Our conscience is placed within us as we are created by God in relation to other creatures. God governs this world by covenant relationship to His creatures, and by instilling a natural structure within us as we carry out our covenant obligations.

Recent events have forced many Christians to re-consider the nature of their Spiritual liberty in Jesus Christ, as well as how their conscience functions. This is the case explicitly in regards to the various governmental mandates to either close services of worship, or regulate them in some regards, on account of health concerns. It is also related to the imposition of governments to have individual citizens wear masks in certain conditions, observe curfews on account of civil unrest, and refrain from fireworks in certain locales. Because these issues have stirred up my Christian brothers and sisters to some level of debate, disagreement, and even dissension, I have written what I hope is a good explanation of the nature of Christian liberty and of the conscience. I am intentionally leaving out the issue of how a person should relate to the commands of civil governance, as this is addressed by other people in a better way than myself. In the end, this little article may not answer every question, but I hope it forces us to consider the nature of Christian liberty and the freedom of the conscience more thoroughly.

I. What is the Conscience, and what is Christian Liberty?

Christian Liberty

Christian liberty is a profoundly broad freedom that God grants His people in every age from numerous spiritual evils and to spiritual goods. The Westminster Confession of Faith details these freedoms as, “freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law; and, in…being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin; from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation; as also, in...free access to God, and…yielding obedience unto him, not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and willing mind” (WCF 20.1). God has a purpose behind granting us liberty from these things and to these other things, which is, “that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our lives” (WCF 20.3). In summary, Christian liberty is being delivered from a spiritual enslavement that carries legal guilt and a punitive curse, to a situation of freedom in order to serve God with joy. [1]

The Conscience

The liberty of the conscience and Christian liberty are two distinct but interrelated ideas. The conscience exists among all people, but is sanctified in the Christian. There are numerous definitions for the conscience, but my favorite is that the conscience is “the moral faculty within human beings that assesses what is good and what is bad“. [2] It is a moral faculty. A faculty is a “part” or a sort of invisible organ of a person that carries out a specific task. This faculty is moral–it is concerned with doing things that are wrong or right. This faculty, based on the teaching of Scripture, is endowed by God to all human beings, just as He endows the soul, mind, will, and affections. It is not merely an expression of various people groups based in our cultural setting or place in time. This means that it is originally designed to make distinguishing determinations between what God says is right or wrong, and not merely between the norms of a particular culture. To put it another way, as a moral faculty, it assesses whether something is good or bad. Once it makes its assessment, it serves as a witness (Rom. 9:1), then judge (Rom. 2:15), then either as a prosecutor (accusing) or defender (excusing) of one’s own feelings, thoughts, words, or deeds, and finally as a mentor who seeks to keep you from evil (Acts 24:16).

But the conscience is not alike in every person. Naturally, the conscience may be insensitive, being evil (Heb. 10:22), seared (1 Tim. 4:2), and/or defiled (Titus 1:15). Even in the believer, the conscience may be oversensitive rather than insensitive, and therefore called weak (1 Cor. 8:7). An evil conscience judges something to be bad but does it anyway. A seared conscience is one that, after constant abuse, no longer recognizes what is bad as bad. A defiled conscience is one that “celebrates what is impure and denigrates what is good” (DeYoung). A weak conscience prosecutes us for things that are not really wrong. It is “too easily wounded” (MacArthur). [3]

On the other hand the conscience that once was evil, or seared, or defiled, or weak may become cleansed (Heb. 10:22), good (Acts 23:1; 2 Tim. 1:3), clear (Acts 24:16; 1 Tim. 1:5; 3:9; Heb. 13:18; 1 Pet. 3:16), and strong (Rom. 15:1). A cleansed conscience is one that used to be evil, and previously judged things as bad but did it anyway. A cleansed conscience could be one that used to be seared, doing evil but not recognizing it as evil. A cleansed conscience could be one that was previously defiled, previously celebrating what was evil and denigrating what was good. But, by the work of the Holy Spirit, and faith in Jesus Christ, this conscience has now been changed, and decreed innocent from these false ways of assessing right and wrong. Further than a cleansed conscience, a good conscience is one that properly assesses what is right and wrong, appropriately defends itself when wrongly accused of evil, and accurately convicts a person for doing wrong, swiftly fleeing to Christ for forgiveness. A clear conscience is one that has no reason to accuse itself. Related to these, a strong conscience is one that has been informed by the Word of God, and accurately understands what God desires of His people in the New Covenant.

