Calibrating the Conscience

Abstract: Matthew Bingham highlights the importance of a well-calibrated conscience for the life of every Christian. Since the conscience is not infallible, Christians should calibrate it according to God’s Word and allow it to be shaped in the fellowship of God’s people.

The nature and function of the “conscience” is something we often take for granted. In one sense, few things seem as immediate and obvious as the nature of this particular human faculty: a person’s conscience discerns right from wrong, approving the former and disapproving the latter. And yet, there is also a sense in which the precise nature of the conscience eludes us. Theologian Charles Hodge (1797–1878) describes the conscience as a “mysterious power,” a mental faculty that seems both to emerge from our inner world and stand outside of us as an external judge.^{11 .}Charles Hodge, Princeton Sermons: Outlines of Discourses, Doctrinal and Practical (Banner of Truth Trust, 1958), 170.

A further complication arises from the evident reality that one’s conscience can malfunction. As Hodge puts it, “It is not infallible in its judgments.”^{22 .}Hodge, Princeton Sermons, 170. Though usually a reliable guide, experience suggests and Scripture confirms that one’s conscience can both go strangely quiet in the face of sin and chirp too loudly about matters on which the Bible is silent. Paul illustrates both when he warns Timothy against “the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared” (1 Tim. 4:2). Having lost all sensitivity to the real sin in their lives (e.g., they are untroubled by their dishonesty), these mencan still insist that Christians “abstain from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim. 4:3). These two seemingly opposite faults stem from the same problem: a failure to correctly calibrate the conscience.

If this sort of miscalibration characterizes those who are on the wrong path, it seems reasonable to conceive the life of the believer as a lifelong attempt to calibrate the conscience correctly. Indeed, Paul does something very close to this in Romans 12:2, framing a godly life in terms of “the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” That is a fine definition of a rightly calibrated Christian conscience: thoroughly transformed and renewed by the Spirit, such that it is able to “discern what is the will of God” in every situation.

But how, exactly, do we do this? How do we perceive God’s perfect will for our lives while neither succumbing to an overly sensitive legalism nor an overly permissive license? For those in ministry, the need to understand these dynamics is impelled by a double burden. Pastors must both attend to our own consciences and look after the spiritual health of those set under our care. Indeed, as the Puritan William Ames put it, the minister’s “daily labor . . . is to deal with the consciences of men.”^{33 .}William Ames, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (London, 1639), “To the Reader.”Another way to describe that “daily labor” is as a continual attempt to calibrate consciences so that they increasingly reflect God’s own character.

Let’s consider four key steps along that road.

1. A Properly Calibrated Christian Conscience Begins with Becoming a Christian

This does not mean that non-Christians lack a conscience. The conscience is a constituent part of our humanity as made in God’s image, and Scripture teaches that even fallen sinners “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Rom. 2:15). As Archibald Alexander (1772–1851) observes, “Though man in his natural state is spiritually dead . . . yet is he still a reasonable being, and has a conscience by which he is capable of discerning the difference between good and evil, and of feeling the force of moral obligation.”^{44 .}Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1844), 46. We observe this all around us every day; unregenerate people clearly experience guilt for some but not all of their actions, and that ability to differentiate demonstrates the reality of a conscience at work.

And yet, while the conscience remains after the Fall, apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, it cannot bring salvation or real growth in godliness. As Alexander goes on to say, “There is nothing in this kind of conviction which has any tendency to change the heart or to make it better.”^{55 .}Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience, 47. Moreover, while the conscience is still present in the unregenerate, it is prone to sometimes grievous malfunctioning, not only failing to differentiate right from wrong, but actually reversing moral categories outright: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isa. 5:20).

The first and most significant step for calibrating the conscience, then, is to receive the blessing of enlightenment that only the Spirit of God can bring. When Paul describes his conversion and commission in Acts 26, he recounts the Lord Jesus sending him to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). This spiritual opening of the eyes through conversion is the sine qua non of conscience calibration, and thus, a minister’s first step towards helping people along this road is to make sure that he is regularly preaching towards conversion, clearly presenting the gospel, and communicating that apart from new birth in Christ all moralistic attempts to calibrate the conscience will fail.

2. The Conscience Is Rightly Calibrated Primarily Through Immersion in God’s Word

If the Christian life is one long attempt to calibrate our consciences, such that we are approving what God approves and disapproving that which he does not, then clearly the key factor will be steady exposure to and meditation on God’s will and ways. And the only place where we can learn about God like this is in Scripture.

Indeed, Psalm 119 can be read as an extended meditation on conscience-calibration through such continual engagement with God’s special revelation:

Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,
who seek him with their whole heart. (Ps. 119:2)

Here at the outset, we see that the psalmist prizes a well-informed obedience that flows out of a renewed heart, a heart that increasingly mirrors God’s own in its judgments and desires. Then, as the psalm unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that the God-given means for achieving this sanctified synchronization is to meditate on God’s own self-revelation:

I will praise you with an upright heart,
when I learn your righteous rules. (Ps. 119:7)

Note that learning God’s “righteous rules” is connected not just with obedience but with real praise that flows from “an upright heart.” That is the mark of a correctly calibrated conscience—a growing delight in approving and disapproving in accord with God’s own judgments:

How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way. (Ps. 119:103–104)

Here, as elsewhere, meditation on divine precepts yields a deeper understanding of God’s ways and a corresponding love of them. If our minds are not steeped in Scripture, they will be steeped in whatever our pop culture happens to offer on any given day, and the result will be a conscience calibrated according to the rhythms of the world, a movement that runs precisely contrary to Paul’s summons in Romans 12:2.

