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You can’t be sure your conscience is right, but you can be sure that violating it is wrong.
The word of God educates and overrides conscience. Therefore, when your conscience conflicts with the word of God, make sure 1) that you actually have the word of God, and 2) that you understand how it is correcting your conscience. For an example to follow, consider Peter in Acts 10 (and the account of it he relayed in Acts 11). Consider also how he accepted correction for Paul in Galatians 2, and kept his regard for Paul high (2 Pet 3).
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There are verses and words that imply conscience even when it is not mentioned per se. For example:
- Luke 12:57 – How could we obey such an instruction if we had no conscience?
- Rom 14:22-23 – Using Rom 2:14-16 as a reference point makes the inference of a conscience at work in this passage even more reasonable than when read by itself.
- 1 Cor 4:4 – The phrase “I am conscious of nothing against myself” is equivalent to “my conscience is not condemning me.”
- 1 Cor 7:25 – Paul makes clear that he is speaking in this instance from his conscience and not as delivering a word of the Lord (which he did claim to have in other contexts, such as 1 Cor 14:37 and 1 Thess 4:15-18).
- 1 John 3:19-22 – In this short passage, “heart” functions as a proxy for “conscience.”
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The English word “conscience” shows up in the NASB 1995 30 times: once in the Old Testament, and 29 times in the New Testament.