Can Your Conscience Be Your Guide?
Read | Romans 2:14-16
Every human being is born with a marvelous gift from God—a conscience. Since its warnings cause discomfort, you perhaps have never thought of this “alarm system” as a blessing. But our benefit and protection were what the Lord had in mind for this internal witness to our moral conduct. By listening to its promptings, we are guarded from making sinful choices that could ruin our lives.
But can you rely on your conscience to be your guide for all decisions? Before we can answer that question, we must understand what God designed it to do. The conscience was not given primarily as a positive force to guide but as an alarm system to warn and protect us from sin.
However, many of our choices are not moral issues, so we need an even more reliable source for direction.
That’s why the Lord has provided believers with the Holy Spirit, who accurately leads us in any kind of decision we must make. He not only works through the conscience to make us aware of sin, but He also helps us choose between good and best. As we listen to His voice and heed His warnings, He purifies and sharpens our conscience so that it aligns more precisely with the Word and will of God.
One problem is that the conscience has the capacity to be shaped by our responses—we can damage its dependability by rejecting or ignoring its promptings. Then sins that should bother us won’t register. But heeding its warnings make it sharper and more sensitive, protecting us even more effectively.
Every human being is born with a marvelous gift from God—a conscience. Since its warnings cause discomfort, you perhaps have never thought of this “alarm system” as a blessing. But our benefit and protection were what the Lord had in mind for this internal witness to our moral conduct. By listening to its promptings, we are guarded from making sinful choices that could ruin our lives.
But can you rely on your conscience to be your guide for all decisions? Before we can answer that question, we must understand what God designed it to do. The conscience was not given primarily as a positive force to guide but as an alarm system to warn and protect us from sin.
However, many of our choices are not moral issues, so we need an even more reliable source for direction.
That’s why the Lord has provided believers with the Holy Spirit, who accurately leads us in any kind of decision we must make. He not only works through the conscience to make us aware of sin, but He also helps us choose between good and best. As we listen to His voice and heed His warnings, He purifies and sharpens our conscience so that it aligns more precisely with the Word and will of God.
One problem is that the conscience has the capacity to be shaped by our responses—we can damage its dependability by rejecting or ignoring its promptings. Then sins that should bother us won’t register. But heeding its warnings make it sharper and more sensitive, protecting us even more effectively.
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