Biblical Psychology

CONSCIENCE is the innate law in nature whereby man knows he is known.

N. B. The half truth and half error of such phrases as ' ' Conscience is the voice of God" and " Conscience can be educated' ' will be carefully dealt with.

(b) Consciousness of the World.

(c) Consciousness of God. Gen. 3: 1-24.

These three are the several sides of man's personal life.

(b) The Standard of the Nations — Pagan. Matt. 25: 31-46.

(c) The Standard of the Naturally Pious. Acts 26: 9; John 16: 2.

(a) Conscience and Character in the Saint. Bom. 9:1; John 17: 22.

(b) Conscience and Conduct in the Saint. 2 Cor. 1: 12.

(c) Conscience and Communion of the Saints. 1 John 1: 7; Eph. 4: 13; Heb. 9: 14.

"Conscience is the innate law in human nature whereby man knows he is known. " From every standpoint that is a safeguarded definition of conscience.

Look at the N. B. at the head of the outline. If conscience were the "voice of God," it would be the most contradictory voice man ever heard. For instance, a Hindoo mother obeys her conscience by treating her child cruelly, and the Christian mother obeys her conscience by sending her child to Sunday-school, and bringing it up generally in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord." If conscience were the voice of God, great contrasts of that kind would never happen. "Conscience attaches itself to that system of things which man regards as highest.' ' Consequently you will find that what conscience records is very different in different people. The Hindoo mother's conscience attaches itself to the highest she knows, viz.: Hindoo religion; the Christian conscience of the Christian mother attaches itself to the highest she knows, viz.: the revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Probably the best illustration of conscience is the human eye. The eye records what it looks at. Conscience may be pictured as the eye of the soul, recording what it looks at, and it will always record exactly what it is turned towards. One thing we soon lose in human sight is what Ruskin called the "innocence of the eye." By the "innocence of the eye" he means this — that the majority of us know what we look at, and we try to tell ourselves what our eye sees. An artist, records exactly from the "innocence" of sight; he does not use his logical faculties. In training art students in sketching from nature, you will find that in looking at a distant hill draped in blue mist, with little touches of white or color here and there, the beginner will sketch not what he sees, but what he knows those blotches indicate, viz.: houses; while the artist will give you the presentation of what he "sees,"

not what you know he sees. Now something very similar happens in conscience. The record of conscience may be distorted or perverted, and conscience itself may be seared.

Then, again, if you throw a white light on trees, the eye will record that the trees are green; if you throw a yellow light on trees, the eye will record that the trees are blue; if you throw a red light on trees, the eye will record that the trees are brown. Now, your logical faculties will tell you all the time that they are green (because daylight is white light), but the illustration I am using is that the eye has no business other than to record; and conscience does the same thing.

Let us get back to the illustration of the Hindoo mother and the Christian mother. The Hindoo mother's conscience looks out on what she is taught by her Hindoo religion to be God, and her conscience records exactly what it looks at and she, reasoning on the records of conscience, does the thing that is cruel. The Christian mother looks at God in the " white light" of Jesus Christ, consequently her conscience records exactly what it sees, and reasoning on it, she behaves as Christian mothers ought to behave. So it never can be true to call conscience "the voice of God." The varieties of the records of people's consciences are accounted for by the various traditional religions, etc. It does not matter whether a person is religious or not, his conscience attaches itself to the highest he or she knows, and reasoning according to that, guides the life.

The other phrase that "Conscience can be educated/ ' is again a truth that is half an error. Conscience cannot be educated, strictly speaking. What is altered and educated is a man's reasoning, and a man reasons not only on what his senses bring him, but what his conscience brings him, and immediately you face a man with the white light of Jesus Christ (we call Jesus Christ the white light, for white embraces all the other colors and shades of light; it is the pure, true light), the conscience records exactly, and the reason is startled and amazed. When a man g«ets rightly adjusted to God, his conscience staggers* him, and his reason condemns him from all standpoints.

1. Conscience Before the Fall. (Gen. 2:16, 17; 3:2,3.)

Now, originally in our language the words* "consciousness" and "conscience" meant the same' thing; they do not mean the same now. In "Conscience before the Fair' we have to- take the three sides, or facts, of a man's personal life —.consciousness of self, consciousness of the world, and consciousness of God.

"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayesit freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou, shalt surely die." (Gen. 2:16, 17.)

