The Cleansing of the Conscience
Question: What is the conscience?
Answer: The conscience is that part of the soul, or inner man, that allows man to feel the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, clean and unclean, even without information or knowledge from without. It is something like a spiritual bundle of nerves, or a sensitive spiritual organ, that is able to sense or discern the goodness or badness, the rightness or the wrongness of what our senses are perceiving.
Question: Why were we given a conscience?
Answer: It is a gift of God, given to man so that he can feel what God feels, love what God loves, hate what God hates, and thereby walk with God in His own pure nature. When the conscience is clean, tender, and functioning properly, receiving and walking in the light of Jesus Christ, it warns us of every form of evil and corruption, both in ourselves and in others. It sees through masks, it feels what is behind words, it tastes the true nature of things, it is offended by what is dirty, and troubled by anything that is contrary to the life and will of its Creator. And all of this is in order that man may rightly perceive God’s will and nature, and feel when he abides in it, and when he departs from it.
Question: Is the conscience the same thing as the light of Christ?
Answer: No, the conscience is where and how man receives and experiences the light of Christ. It is the inward, sensitive, spiritual organ (so to speak) that is able to see His light, feel His convictions, love His purity, and discern between contrary natures. The light of Christ, on the other hand, is the Teacher, the Illuminator, the nature of God manifesting itself in a discernible way WITHIN the conscience. There it draws the heart of man to all that is good, clean, right, honest, just, and innocent, and also reproves, convinces, convicts, and warns against every form of evil and danger, even against some things that a man’s culture or family would call harmless, normal or good.
Question: Can the conscience be corrupted?
Answer: Yes, it can. Through the practice of sin, through contamination from evil company, through false instruction from false teachers (like culture, media, and ungodly parents) the conscience can become “defiled” (Titus 1:15), “seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2), and even “evil” (Hebrews 10:22). Therefore, to various degrees, it stands in need of being “purified,” or “cleansed,” which is part of the “better hope” of the new covenant.
Question: What is a corrupt or defiled conscience?
Answer: It is a conscience that has, to varying degrees, been influenced, defiled and damaged by sin, by lies, wrong judgments, and false beliefs, thereby losing its sensitivity to the light of Christ and becoming numb to the manifestation of Truth in the heart. It can no longer FEEL the truth, or discern between contrary natures, and therefore does not function in man as it was intended to function—as an arbiter or governor over the thoughts of the mind and the desires of the senses.
As the conscience becomes defiled, it ceases to check and regulate the wild, animal-like nature of fallen man. Natural senses are progressively let loose to pursue their desires without any checks, warnings or restrictions, and the mind learns to defend and to excuse even the most evil aspirations of man’s will. The custom of sin takes away all sensitivity to sin, and man feels himself more and more free from guilt and shame as he pursues the unclean pleasures of self-love. The body continues to function with its senses, and the mind with its thoughts and desires, but there is less and less of a distinguishing between rightness or wrongness, cleanness or filthiness in all that it does and desires. The heart progressively loses every vestige of the fear of the Lord, the love of truth, and the appreciation of virtue. And in this condition, there are many paths that seem right to a man, but the end of them all is death.
Question: If the conscience can come to this condition, can I trust it? Should I obey it?
Answer: The conscience can indeed come into a very poor condition where, of itself, it has little ability to guide man correctly. And those who have long violated it, and thereby defiled it, should understand that it is not in a condition to sound a true alarm, or to give a clear sense of what is right and good and true. However, the light of Jesus Christ that often shines IN the conscience, even in the darkened and defiled conscience of sinners, always gives a clear and certain testimony, and should always be obeyed and followed.
Question: What is that clear and certain testimony? How can I recognize it?
Answer: It is a call to purity, to righteousness, and to union with God. It is the voice of holiness calling you to live in the Spirit of holiness. It is a voice in the wilderness of your heart telling you that all flesh is grass, and calling you to repentance. It is an invitation to love what God loves and to hate what God hates, so that you can walk with God in His own pure nature, and be His true son.
Question: But can’t the flesh or Satan imitate these things and deceive me, leading me into a false righteousness and into dead works?
