Our Conscience

Have you ever been in a room with someone who was emitting a beautiful perfume or cologne and then that person left, yet the room was still filled with the fragrance of that person? That is a great metaphor of the conscience of Mankind – it is the residue of God’s once indwelling gloriously moral Presence of Light in and with us. 

It is the conscience of heart that Jesus came to atone for, so that He could birth us again (what we call born again) and create us again (what we call the new creation) back into our high place, the state of pure and holy where we Sabbath with Him in  pleasurable fellowship with Him as He is!

For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant… Heb 9:13-15

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Heb 10:19-22

There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to Him. 1 Pet 3:21-22

In Hebrew, the word leb, which is translated heart, conveys the deep inner being of our conscience of heart. The New Testament uses the word "conscience" over thirty times, almost exclusively in the Pauline epistles. Conscience means to co-know or co-perceive. Our conscience was by design hardwired as a conductor to the spirit man. However, when our spirit man died because of sin, our conscience, which once functioned in a holy state, began functioning from a fallen state from only a memory of pure and unadulterated righteousness. 

Our conscience is not morality itself but interprets or perceives what is or is not moral. Our conscience heart is the faculty of perception – how we see, comprehend or perceive reality. It is our conscience of heart that perceives light and darkness. The clarity or sensitivity of our conscience (or perception) is contingent upon our relationship to the Light of Himself, consider this Scripture,

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend (perceive) it. John 1:4, 5

Most of us on this planet, regardless of creed or color, intuitively know that our beings were designed for extraordinary significance and most of us have a deep sense and desire to be good. Our universe, planet, bodies, and conscience are all of a moral design. When we violate that moral design, it pains our conscience. Irrespective of religious, philosophical or humanistic persuasion, virtually every world-view recognizes the conscience as an inner faculty that judges right and wrong – the faculty that employs a divisionary process. Our conscience holds us accountable. So why can’t we just be moral, upright beings?

The Scripture clearly teaches that we can either dull (1 Tim 4:1) or sharpen (Rom 2:5) our conscience by immoral or moral heart conduct. Consequently, we are prone to think because we are a good person that does good works that we are okay. We all, no matter who you are, if you are human then you have an imprint of the Image of God on the inside of you, we are created in His Image! His imprinted Image with us is hardwired to feel good when we do good. However, our need is much deeper than a good or bad feeling, we need the infilling of the Source of Good, the Source of Light Himself, the very Presence of God!

…how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit

offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from

dead works to serve the living God? Heb 9:14