Christian Conscience

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This meditation is going to be heavy on Bible verses. Often, I read the lectionary scriptures and simply go from there, maybe quoting a scripture or two in the process. But this meditation will be quoting scripture a lot. The reason this is true is that we’re looking at a very important topic, and the scripture has a lot to say about it. 

The topic is this – Conscience. 

In researching this topic last week, I came upon something that’s been going on since 1811 that I’ve only just heard about. The IRS has a fund that folks can donate to. It is called the Conscience fund. It’s meant for those who’ve defrauded the government in some way and because of their guilty conscience want to make it right. Clergy have often been mediators of monies given to the fund. Deathbed confessions to clergy led to donations to the Conscience fund.

That said, it isn’t just religious people who are endowed with human conscience. Everyone is endowed with conscience. Yes, that conscience can become broken, but though it isn’t working, it’s still there. 

Okay, let’s get into some scripture.

According to the Bible, conscience amounts to something God has written onto our heart. God, through Christ, has infused each of us with a law of the heart that helps us decide the right or wrong way. We call this conscience.

In the Hebrew Bible, aka the Old Testament, the law written on our hearts is focused on God’s people, Israel.

Jeremiah 31:33 has God saying this:

I will put my laws in their minds
    and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.

Hebrews 8:10 quotes this important verse in discussing how the law of the heart applies to everyone, Gentile and Jew alike. Paul makes it even clearer in Romans 2.

Romans 2:14-16

 When gentiles, who do not possess [Jewish] law, by nature do what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, as their own conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all.

Jew and Gentile, all of us, are endowed with a conscience, an internal compass, a law written on our hearts, that guides us well on what way to go, on what is good and what is bad.


For the lawyer or lawyerly folks out there, maybe you ask, well, what does the law say exactly? What does this law on our hearts specify?

Well, the law written on our heart’s amounts to one word – love. Three scriptures with 3 different communicators point to the law of love.

  • Matthew 22:37–40: Jesus says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these hang all the law and the prophets.”

  • Romans 13:8–10: Paul says, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore – and here Paul quotes Jesus - love is the fulfillment of the law". 

  • James 2:8-9: James, Jesus’ brother, says, "You must love and value your neighbor as you love and value yourself!"

The law of love – to love God and love neighbor – is written on our hearts. Our conscience at its purest is guided by love. That is why all of us were born with the capacity to love.

Before we move onto how this law goes unheeded and broken, let me say that in a sense, the conscience we all possess, that conscience is a Christian conscience. That’s what Christian teaching suggests. Whether you are a Christian or not, your conscience is Christian, or, better put, of Christ. 

How? 

Because God creates all things – including our consciences – through Christ.

  • Colossians 1:16

"For through [Christ] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities". 

  • John 1:3

"Through [Christ] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made".

Christ, Christ was the pen that wrote the law of love upon our hearts! Your conscience is Christ composed! All our consciences are Christian consciences!

One last point before moving on. That the law of love is written on our hearts means our hearts are originally soft, tender, open. That’s the way it’s meant to be.  As is true with our biological hearts, a good, healthy heart – a new heart - is marked by tenderness, flexibility, openness. 

We are meant to be guided by love, living in a soft-hearted, tender-hearted, and open-hearted way.


Okay, so why all the chaos? Why all the confusion? Why all the conflict? Why all the craziness and cacophony? How does the law of love written on our hearts get so lost and broken?

Well, our hearts are fragile things! They need to be cared for, cradled with compassion, christened with life, light, and love. 

If we don’t care for them, if we don’t christen them, if we don’t literally immerse our hearts in Christ, they become marred, scarred, or as the Bible puts it, calloused. 

A callous heart – that kills a healthy conscience

Paul speaks to that process of a callous conscience.

In Ephesians 4,

Paul warns the Ephesians what happens if we fail to follow the law of love, if we fail to follow the conscience written upon our hearts. 

Our hearts become hardened, calloused.

 Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer walk as [others] walk, in the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to shamelessness, greedy to engage in every kind of unhealthy, harmful practice. That is not the way you learned Christ! 

How hearts become calloused is clear – every time we neglect love, every time we fail to operate from the basis of love, every time we ignore the way of love, our heart becomes a little more calloused. After a while, hearts become so callous that nothing gets in, nothing is felt, nothing but hate remains. 

A callous heart, a hard heart – this is the deadly disease the Bible points to again and again. 

A soft heart, a tender heart – that is the ideal, that is the heart of God, that allows the law of love to work beautifully!  


But even when callous hearts seem to rule the day, even when hard-heartedness seems to be the way of the world, even when soft-heartedness is ridiculed and condemned, there is hope!

Christ can soften the most hardened of hearts. Christ can heal us, removing the callousness and replacing it with compassion. Christ is in the heart healing business!

Let me close where I began… the law of love written on our hearts. That law of love written on our hearts is akin to a love letter to the world, one we get to share. 

Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 3:3

You are each a letter composed by Christ, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of our human hearts”!


My prayer for you this week is that you will share that letter with the world.. with your words, your actions, and yes with your vote. Let that be your prayer this week.

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