The Operation of the Conscience in the Unbeliever

Romans 1:18-32 teaches that fallen man not only knows that the true God exists (verses 20-21), but he also knows that this God has an absolute moral standard which binds all mankind and to which is attached the penalty of death for disobedience (verse 32). In other words, men are aware that there is a covenant of works because the "work of the law" has been "written in their heart" (Romans 2:15). This assertion is proven by the fact that every religion known to man is a manifestation, in one form or another, of a works-based system of righteousness. Even the most primitive savage has a concept of deity whose wrath he fears and whose favor he seeks to earn through good deeds, rituals, or even sacrifice.

The subject of which Paul wrote is the conscience, a word derived from the Latin "com" (with) and "scire" (to know or to discern). A man with a conscience is a man "with knowledge." The conscience is "the faculty by which [man] perceives the moral effect of actions in Time in reference to their results upon himself in Eternity. It is that sense which over and above the idea of Right and Wrong, has with it the idea of duty, the sense that it is right, and proper, and suitable to act this way, and not that; and the sense that if we do this way, then are we to be declared just; if we do that way, then are we to be declared unrighteous. That it is the sense of Duty and of Responsibility" (William Smith, The Elements of Christian Science [1857], page 78). The function of the conscience is threefold: "The first is Prohibitory. 'This act thou shouldest not do.' The second, Recording. 'This act I have done.' The third is Prophetic. 'Therefore for this act I am responsible'.... The Prohibitory has reference to the Present; the Recording to the Past; the Prophetic to the Future." (ibid., page 81). It is therefore the agent of the covenant of works, setting forth the moral standard, reminding man that he has failed to meet this standard, and declaring that he stands before his Creator in a position of condemnation as a result of that failure. Shakespeare put it thusly: "My conscience hath a thousand several tongues; and every tongue brings in a several tale; and every tale condemns me for a villain."

Through his conscience, the unregenerate man can only know God as his Judge. Inheriting original sin from Adam, and worsening his condition by his own actual sins, the sinner is always running away from God and yet at every turn, God thunders out His judgments through the faculty of his own conscience. Indeed, there is a civil war raging within the unbeliever in which his depraved will urges him to indulge his sinful passions in opposition to the authority of conscience; in fact, the obstinate sinner will spend his whole life trying to silence the voice of his conscience - to suppress the righteousness of God (Romans 1:18) - and in this effort he will only be successful if abandoned by God to his own lusts (Romans 1:28). The traditional Reformed doctrine of common grace enters at this point to teach that all men are not as evil as they could or would be because God inhibits such efforts to render the conscience inactive. Man longs for autonomy, but his own conscience - the ever-present voice of God's moral law - stands as a barrier to that goal and he is thus prevented from giving full vent to his depravity. The utter impossibility of escaping God's presence should lead him to repentance, but, if left to himself, he will instead respond by hating his perceived tormenter. The unregenerate sinner is therefore rendered unable to hear the call of a merciful God as it is declared in the Gospel and unable to trust in Christ for salvation.

The Calvinistic doctrine of "total depravity" is often misunderstood to mean that fallen man is so thoroughly wicked that he cannot do or know any temporal good. Of course, the Bible itself nowhere teaches that the functions of human nature are inoperative or that they are evil in and of themselves; man's problem is that his will has been corrupted by sin and his mind is "enmity against God" (Romans 8:7), but that, under normal circumstances, the conscience remains quite active and it is to this human faculty that the Gospel message is addressed.