Conscience 339
teachable and should be taught by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit shall
surely come and help if a person is honestly minding his conscience.
Conscience is like a window to the believer’s spirit. Through it the
rays of heaven shine into the spirit, flooding the whole being with
light. Heavenly light shines in through the conscience to expose fault
and to condemn failure whenever we wrongfully think or speak or
act in a way not becoming saints. If by submitting to its voice and
eliminating the sin it condemns we allow it to do its work, then the
light from heaven will shine brighter next time; but should we not
confess nor extirpate the sin. our conscience will be corrupted by it
(Titus 1.15), because we have not walked according to the teaching
of God’s light. With sin accumulating, conscience as a window
becomes increasingly clouded. Light can barely penetrate the spirit.
And there finally comes a day when that believer can sin without
compunction and with no grief at all, since the conscience has long
been paralyzed and the intuition dulled by sin. The more spiritual a
believer is the more keenly alert is his inner monitor. No Christian
can be so spiritual as to have no further necessity to confess his sin.
He must be fallen spiritually if his conscience is dull and insensitive.
Excellent knowledge, hard labor, excited feeling and strong will
cannot substitute for a sensitive conscience. He who does not heed it
but seeks mental and sensational progress is retrogressing spiritually.
The sensitivity of the conscience can be increased as well as
decreased. Should anyone give ground to his conscience to operate,
his spirit’s window will let in more light next time; but should he
disregard it or answer it with reason or works other than what it
demands, then his conscience will speak more and more softly each
time it is rejected until ultimately it ceases to speak. Every time a
believer does not listen to conscience he damages his spiritual walk.
If this self-inflicted wounding of his spiritual life continues unabated,
he shall sink into the state of being fleshly. He win lose all his former
distaste for sin and former admiration of victory. Until we learn to
face squarely the reproach which arises from conscience, we do not