II. Liberty of Conscience

The Christian conscience is related to Christian liberty in that it means if certain subjects are declared sinful by tradition or the world or a weaker brother, then the person with a strong, clear, good, and cleansed conscience need not submit out of necessity. Our conscience stands before God, and agrees with His evaluation of things. Therefore we are freed from false demands, from impositions that God has not said are wrong, or commands God has not said are good. At the same time, we are set free from these demands in order to show love to one another. A person with a strong conscience is encouraged to submit to the moral concerns of a weaker Christian out of compassion for them. In fact Paul even urges this submission in certain circumstances out of concern for a brother’s well-being (Rom. 14:15).

The Conscience is Free from Man-Made Traditions

It is free from “the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or besides it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray to liberty of conscience” (WCF 20.2). This means that the conscience has liberty from man-made teachings in regards to how to live by faith, and how to worship God. To decide to obey man-made teachings in regards to these issues is to violate your liberty of conscience. But what of things that the word of God clearly says are acceptable or unacceptable in regards to faith and worship? The conscience is not free from these. The conscience is bound to do them, even if the conscience does not correctly assess them.

Not Free from God’s Commands

The conscience is bound to do or not do that which is explicitly taught or necessarily deduced (implicitly taught) from the word of God. The WCF 1.6 says, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life [same phrase as in 20.2], is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture”. This means that certain things may not be explicitly taught in Scripture (the word “Trinity” for example, or the Sabbath in the New Covenant, or *ahem* infant baptism), however they are necessarily deduced and therefore must be taught and believed. Our conscience is not free from these sorts of things.

Beyond elements of worship, our conscience is also bound to answer to God’s implicit moral demands. For example, am I free, as a Christian, to shoot up heroine whenever I desire? The Word of God does not explicitly forbid this practice. In addition, the prohibition against bestiality is not explicit in the New Covenant. If we rely upon mere explicit commands as the determining factor for liberty of conscience, then a number of immoral or unethical practices will be considered permissible. Instead, we must employ the use of logic and reason in considering how God intends His Word to be understood and practiced. In fact, a number of things may be described or commanded in general, but we must employ wisdom and logic to determine how these general prescriptions fit our current situations. AA Hodge comments, “That, while the Scriptures are a complete rule of faith and practice, and while nothing is to be regarded as an article of faith to be believed, or a religious duty obligatory upon the conscience, which is not explicitly or implicitly taught in Scripture, nevertheless they do not descend in practical matters into details, but, laying down general principles, leave men to apply them in the exercise of their natural judgment, in the light of experience, and in adaptation to changing circumstances, as they are guided by the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit.” [4]

III. Is the Conscience Always Correct?

No! As R.C. Sproul states, “the conscience is not the final ethical authority for human conduct because the conscience is capable of change.” [5] If a person is unregenerate and has a seared conscience, they will not “hear the alarm bells” ringing when they do something wrong. If a person is a Christian with a weak conscience, they struggle with faith and knowledge in the instructions of God for His people under the New Covenant, and may be incorrect in their assessment about the ethicality of certain practices.

IV. Is the Conscience Always to be Followed?

A Regenerated Conscience

Yes, the conscience is indeed to be followed for the believer. R.C. Sproul argues, “acting against conscience is sin (Rom. 14:23)…it is [sin] because he is doing something that he believes is a sin.” Yet, “on the other hand, we have to remember that acting according to the conscience may sometimes be sin as well” particularly if the conscience is misinformed. If we are “negligent in studying the Word of God” we are still liable to God, even if our conscience does not accuse us of guilt. So, according to Sproul, to disobey the conscience is to sin. But, on the other hand, to obey a conscience that is wrong in its assessment of moral good and evil is also to sin.

So then, what of the weak, Christian conscience? Must it always be obeyed? Paul’s examples of a weak conscience in Scripture range from examples of people who believe it is wrong to eat ceremonially forbidden foods (Rom. 14-15) to examples of people who believe it is wrong to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 8). He urges the Christians with strong consciences not to force Christians with weak consciences to stumble by eating these items in front of them. He says this is the case because for the Christian with a weak conscience to go against this moral assessment, “for him, it is sin.” The brother or sister with weak faith sees a fellow Christian doing something that they believe to be sin, and says, “Oh no! I can’t believe this Spiritual leader would do that! I’m distressed!” Paul doesn’t tell the person with an over-sensitive conscience to be quiet and get over it. Instead, he tells the strong spiritual leaders to not give unnecessary offense, because the weak Christian’s conscience is still in formation. This leads me to conclude that it is always sin to go against a weak conscience. But, this is not some sort of spiritually good state in which to remain stagnant! We don’t want people to remain weak in their consciences, but teach them about what God says is right so that their conscience will grow strong in conformity to God’s law. As MacArthur puts it, “A weak and constantly accusing Christian conscience is a spiritual liability, not a strength. Many people with especially tender consciences tend to display their over-scrupulousness as if it were proof of deep spirituality. It is exactly the opposite.“

