Conscience

Romans 2:14-15 - "For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them."

Another general way in which God reveals Himself to everyone is through human consciences. The human conscience, according to this passage, is the reflection of God’s moral law. The conscience is an interesting thing. What is your conscience? Where is your conscience? Where did it come from? The dictionary defines conscience like this: "The inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action." So the conscience is an inward standard or code that distinguishes between right and wrong. But here’s the thing, not only does it distinguish between right and wrong, it also compels you to do what is right and refuse what is wrong. It distinguishes between what is morally good and morally bad and then it prompts you to do the morally good thing and shun the morally bad thing. It commends one and condemns the other. The conscience is based on some seemingly unwritten standard, some universal moral code. But who determined the standard? Who wrote the code? C.S. Lewis writes about this in his book Mere Christianity, and he says that if you listen to two people arguing you'll hear them appealing to some higher standard, and they'll things like this, - ""How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?" - "That's my seat, I was there first." - "Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm." - "Why should you shove in first?" - "Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine." - "Come on, you promised." People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behavior does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies, "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are."

That’s what the apostle Paul is writing about here in Romans chapter 2. God has put a moral standard of right and wrong within us. And when you do something wrong your conscience either accuses you, "How could you do something so despicable? You need to go make it right." Or it defends you, "That was the right thing to do. I may not understand it but I know I did the right thing." Your conscience either accuses or defends you, based on what? Based on an internal standard of right and wrong.

We see an example of this back in Genesis chapter 42; this is when Joseph’s brothers went down to Egypt to buy bread. As they stood before Joseph, you’ll remember that Joseph disguised himself so that they wouldn’t recognize him and spoke harshly to them and accused them of being spies. As this was going on their consciences began to accuse them. Even though they had no idea that it was Joseph who was standing in front of them, even though it had been over ten years since they had sold their brother and lied to their father, this is what they said to one another, “Truly we are guilty concerning our brother, because we saw the distress of his soul when he pleaded with us, yet we would not listen; therefore this distress has come upon us.” They basically said, “what we did was wrong and now we’re going to suffer the consequences of that.” And Reuben said his brothers, “Did I not tell you, ‘Do not sin against the boy’; and you would not listen? Now comes the reckoning for his blood.” Question: How did they know that what they had done was wrong? How did they know that it was a sin? How did they know that casting Joseph into a pit and then selling him into slavery and lying to their father was wrong? Well it’s obviously wrong. Yeah, I know it is, but my question is, why is it wrong? And how did they know? At this point there were no written Scriptures. The law of God has not yet been written. But, as we see here in Romans 2, the law of God was written on their hearts, they knew that it was wrong, and now they’re being accused by their consciences. They didn't need the Scriptures to know what they had done was wrong, their consciences showed them their guilt, and they didn't try to defend themselves because they knew instinctively that what they had done was wrong.

God has written His moral standard on the hearts of men. And, by the way, this is a moral standard, not a ceremonial standard. What do I mean by that? Suppose that you're invited to a dinner party. As you walk up and knock on the front door the host answers, and you can see over his shoulder into the living room, and you notice that everyone inside is wearing yellow, and you show up and you’re wearing purple. Now, the host says to you, “Oh, you know what? At my house, when I’m hosting the dinner party and I’m the one who paid for the food, we do yellow here. Sorry, you're not getting in.” You’re going to object, right? “Wait a minute, I didn’t get the memo on that! I never got that e-mail.” And you would have a case. You didn’t get the memo on the yellow clothes. Now suppose that as he invites you into his house and as you’re walking past him and his wife you take your knuckles and hit his wife right in the mouth. What, you didn’t get the memo on that? Now, there may be strange rules at dinner parties, but you don’t have to be told not to hit the host's wife. Why not? Because intuitively you know, you don’t do that. Maybe he can excuse you for the purple clothes, but you didn’t have to be told not to hit the host's wife. You knew that one was wrong.

And this distinction between a ceremonial standard and a moral standard is an important one, because where Paul is going in the end of chapter 2, he’s going to start talking about some of the ceremonial laws, circumcision in particular. Now, someone is not going to show up at God’s front door and have God say to them, “you didn’t have the circumcision, you didn’t have the Levitical priesthood, you didn’t have the right garments and the ephod, sorry, you’re not getting in.” Because someone could respond, “Wait a minute, I didn’t get the memo on that! I never received the e-mail about the priesthood and the ephod and the circumcision and all that.” And they would have a case. But you can’t show up at God’s front door having lied and stolen and committed adultery and murder, and say, “Wait a minute, I never got the memo on that.” Why? Because God has written His moral standard on people’s hearts, and when we break that standard we are culpable. When it comes to the moral standard of God, even the man in the jungle got the memo on that one. Why? Because God has written it on their hearts.

Think about this, you go into a jungle somewhere where they don’t even have a written language, they’re walking around with bones through their nose dragging boars behind them. You go up, take their boar, and run off into the jungle. Now, they’ve never read the Bible, they’ve never been to Sunday school, they’ve never memorized the ten commandments, and yet they know that it is wrong to steal. He just took something that wasn’t his. That’s not right. Now, they’re showing up to the dinner party at each others huts wearing the wrong color loin cloth, but they know it’s wrong to steal. They know, you don’t hit the host's wife. How? Because they have a conscience. And God has inscribed upon their hearts His moral standard of right and wrong. And when they break that standard, they know it. And God is just on judgment day in saying to them, “You violated the law of God and you knew it was wrong, and now you will be punished for your sin.” And all of this hinges on the truth that God has inscribed His law on the hearts of men, God has endowed human beings with a conscience.

Romans 2:14-15 - "For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them."