Answer: Both Satan and the flesh can indeed produce many kinds of false goodness and false religion, but these are always done from evil motivations, from desires for self gain, from pride, ambition, and pretension. But if you feel something in your conscience that is drawing you to righteousness, to purity, to cleanness, humility, goodness, love, and also correcting you for evil and selfish desires and actions, then you can be certain that this is the light of Jesus Christ calling you to Himself. Righteousness is the nature of God, and desires for righteousness are the work of His Spirit alone. The flesh never produces desires to be truly clean, righteous, humble, and pure. It may produce desires to APPEAR that way to others, but not to BE that way before the searching light of God.
That which makes you see evil in yourself, is good. That which allows you to see darkness in your heart, is light. That which makes you desire to unite with God in His own pure nature, is the work of His own pure Spirit. That which desires to depart from evil, is not evil. The kingdom of Satan is not divided against itself. There is only one thing in man that produces sincere longings to be free from sin, to unite to God in purity and righteousness, and to walk whatever path is necessary to arrive there; and that one thing is the Seed of the kingdom, the gift of Grace, the implanted Word which strives against the flesh and Satan for the salvation of the soul.
Question: Is this then what I should obey?
Answer: Yes, callings to depart from sin and to walk in righteousness should always be obeyed. These are the voice of the Good Shepherd. This is how the Lord reaches to us in our fallen condition, and begins our relationship or covenant with Him.
Question: But would it not be better to focus first on developing a relationship of intimacy with God, and then to begin to obey Him after I have grown to know Him, trust Him and love Him?
Answer: It is not possible to develop any true knowledge, intimacy and familiarity with God when the soul remains in disobedience. This is impossible because the nature of our relationship with God is a call out of darkness, sin, death, and evil, into God’s light, life, and righteousness. It is a walking with God out of one nature and into another. There is no way to develop a relationship with God BEFORE we begin to follow Him out of sin and self though obedience. Because just as soon as the heart turns to Him and desires to know Him, it begins to see and feel that it is living in a nature that is contrary to Him, and that our sins have made a separation between us and our God (Isa. 59:2). The heart cannot then decide to remain in that contrary nature for a time in order to establish intimacy with God, before it obeys His call. This would be like Israel refusing to leave Egypt, and expecting to develop a relationship with God, and experience the blessings of the Promised Land, while living under Pharaoh’s dominion.
Any real relationship with God demands that we be conformed to His nature and purity, and this requires obedience to the will and the work of His Spirit. We do not start out pure, but the direction and experience of our relationship with God IS the purification of the heart. It is a purifying relationship. Walking with Christ, knowing Him, becoming familiar with His Spirit, hearing His voice, etc. all of this has to do with progressively sharing His nature through purification. “He saves us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,” and this cannot happen to any extent while we willingly remain in a state of disobedience. And so any relationship that we claim to have with God that does not involve a humble submission to His cleansing and transforming Spirit cannot be more than an imagination. It is a golden calf that allows us to keep an idea of God, but remain in a nature contrary to Him.
Therefore, all true knowledge of Christ begins with something like a voice of John the Baptist, calling the soul to see its miserable condition, and to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” The very beginning of our relationship with Christ is a humble submission to His light in the conscience, even if our first attempts to follow Him are weak, confused, and imperfect.
Question: So it is possible to be confused and to make mistakes in our attempts to obey the light of Christ in our conscience?
Answer: Oh yes. There will almost certainly be mixture, confusion, and immaturity experienced as we learn to walk in the light and obey the voice of the Shepherd. I say mixture, because we are prone to mix God’s work in us with our own human zeal, religious opinions, and carnal imaginations. I say confusion because there is often great uncertainty at first regarding the voice, leadings, and requirings of the Lord. And I say immaturity because we are children who have not walked this way before. But none of these things should cause discouragement. The Lord knows where we are, what we understand and don’t understand, and precisely how to lead us. And growth will be experienced by all who give up in humble submission, according to the best of their understanding, to the present manifestation of Christ’s light in the conscience.
Question: But if beginners are prone to confusion, mixture, and immaturity, would it not be better to wait until the Lord makes all things clear to us, and then to step out in obedience?
