Adam and Eve were created with perfect consciences, with perfect knowledge of right and wrong, with a clear inner voice encouraging them to do right and warning them to avoid wrong. Herman Bavinck did not believe Adam and Eve had a conscience before the fall. He said that conscience was “a proof of humanity’s fall, a witness to human guilt before the face of God” (Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 3, 173).

I humbly beg to differ. Conscience is not just a negative (telling us what is wrong and convicting us when we do it), but a positive (telling us what is right to do and approving what is done right). Romans 2:15 tells us that conscience not only accuses but defends; it not only tells us what is wrong but also what is right. And it does that not just retrospectively but prospectively as well. That’s what makes Adam and Eve’s sin even worse. They not only had God’s command, they also had clear and clean consciences. They had the outer voice of God’s command and the inner voice of conscience. And despite all that they rejected that knowledge and disobeyed that voice by sinning in the garden of Eden. This resulted in serious damage to their consciences, and ours.

Sin filled our consciences with guilt, shame, and fear, suppressing the volume of God’s inner voice; muffling it and mixing it up. While conscience is still present, even in the heathen (Rom. 2:15), its loss of reliable knowledge means its voice is dim, distant, and often confused.    

Due to the effect of sin on our consciences, and its subsequent fallibility, we need to have our consciences re-educated. Our lack of information and our misinformation must be replaced with divine information. And that only comes through God’s Word. Alphonse De Lamartine said: “A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.” That’s why, before claiming possession of a good conscience in Acts 24:16, Paul said in verse 14 that he believed “all things written in the law and the prophets.” He had a good conscience because he had an educated conscience.

There are many who claim to have a clear conscience, whereas what they really have is an uninformed conscience, or a badly educated conscience, often resulting in a brazenly insensitive conscience. A badly educated conscience though can also produce a paralyzingly oversensitive conscience (1 Cor. 8:7, 10, 12). People can think something is wrong when nothing is wrong. All consciences, insensitive and over-sensitive, need to be informed and filled with the Word of God.

Martin Luther started a revolution by educating his conscience with God’s Word. When the religious superpower of the day accused him of pitting his puny conscience against the might of the Church, he replied: “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other, so help me God.”

Tomorrow we will see that a good conscience is also an exercised conscience.

The Academy of TV, Arts & Sciences honored eight “TV shows with a conscience” at its annual TV Academy Honors Ceremony a few months ago. One winner was a CSI Crime Scene Investigation episode about prejudice. Among the others was a documentary about Alzheimers, and one about Assisted Suicide. There was a special award for an episode of Glee that the cast performed in wheelchairs out of sympathy for a disabled member of the Glee club. Actually, the actor is not really disabled – he’s just acting disabled – a fact that has provoked many disabled actors to protest! The show has regularly been engulfed in controversy due to risque story lines and most recently a photo-shoot in GQ, in which the female actresses posed provocatively in school uniforms.

TV with a conscience
So that’s TV with a conscience! It’s thought-provoking and provocative TV. It’s TV that challenges the usual norms. And, to the extent that it reminds us of the oft-forgotten difficulties and dilemmas that people face, and makes us more thoughtful and sympathetic, it is good. But its “conscience” seems to have no reference to divine moral standards, it is dependent on electronic visual images for its long-term maintenance, and its effects are limited to the one issue of life being addressed. This is quite different to and far short of the world-changing good conscience of the Apostle Paul or of Martin Luther.

The greatest friend – or enemy
Conscience is the inner voice in every person that tells us that we ought to do God’s will. If we do, it will comfort and encourage us, regardless of painful external circumstances. If we don’t, it will accuse and pain us, regardless of external comfort. That’s why Richard Sibbes said that “conscience is either the greatest friend or the greatest enemy in the world.” As such, it has been given various names over the years: God’s spokesman, God’s deputy, God’s watchman, God’s sergeant, God’s preacher, God’s whisper.

And even the unconverted recognize the existence and benefits of conscience. The late Christopher Reeve (of Superman fame) said: “I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don’t know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do.”

Always striving
In Acts chapter 24, Paul was in a dire situation. He had been arrested in Jerusalem, and sent to Caeserea to protect him from would-be assassins. There he was called before Felix, the Roman governor of Judea, then residing in Ceaserea. A skillful and powerful advocate, Tertullus, was the prosecuting attorney. He accused Paul of three things: (i) you are a political rebel, (ii) a Nazarene sect leader, and (iii) a Temple defiler. Paul denied charges (i) and (iii).  And though he admitted charge (ii), he denies any sense of guilt being associated with the admission.  He denied two charges with a good conscience and he admitted one charge with a good conscience. In other words, however many people, courts, Kings and Ceasar’s accused him of wrong, his conscience comforted him.

This was because he was always striving to to have a conscience without offense toward God and man (Acts 24:16). This good conscience, this clear conscience, was the great power behind Paul’s life. It changed Paul’s world, and through him changed the whole world. In the next few days we’ll look at four characteristics of a world-transforming conscience.