Conscience 351
Yet the more advanced ones are confronted by one of the most
serious hazards here. Their conscience becomes so strong as to drift
into cold numbness. Young Christians who follow the Lord
wholeheartedly obey Him at many points, for their conscience is
sensitive and easily moved by the Holy Spirit. Old believers, on the
other hand, have so much knowledge that they tend to overdevelop
their mind so as to numb the sensitivity of the conscience. They are
tempted to do things according to the knowledge of their mind and
seemingly render themselves immovable by the Holy Spirit. This is a
fatal blow to spiritual life. It removes the freshness from a believer’s
walk and causes it to become old and dull. Regardless how much
knowledge we possess, let us be careful not to follow it but the
conscience of our spirit. Should we disregard what is condemned
intuitively by our conscience and take our knowledge as our standard
of conduct, we have already settled into walking after the flesh. Is it
not true that our conscience sometimes can be greatly disturbed when
we set out to do what is absolutely legitimate according to the truth
we know? That which conscience condemns is reckoned as not in
accordance with God’s will, even though by the knowledge of our
mind it is good. This is because our knowledge is acquired through
the searchings of our intellect and not by revelations in our intuition.
Hence the leading of conscience and of knowledge can prove to be
quite conflicting.
Paul indicates that one’s spiritual life shall be impaired
enormously if he disregards the reproach of conscience and follows
the knowledge of his mind instead. “For if any one sees you, a man
of knowledge, at table in an idol’s temple, might he not be
encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols?
And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother
for whom Christ died” (1 Cor. 8.10-11). Seeing a believer with
knowledge eating food offered to idols, the one without knowledge
tends to think he too can so eat. But if the latter eats against the voice
of his conscience he falls into sin. Let us never for a moment, then,
walk by the knowledge we have. However much of it we have