But what about Peter in Acts 10, when God says “eat” but his conscience says “no”? At that point in the New Covenant administration, Peter was apparently unaware that, or unsure whether, Jesus’ resurrection abrogated the ceremonial food laws. God corrected Peter’s ignorance by giving him knowledge of the nature of the New Covenant. We do the same by telling those with weak consciences that it is not sin to partake in these foods. But we, unlike God, have no ability to change a person’s conscience!

A Defiled and Seared Conscience

The conscience is always to be followed for a believer, but for the unbeliever, no, sometimes the conscience is not to be followed. In some cases, the conscience is so skewed, that it urges sin. One question that could reframe this is, “Is it a sin to disobey a defiled or seared conscience?” Based on the premise that it is sin to do something one believes to be a sin, should we consider disobeying a defiled or seared conscience as sin? For example, if one believes it is a sin to allow only heterosexuals to marry, or only two persons within marriage, then is it a sin to campaign for changes in our laws about this? If one believes it is a sin to permit Churches to preach about sin, then is it a sin to seek to close Churches? If one believes it is sin to protest in front of abortion clinics, is it sinful to try to stop protests in front of abortion clinics? Simply because one believes something to be sin, it does not follow that they ought to obey their seared or defiled conscience. There are definite limits to the idea that it is a sin to disobey the conscience. In fact, the defiled and seared conscience ought to be disobeyed. The very fact that they are defiled and seared indicates that they are useless guides for what is wrong or right before God. But the important thing to note about this is that the Christian’s conscience is not defiled or seared, but cleansed!

Here are some examples of a defiled or seared conscience: If my conscience tells me it is fine to wear a woman’s dress, or unacceptable to go to Church on Sunday, then the issue is not a matter of whether my conscience is strong or weak, but whether my conscience is defiled or seared. One real illustration of this issue is with a young woman who had lived her life as a lesbian but became a Christian by the grace of God. She traced the steps by which she underwent conversion, and detailed how initially she did not feel that lesbianism was wrong, but she believed what God says is true. She determined to stop practicing lesbianism, not because she was convicted in her conscience that this particular sin is wrong, but because she trusted God is correct. Over time, her conscience was repaired, and she came to feel in her conscience how grievous a sin is this practice. But as she says it herself, “Obedience comes before understanding. I wanted to understand. But did I actually want to do his will? God promised to reveal this understanding to me if I ‘willed to do his will’.” If someone had demanded of her, “No! Don’t stop practicing this until you can say that you have not violated your conscience, because it is always wrong to go against conscience” then she would never have repented. In this way, we see that the defiled or seared conscience must be resisted, restrained, corrected, and conformed to the word of God.

A Pretense of Conscience

But there is another circumstance in which the issue of following the conscience is actually about whether or not it really is a conscience issue in the first place! What do I mean by that? There are times when a person claims, and may even be self-deluded in thinking, that their conscience is telling them something is wrong or right. As we noted above, the conscience is malleable, may err, and sometimes should be rejected. While we should listen to a weak conscience and a strong conscience, there are certain “claims to conscience” that we should not obey.

The conscience ought to tell you that what God says to do, you ought to do, and what God forbids, you ought not to do. But there are times when a person’s conscience agrees with the Word of God, and yet that person does not want to obey. What a person might do, based on the Bible’s teaching about obeying a weak or strong conscience, is to suggest that their conscience says it is okay, or does not say it is wrong. It is possible for a person to do or not do something on the pretense that their conscience says “don’t do it” or “do it”. The logic of a pretender is: “If a weak or strong conscience must be obeyed, then I will claim my conscience is offended so I don’t have to or do have to do something.”