Answer: This too is a great mistake. Wisdom and understanding grow in the obedient soul. First we must surrender our will to the light of the Lord, yielding our neck to His yoke, and then we will grow in knowledge and discernment. The carnal mind says, “First teach me the doctrine, and then I will do the will of God.” But God says, “No, first do what you already understand of My will, and as you walk faithfully in your current measure of light, I will teach you more.” Jesus said to the Jews: “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.” (John 7:17) First you must “will to do His will,” and then you will experience a growth in both understanding and grace. But those who sit back wanting all to be made clear to the understanding before they will submit, are still in the life of self and a state of rebellion.
It is easy for God to correct errors in understanding when the heart is soft, teachable, and walking in faithfulness to what it can currently see. But there is no reason for Him to inform man’s understanding when his heart remains in rebellion; that is, when he has not obeyed what he already knows to be true. It is a common error to claim ignorance and uncertainty of God’s will, when we have more than enough light to depart from some things that we already see to be wrong, and to submit to what we already know to be right, even if these are what people call “little things.”
Question: Does God care about these little things? And does the light of Christ disturb the conscience for them?
Answer: There really are no “little things;” there are just things. And the reason why God is concerned with them is not for what they are in themselves, but because man’s heart is in them, and because what he calls his life is composed of them. Now, if they truly were little things, they would be easy to surrender, and man would not argue and make excuses to keep them. But because in each of these little things there is a piece of man’s treasure, his life, his identity, purpose, pleasure, will, mind, and time, they are big enough to affect his heart, and the Lord has good reason to deal with us about them. You could perhaps say it this way: God is not concerned with things, but rather with the heart. But since the heart of man IS very much concerned with things, the dealings of the Lord will necessarily involve our inward and outward relationship to things.
Now, it is true that many people cannot see the wrongness of these so-called little things, but this is only because their consciences have become defiled and numb, and they cannot feel the truth. And yet it is the experience of every sincere follower of Christ that the “cleansing of the conscience” (Heb. 9:14) causes the heart (with time and faithfulness) to feel things to be what they really are.
Question: What is the cleansing of the conscience?
Answer: It is the removal of all deadness, numbness, and corruption from the conscience through the blood of Jesus Christ—that is, through the inward operation of both His death and His life in man. The author of Hebrews writes:
Heb. 9:13-14 “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?”
Heb 10:22 “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.”
As a man loves the light that shines in the conscience, grace is received, and the power of Christ is felt fulfilling the prophecy of Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 36:25-27, 31 “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them… Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your iniquities and your abominations.”
As the conscience is thus cleansed of all defilement, it becomes much more tender and sensitive, and is able to feel what it could not feel before. Wrong things start to feel uncomfortable, disagreeable, dirty, and dangerous. Sin begins to lose its appeal, and all of its promises of pleasure and fulfillment are clearly seen to be lies. The heart cannot help but see its true intentions in everything, and is no longer able to make excuses and blame others. Pride, ambition, and self-love are felt to be the spring of so many words, actions and desires, and so the heart begins to long for, pray for, and also receive from Christ a growth in purity, innocence, and humility.
Question: Is this entirely the Lord’s work in man? Or does man have a part to play in the cleansing of his conscience?
Answer: The cleansing of the conscience is a work wrought entirely by the power of God, and neither man’s power nor his knowledge can add anything to it. And yet, unless a man seeks and submits to God’s power, desiring His judgments, loving His light, and learning to abide in it, he can live an entire lifetime as a professing Christian and experience nothing of it. This may sound like a contradiction to the natural mind, but there is an enormous difference between carefully and actively submitting to God’s work, and seeking to make a work of our own. The first is the way to experience God’s promises; the second is the way to create an Ishmael.
This then is our responsibility, and the way to experience the conscience purified by the power of God: We must seek and submit to the light of Christ in all of its manifestations in the heart. Living in this way—not just at some times, but at all times—we find a light often appearing, more and more, in our thoughts, our desires, and our actions. We feel something within us warning, checking, correcting, and reproving for everything that runs contrary to the life and nature of Christ. And we also feel something approving, confirming, and granting a measure of peace and joy when our will unites to the light, and yields to the truth. Loving the light of Christ that shines in the conscience, and carefully submitting to it, is how we receive the power of God, and how the conscience is made clean and sensitive. This is how man comes to see what God sees, feel what God feels, love what God loves, hate what God hates, and learns to walk with God in His own pure nature.