The Bible says:
“For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.”
— 1 Peter 2: 19
Man is body, soul, and spirit. (1 Thessalonians 5: 23) He is not an entity that has or was later given a body, soul, and spirit, but is a created entity that is body, soul, and spirit. Man is conscious of both his outside and his inside world.
With the body, man is conscious through his sensory organs of the world he lives in.
With his soul and the power he has to objectify and examine self he is conscious of his sin, hate, love, fears, courage, weaknesses, strengths and all other vices or virtues.
With his spirit, if he is saved, he is conscious of the indwelling presence of God. (Romans 8: 16) A lost man can be conscious of the world he lives in and conscious of himself, but cannot be conscious of God because his spirit is dead in trespasses and sin and separated from God.
(Ephesians 2: 1)
Both conscious and conscience come from the Latin conscire, to know inwardly. Conscious is an inward alertness or awareness, conscience is an inward knowing of right and wrong. To know inwardly, is itself based on Latin scire, to know, which also gives us our word science.
The phrase “conscience toward God” in our text signifies a consciousness of God. This is a conscience that is so impressed and controlled by the idea of God that the Christian realizes that persecution is to be borne in accordance to His will, and that it is done in the light of His countenance.If our conscience has been educated by the Word of God, we are conscious or know inwardly of the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God. We know that God is conscious of everything we’re facing, has power over everything, and sees everything.
And with our spirit we are in constant contact with just such a God.
It is being conscious of God and His willingness to help us that we overcome the fears and weaknesses we are conscious of. Those in our self and the foe we are conscious of in the world and consciously see Him give us the victory over them.
We are made conscious, alerted, made aware of sin in our selves when our conscience is defiled and it places our sin before us. We are conscious of our sins being forgiven and our fellowship with God restored when we repent of our sins.
We become more conscious of God’s work in our life as we become more sensitive to the things of the Spirit and insensitive to the things of the world.
James H. Cagle is a Ray City resident who pastored several churches for a total of 11 years. Email him at pastorjameshcagle@ yahoo.com