"And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the ga'rden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye di<\" (Gen. 3: 2, 3.)

There in both passages the three sides or facts are clear — consciousness of myself, consciousness of the world around me, and consciousness of God. It is the last that has gotten most conspicuously blurred by the Fall. Consciousness of self (a) takes us back to the first subject we dealt with, viz.: the general subject of "Man," and you will find there that when the other creations were passed before man in procession, there was not found a helpmeet for Adam; he had no affinity with the brutes, instantly distinguishing man clearly and emphatically from all the brute creation round about him. There is no evidence that a brute is ever conscious of itself, but man is ostensibly so conscious.

Second, (b) he is conscious of the world. I mean by the world the thing that is not himself; the strict word for it would be " continuum/ ' i. e., that which continues to exist outside of me. It is by understanding how we, as men and women, come into contact with what is not ourselves that we will understand our barriers and our limitations. We can never understand what an angel 's consciousness is like, nor what a dog's consciousness is like, because both these creations are constituted differently.

First of all, then, let us look at this question, "How do I come in contact with what is not myself V7 By a nervous system. Eemember, the body of man is his glory, not his drawback. The body is the thing that makes and manifests his character. The body is not an accident, but is essential to the order of creation we belong to. Consequently we can always say, up to a certain point, how a human being sees things outside. The more you think on that line of things, obvious and common sense as it is, the clearer will become the basis of Christian philosophy.

"How do angels come in contact with what is not themselves V ' Certainly not by nerves, therefore we have no possibility of knowing how an angel comes in contact with what is not angelic. Read the record of angelic appearances in the Bible, of our Lord after the resurrection; physical barriers simply did not exist to them. They exist to us by means of our nervous system. Angels seem to come and go through rocks and doors, appearing and disappearing altogether in a way we cannot understand. That is a consciousness which is above mine, different from mine. Jesus did not take on Him the consciousness of a man; that is, Jesus Christ came down where man was, in the same world; He came into the world we are in, and took on Him a body and a nervous system like we have, and saw the world just as we see it, and came in contact with it just as we do. Whenever anybody writes or speculates as to how an angel sees and knows, put underneath it "private speculation, ' ' and you will always find that God's Book draws the barrier strong, "Thus far and no farther." We only know consciousness of ourselves and consciousness of what is outside us by means of a nervous system; all our conscious life depends on our nerves. The world "goes out" wrhen we are asleep, we are not conscious at all, what has happened? The nervous system is not working. An anesthetic makes the WQrld "ga out." Why we must shut a lunatic up in an asylum is that a lunatic's nervous system differently relates him to the world from the majority of men, consequently a lunatic very often becomes dangerous, he does not record what he sees outside as we do, and the consequence is he becomes so different that we have to confine him.

Now, on the other hand, look at the lower animals. There is a great amount said about the intelligence of dogs and a great amount of insight, falsely so called, into the nature of a dog. A dog seems to be the most human of all animals, but we have no means of knowing how a dog sees what is not itself; we simply take our own consciousness and transfer it to the dog. We have no more means of knowing how a dog sees than we have of how an angel sees. These barriers above us and below us are essential to our knowledge. Spiritualists in all times have denied that they are essential; they say we can know, we can come in contact with and understand how an angel sees things.

"Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost," and we are held responsible for the way we manifest that through our bodies to the external world. That explains what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5: 17: "If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold all things have become new." You will ever find that when a man gets a great alteration inwardly, his nervous system is altered. Whenever the grace of God works effectually in a man's inner nature, it alters his nervous system and he instantly begins to see things differently. The external world around him begins to take on a new guise. Why? Because he has a new disposition. If any man is in Christ Jesus, his nervous system will prove that he is a "new creation," meaning by that, that he begins to see things differently.

"Heaven above is softer blue,

Earth around is sweeter green, Something lives in every hue

Christless eyes have never seen; Birds with gladder songs overflow,

Flowers with deeper beauties shine, Since I know, as now I know,

I am His and He is mine."

That is not only poetry, it is a fact.