Practically speaking, then, believers must intentionally cultivate a Word-based piety characterized by hearing from God in Scripture, meditating on what has been heard, and praying God’s promises back to him. Such constant immersion is critical because the circumstances and challenges of life in a fallen world are too varied and multifaceted to be anticipated in advance. We need minds and hearts so saturated with Scripture that we reflexively think and feel in God-honoring ways. In other words, we need rightly calibrated consciences.

Pastors have a special responsibility to both encourage their people to be in the Word and to model it for them Sunday by Sunday. Services centered around and saturated with Scripture will both serve as a means of corporate conscience-calibration in the moment and as a way of showing people what it looks like to think biblically on the very sorts of difficult issues that most require a fine-tuned conscience.

3. A Right Calibration of the Christian Conscience Will Be Greatly Helped Through Fellowship with God’s People and Greatly Hindered by Neglecting It

One of the most interesting aspects of the conscience is its susceptibility to the influence of other people, whether for good or for ill. In Romans 1, after explaining that fallen humanity willfully breaks God’s moral law despite knowing better, Paul highlights this corporate aspect of conscience-calibration by noting that sinners also “give approval to those who” commit similar sins (Rom. 1:32). What is it about our fallen hearts that causes us not only to sin but to actively cheer on others as they pursue sin themselves? In large part, this tendency reflects an intensification of the basic orientation of fallen humanity, “who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). In rebellion against God, we suppress the truth about the wrongness of our own actions, thus deadening the conscience and relieving the burden of guilt. By encouraging others to join us in sin and celebrating when they do so, we engage in this same dynamic on a corporate scale and multiply its conscience-searing effects.

But thankfully, among the redeemed, this same corporate movement of hearts can work in a positive direction. Scripture urges God’s people to “exhort one another every day,” so “that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13). This is precisely the opposite of the sinful dynamic Paul describes in Romans 1:32, and it highlights the role that the church plays in calibrating the Christian conscience. Sometimes the exhortations and example of others can cut through a deadened conscience and draw us back toward godliness.

Pastors must pay special attention to this, as the inherent power of community to mold individual attitudes regarding moral issues will always be operative. The question is whether that power will be harnessed toward God-honoring or destructive ends. We’ve all seen congregations where the collective conscience has been miscalibrated. Sometimes, this involves promoting third-order wisdom questions to first-order imperatives—think of a church context where homeschooling becomes the de facto norm and an unstated expectation. At other times, this same group power can foster a culture of license around a particular issue—think of a church context in which overindulging in alcohol is winked at. Our communities will shape our consciences, and thus, pastors should both encourage meaningful church membership and be intentional about building a healthy culture in which conscience issues are treated with care and biblical nuance.

4. The Christian Conscience Will Be Rightly Calibrated Through Intentional and Steady Self-Examination

Though originally intended for Timothy in his pastoral work, Paul’s exhortation to “keep a close watch on yourself” (1 Tim. 4:16) applies to every believer who wishes to rightly calibrate the conscience. This is because calibration requires both listening to one’s conscience and then prayerfully correlating its judgments with what we find in Scripture. There is thus a reciprocal relationship between self-examination and biblical meditation. Through self-reflection, I call to mind the particulars of my conduct and give space for my conscience to comment on what it finds. And yet it’sultimately in God’s Word that I find the standard against which such inner self-judgments are to be measured. Without meditating on Scripture, my conscience is liable to drift, and yet without careful consideration of my life’s particulars, my Bible reading can detach from the circumstances into which God has placed me. This is why Puritan authors like Henry Scudder (d. 1659) insisted that “you should . . . be well read in the book of your conscience, as well as in the Bible.”^{66 .}Henry Scudder, The Christian’s Daily Walk (Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1800), 106. Each reinforces the other, and the synergy between the two serves as a key engine for calibrating the conscience.

For pastors, the sermon provides an opportunity to prompt and model self-examination from the pulpit. Effective application digs into the particularities of life in a fallen world, both illustrating the kinds of questions we should be asking ourselves in private and serving as an on-the-spot diagnostic for our hearers. The English Puritans were especially good at this, as illustrated by Joseph Alleine (1634–1688):

Be exhorted, O man, to examine yourself. What does your conscience say? Does it accuse? Does it pierce you as you go? . . . Does your conscience carry you to your closet and tell you how seldom prayer and reading are performed there? Does it carry you to your family . . . ? Does your conscience lead you to your shop, your trade, and tell you of some iniquity there? . . . O conscience! . . . Rouse yourself, and do your work. Now let the preacher in your bosom speak.^{77 .}Joseph Alleine, A Sure Guide to Heaven (Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 48–49.

Calibrating the conscience, whether our own or that of our hearers, is not easy work. But it’s the essential work to which ministers of the Word are called, their “daily business” and deepest privilege. Through our preaching, teaching, and shepherding, we have an opportunity to help believers better understand what the conscience is and how it can be rightly calibrated for God’s glory and our good.