because it comes with the greater authority to the conscience, and the will is more backed up; and all this because the conscience is allowed to be a guide or standard. If I, through grace, see that my sins are forgiven through faith in Christ, so far my conscience must be assured, or it has no peace. But then arises the question, Is my known conduct — known to myself — the measure of my forgiveness? Is it simply relief to my conscience, or is it the sense of God’s righteousness? Am I justified according to the righteousness of God, in whom I have believed, who has raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead? If it be my own conscience, I am necessarily making a standard of it; and if I do this in a point of so much importance, I am sure not to rise above it in all other things; and hence, however conscientious I may be, I make my own sense of right and wrong my standard, and not God and His word, and the practice must be feeble and low. Now, on the other hand, if God’s righteousness were my standard, because knowing myself accepted in Christ,

^[p. 191] I could not accept or approve of anything, even in my conscience, below the standard that the Spirit of God has set before my conscience, and which has satisfied it to the full.

I do not attempt to go further in this paper; but every one on reflection must see that many who own that their sins are forgiven have no sense of the righteousness of God. They believe truly that Christ paid for their sins, and their consciences are relieved; but by and by, when they find themselves carried away and overcome by the enemy, and when their consciences begin to upbraid them, they must either be in despair or become antinomian. They have not seen sin as it is in the sight of God, as God sees it. They have not had the sense of being justified, placed on new ground in righteousness before God; for if they had, they must see that everything that is not according to that righteousness is sin; all unrighteousness is sin, and there is only righteousness with God. Besides this, there is a system of evangelicalism which warps the conscience; for while in that system there is a sacrifice for sins, and it is preached that belief in the sacrifice is that which gives relief to the conscience, yet this relief may not go beyond the security which the Israelite had in his conscience after offering the right offering. The conscience is not purged from dead works to serve the living and true God. The conscience must be relieved; that is all that is required or enjoined. There is no power to walk nor sense of communion with God; and all because the conscience is made a guide and a standard instead of simply a guard — a point which I may consider another time, if the Lord will.