One example of a possible pretense of conscience is with a person who told me they believe it is perfectly acceptable for a Christian to get drunk. I showed them, in the Word of God, why this was unacceptable for the Christian. They said they were unsure as to whether the passage means what I say it means. They responded that perhaps this is an issue of the liberty of the conscience: since they are not convinced that it is immoral, they should not restrain themselves from it. Would it not be sin to go against the conscience that says drunkenness is fine? To demand that they must listen to their conscience, in this particular situation, would be incorrect. Either this person was lying and is getting drunk “upon pretense of a clear conscience”, or else they still had a seared or defiled conscience. Should they, then violate their conscience (or pretense of liberty of conscience)? By all means, yes. Yes, they should.

Or for another one, consider the man or woman who says things like, “I am miserable in my marriage. God says He intends for His people to be happy in Him. I am unhappy, therefore I should divorce my spouse.” The logic of the argument is purportedly that one’s Christian liberty and happiness are being undermined. But the reality is that God commands married couples to uphold their vows for the sake of the well-being of the other party. To claim divorce is acceptable on the grounds of Christian liberty or liberty of conscience, for these reasons, is a pretense of conscience.

This leads us to another thought, which is that the individual’s conscience and Christian liberty are wrapped up not only in individual life and in the individual’s relation to God, but also in our various spheres within society. This is important to discuss because it helps us understand the way we employ our Christian liberty and our cleansed consciences.

V. Spheres of Society

Our conscience is placed within us as we are created by God in relation to other creatures. God governs this world by covenant relationship to His creatures, and by instilling a natural structure within us as we carry out our covenant obligations.

Covenant Relationship

The covenant relationship God establishes with us is either through the covenant of works or the covenant of grace. We are either “in Adam” as our covenant representative, and bear his nature, gifts, and merits, or we are “in Christ” as our covenant representative, and bear his nature, his gifts, his merits. Adam disobeyed, obtained a corrupted nature, lost the Spiritual gifts, and earned us death and everlasting hell. We are, each of us, conceived as natural descendants from Adam, and obtain and deserve all that Adam has along with an afflicted conscience. On the other hand, Jesus suffered the justice due for sin, obeyed the full extent of the law, obtained the right to pour out the Holy Spirit without measure, and earned us life and everlasting paradise with God. Those who are represented by Him are endowed with a new nature, the gift of the Holy Spirit, forgiveness of all sins, a restored conscience, the beginning of eternal life, and the promise of life forevermore. But, some outward members of the covenant of grace are not actually real members of the covenant of grace. Faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for a person to be joined to Jesus, and to appropriate His obedience and suffering on our behalf. A person without faith in Jesus may be “in the covenant” in some respect, to outward appearances, by making vows publicly or else by being born as children of covenant members and heirs of the covenant promises (WLC 166), but unless they believe in Jesus as the covenant mediator, they are not inward members of the covenant of grace.

This distinction within the covenant of grace might be unfamiliar to you. It might lead you to ask some questions. A common one is in regards to infants, but it also applies to unbelieving adults. The question is if they are without faith, and are actually members of the covenant of works, then in what way are they members of the covenant of grace? In regards to infants, we do not assume either way whether or not they have faith.  They could easily have been regenerated and have faith from the womb like John the Baptist.  But they likewise might not have faith until they are 2 or 3 or 7 or 10 or 12, or ever. They are outwardly considered members of the covenant of grace, and are treated as people who are entitled to believe what they are taught.  At some point it is appropriate for them to step forward and publicly claim their birthright (so to speak) by professing that they believe in Christ (and possibly have done so since infancy), or else cede their birthright like Esau and depart from the covenant community.  The one who says, “I do not believe” at an appropriate age is to be excommunicated from the covenant, and should be evangelized as a stranger to the covenant.  That said, there is a second group of people within the outward covenant of grace, who are actually not genuine and inward members. There are numerous people who never apostatize or leave the covenant community, and yet have never believed in the covenant mediator.  For this reason, they are genuinely in Adam though outwardly they appear to be in Christ  They are among the covenant of grace but not truly in the covenant of grace.  These people are told they will receive greater condemnation!  It is these people, who are “hypocrites”, the literal meaning of this word, who will receive covenant curses.  Grace was held out to them, Christ was declared to them, the Lord’s Supper was served to them, baptism administered for them, and though these things should have led them to repent, instead they hardened them, and they filled up the full measure of their guilt by crucifying the Son of God again to their own destruction. Their consciences are seared and defiled from willingly living a double-life.

But not only does God grant the conscience within a covenant structure, He also gives it to us to use within

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