Then take the last fact of primal consciousness (c) Consciousness of God. In Genesis 2 these three types of consciousness are quite clearly manifest in the way Eve talked to the serpent. She was conscious of the surroundings, she was conscious of herself, and she was conscious of God. In Jesus Christ those three consciousnesses are perfectly clear; in us they are not. This latter consciousness is quite obliterated, and you will find men miscall all kinds of things "God." Any system of things a man considers highest he is apt to call God. The God-consciousness in Adam was quite different from our natural consciousness; it was just like it was in our Lord. Those three facts of a man's personal life are restored by Jesus Christ to their more than pristine vigor; we get into real, definite communion with God through Jesus Christ; we get to a right relationship with our fellowmen and the world outside, and we get to a right relationship with ourselves; we get Christ-centered, and not self-centered.

2. Conscience after the Fall. (John 3:19-21.)

That is where we live to-day, viz.: a mixture of Christian and non-Christian, and a great many in between who are neither one nor the other. John 3: 19-21 is the fundamental analysis. " Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil." You ask, "What is light?" Jesus says, "I am the light." He said to His disciples, "If the light in you be darkness, how great is that darkness." Darkness in this connection is "my own point of view." Immediately a man sees Jesus Christ and understands who He is, that instant he is criticised and self -condemned; there is no further excuse. Our Lord, then, is the final standard.

(a) The standard of the "natural person," the person without Jesus, who has never seen or heard of Him; (b) the standard of the "nations — pagan." who likewise know nothing about Jesus Christ, and (e) the standard of the "naturally pious."

(a) In Romans 2: 12-15, the contrast is drawn very clearly and emphatically between what we may call "religious people" and the irreligious. Yv'hat is the standard of judgment? The Gentiles knew nothing about Jesus Christ or the law of God in an external standard; so they are judged according to their consciences. Take the grossest case we can think of — there is no case of a cannibal tribe anywhere on record, where they ate a man and thought they were doing right; they always tried to conceal it.

(b) Take the standard of the pagan. (Matt. 25: 31- 46.) These verses are often applied to Christians, but the primary reference is to the judgment of the nations. The standard for Christians is not the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew; the standard for Christians is our Lord Jesus Christ. But in the twenty-fifth of Matthew the standard is very clear, and God's magnanimous interpretation of the acts of people is revealed, and they are amazed and astounded — "When did we see you sick? "We never heard of you before." "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me." The standard of the "natural person" is conscience; the standard of the "nations" is conscience.

(c) Then the standard of the "naturally pious." (Acts 26: 9.) That was according to his conscience. If conscience is the voice of God, ye have a nice problem to solve! Saul was the acme of conscientiousness. In John 16: 2 there is the same thing: "They shall put you out of the synagogues, yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. Obedience to what is understood to be conscience. Jesus Christ says they will think they serve God in putting you to death. And no one who has read the life of the apostle Paul and his own record also, will ever accuse him of being unconscientious; he was hyper-conscientious. The conscience is the standard for men and wo* men to be judged by until they have been brought into contact with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not sufficient for a Christian to walk up to the light of his conscience; lie must walk in a sterner light, in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ.

3. Conscience in the Faithful. (1 Cor. 8:7-12.) (1 Cor. 8:7-12.) These verses show us how we can be like "spectacles" for other Christians. In the natural life, when the sight is wrong, "spectacles" are put on the outside to adjust the vision. "We have to be a kind of "spectacles" to other Christian people. So many are short-sighted, and so many are long-sighted, so many have not the right kind of sight. Be "spectacles" to them! A very humble position, but a very good one. There is in this First Epistle to the Corinthians Paul's distinction between "equal rights" and "equal duties," the former being wrong. You will find that they have been criticising Paul, and from the seventh chapter he deals with their questions, and evidently the whole thing is this question of "equal rights," and he says, "No! equal duties, but not equal rights." "We all have duties to perform towards God, but not equal rights. His statesmanlike manner of dealing with this matter is very wonderful. There is a difference between "offence" and "stumbling." The Authorized Version translates indiscriminately "offence" and "stumbling"; the Revised Version corrects this. What is the difference? Giving "offence" is sometimes part of moral character; it is sometimes moral duty to give "offence." Offence means going contrary to some one's private opinion. Did Jesus Christ know that He was offending the private opinions of the Pharisees when He allowed His disciples to eat corn on Sunday? Did He know

