Acts 24:16 “This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.”
This brings us to the fourth component of our inward man, which is the conscience of man. God has given the conscience to mankind to guide them to choose good and reject evil. In other words man’s conscience acts as referee that blows its whistle when the individual chooses to do that which is evil, and gives them the green light when they choose to do that which is good. All men have a conscience, believer and unbeliever alike, and the conscience performs the exact same function in all men, for you will recall that it was the consciences of the unbelievers that prevented them from stoning the adulteress when they accused her before the Lord Jesus in the temple (John 8:9). And so we do not get new consciences when we come into the kingdom, for our conscience performs the same function after we are saved as it did before we were saved. Although we do not receive new consciences, we can however either weaken or strengthen our consciences. We strengthen our consciences when we obey them. In the passage of scripture quoted above the apostle Paul speaks of always living his life in a way that did not violate his conscience. Those who choose to violate their consciences however will weaken them over time (1 Corinthians 8:7). The Old Testament makes no mention of the conscience of man, and the first time that man’s conscience is mentioned in the bible is in John’s gospel. Nevertheless as we will see in this teaching, the conscience of man has always been a part of man. Again this highlights to us the fact that under the New Covenant, we have greater revelation than the saints had under the Old Covenant. As we will see in the following section, unlike the will and the mind, the conscience of man is a physical component of the brain and is thus located there. And so strictly speaking, the conscience should be described as being a part of the outward man. Nevertheless because of the interaction that the conscience has with the mind and the will of man, we list it as being part of the soul to more easily understand its function.
The above diagram is an illustration of the various parts of man and how they function in relation to each other. As we have already discussed, the will, mind, spirit and conscience make up the inward man, while the body is the outward man. We can see from this diagram that the mind, the conscience, the spirit and the body all assert their influence on the decisions that men make as an act of their will. We can also see from this diagram that the mind is the filter through which the conscience, spirit and body of the believer try to exert influence on our wills. And so we can see why the condition of the mind of believers is so important, because if the mind is more disposed toward the spirit and conscience, i.e. spiritual, then it will allow those parts of man to have the stronger influence on the decisions of their will. If however the mind is more disposed toward the body, i.e. carnal, then it will allow that part of man to have the stronger influence on the decisions of their will.
Michael E.B. Maher
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