It is not uncommon for a young man to suddenly get interested in postmillennialism and start pontificating about Christianity and politics while his own life is riddled with sin and falling apart. It’s easier to have convictions about politicians should do in Washington, DC than to fight and kill sin in your own heart. A bad conscience will do that to a man. Thus, a bad conscience doesn’t mean you abandon all sense of morality. It often means you substitute God’s law for your own and impose that one on others ruthlessly.

This essay is primarily for pastors, but these concepts are beneficial and needed for all believers.

Years ago, when I first became a pastor, I went to a church planting bootcamp sponsored by Acts 29 (a church planting network I was part of at the time). One of my favorite sessions was about eldership. The man who led the session discussed what the elder’s calling is, how to identify and raise up new elders, and how to examine their character. It was an excellent and helpful presentation.

Shortly after the conference, however, I found out something about the man who taught that session.

He was an adulterer.

He abandoned his wife and children and ran off with another woman, leaving his church devastated and scrambling to find a new pastor. As far as I know, he’s now abandoned the faith entirely.

I wish I could say that his story was unusual, but it’s not. It feels like every few months somebody I respected and looked up to—someone who’s books I read and ministry I followed—has some kind of moral failure. Of course, nobody who goes into pastoral ministry expects that to happen to them. And most of us tell ourselves it won’t, because we’re not the kind of man that that happens to.

But brothers, you are exactly the kind of man that could happen to.

Why? Because you’re human. And because you’ve got a target on your back. That doesn’t mean the devil sneaks into your heart and forces you to act against your will. No, it happens through small compromises and micro-concessions that push you down a dark path. And it typically happens very slowly.

The Scriptures identify a key factor that both sustains a fruitful ministry and prevents pastoral shipwreck. It’s the same factor in both cases. Paul calls it a “good conscience.”

The Aim of Our Charge

In 1 Timothy 1:5, Paul gives Timothy what amounts to a thesis statement for the entire letter: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”

Notice that there are three qualifiers that define the kind of love Paul is talking about:

1. A “sincere faith” means you are a legitimate believer. You are converted, regenerate, filled with the Holy Spirit.
2. A “pure heart” means you are in ministry for the right reasons. You love God, you love his people, and you want to shepherd souls and build them up
3. A “good conscience” means your inner life is clear. You are not burdened by unconfessed sin or driven by nagging guilt you’re trying to manage.

All three of these things are important, but from my experience, the conscience is the most neglected of the three. At a recent Founder’s Ministry conference where I gave the talk this essay is based on, several men approached me afterward to tell me, “I’d never heard a discussion about the conscience like this before.” And yet, it’s so important that Paul included in the “aim of [his] charge.”

Actually, Paul has a lot to say about the conscience. It shows up repeatedly throughout the book of 1 Timothy. Every time it appears, it is connected to either the health or the destruction of a man’s ministry. In Acts 24:16, Paul said, “I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” When Paul listed qualifications for deacons in 1 Timothy 3:9, he required that they “must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.”

In other words, a good conscience isn’t a luxury, it is a precondition for effective ministry. So what is the conscience?

What is the Conscience?

The conscience is the faculty of the mind and soul that tells you whether what you are doing is right or wrong. It an inner sense that tells you the moral quality of a given action. Put another way, it’s your moral compass.

This is important because we don’t go through life pulling up Bible verses for every decision we make. You know the Word of God, and as you simmer in it, it informs your moral compass so that in a given situation you can make a moral decision quickly. For example, when your conscience is working properly, you won’t tell a lie even when you’re tempted to do so because you intuitively know it’s wrong. You don’t need to look it up, you just know it.

A conscience can be called “good” when it meets two basic criteria:

1. First, your inner moral compass is properly calibrated by the Word of God. In other words, your sense of right and wrong is not calibrated by your feelings, or culture, or your wife, or by Instagram. The things you believe to be good actually correspond with what Scripture says is good.
2. Second, your outer behavior aligns with what your conscience tells you. In other words, you know what is right, and then you do it (cf James 4:17).

When both conditions are met, you’re better equipped for ministry. You can love people well, preach with authority, correct sin with integrity, and shepherd souls without the constant drag of hypocrisy nagging you from the inside.

How a Conscience Goes Bad

The conscience can also become bad, and when it does, it can kill your ministry and shipwreck your faith.

Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:6, “Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.” People who ruin their ministries begin by swerving from the things Paul just mentioned the verse before: a pure heart, a good conscience, a sincere faith. Kind of like a moral car accident—first you swerve, then you crash.

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