He was offending the Pharisees when He healed the sick on the Sabbath day? But our Lord never put an occasion of stumbling in anybody's way. (The passage that alludes to Him as "a rock of stumbling and a stone of offence'' refers to a different thing.) Stumbling is quite a different thing from offence. For instance, somebody loves you very much, and does not know God as well as you do, but they continually do what you do because they love you, and as you watch them, you begin to discern that they are degenerating spiritually, and to your amazement you find it is because they are doing what you are doing. There is no offence, but they are stumbling, distinctly stumbling. Then Paul says, "I will never do those things again as long as I live whereby my brother stumbles. I do not insist on my rights, or my liberty of conscience; I do exactly the opposite." You will find he works it out from every standpoint in this First Epistle. "I reserve the right to suffer the loss of all things rather than be a hindrance to the Gospel/ ' "Waive aside your liberty of conscience if it is going to be the means of some one stumbling. The application is the application of the Sermon on the Mount in practical experience. The Sermon on the Mount, to put it very briefly and crudely, simply means that if you are My disciple, you will always do more than your duty. You will always be doing something equivalent to the "second mile." People will say, "What a fool you are! Why don't you insist on your rights?" Jesus Christ says, "If you are My disciple, y[ou will always be doing these things."

That is the way we can be spectacles to make other people see.

God educates every one of us from the great big principles down to the little scruples. You find people who are right with God guilty of the most ugly characteristics, and you are astounded that they do not see it; but they don't. But wait; if they go on with God, slowly and surely God's Spirit educates them from the general principles down to the particular items, until after a while they are as careful as can be down to the "jots" and "tittles" of life, whereby they prove their sanctification in the growing manifestation in their physical lives of the new disposition God has given. No wonder the Book of God says we need to be patient with one another!

(a) Character in the Saint. Character is the sum total of a man's actions. You cannot judge a man because he does good things at times; you must take the whole of the times together, and if in the greater number of times he does the bad things, he is a bad character in spite of the noble things he does intermittently. You cannot judge your character because you once spoke kindly to your grandmother, if the majority of other times you did the other things. The fact that people say, "Oh, well, he does do good things occasionally," means that he is a bad character. The very statement is a condemnation. Any of us who do good things occasionally are sure to be bad. It is only when we do good things almost always and wrong things only occasionally that we are good characters. What are conscience and character in a saint? The disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested. You cannot appeal to saints on the line of self-interest; you can only appeal to them on the line of the interests of Christ. Whose honor do you seek? The feeblest, weakest saint will become a holy terror immediately you scandalize Jesus Christ.

(b) Conscience and Conduct in the Saint. "For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to youward." (2 Cor. 1: 12.) The point there is a very important one; the knowledge of evil that came through the Fall gives man a broad mind, but paralyzes his action. The restoration of a man by our Lord gives him simplicity, and simplicity always shows itself in actions. Do not call simplicity stupidity. Simplicity here means the simplicity that was in Jesus Christ. Paul says, "I am afraid you will be taken away from the simplicity that is in Jesus Christ. '' You get men and women of the world who know evil, whose minds are poisoned by all kinds of things; they are marvelously generous with regard to their notions of other people, but they can do nothing; every bit of their broadsightedness paralyzes their efforts.

The knowledge of evil, instead of instigating to action and work and good, does the opposite; it paralyzes; whereas the very essence of the Gospel of God, working in conscience and conduct is that it shows itself at once in action. God can make simple, guileless people out of cunning, crafty people; that is the marvel of the grace of God. It can take out the strands of evil and twistedness out of a person's mind and imagination and make him simple towards God, so that his life becomes radiantly beautiful by the miracle of His grace.

(c) Conscience and Communion of the Saints. The " together' ' aspect. Nowhere is "enthusiasm for humanity" mentioned in the Bible. This is quite a modern phrase. Enthusiasm for the "communion of saints" is continually mentioned in the Bible, and the argument is very simple and direct, that if we keep our consciences open towards God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ, we will find God bringing hundreds of other souls into oneness with Him through us.

In 1 Corinthians 4:3,4, Paul shows three standards of judgment which he has left behind:

(1.) Standard of the "special set" judgment — "It is a small matter that I am judged of you. ' '

(2.) Standard of the universal human judgment — "Or of man's judgment."

(3.) Standard of conscience — "Yea, I judge not mine own self."

And the standard he accepts as his final one is the Lord.

One of the greatest disciplines in spiritual life is the darkness that does not come on account of sin, but that comes when God's Spirit leads you from walking in the light of your conscience to walking in the light of the Lord. When the latter is learned, bitterness and contention are an impossibility. Defenders of the faith are always bitter till they have walked in the light of the Lord.