FORMING THE CONSCIENCE

When the Holy Spirit confronts, rules and lives in the conscience of a person and the Holy Spirit and the person in whom He dwells agree…this is the perfect will of God. It is perfect safety, peace and agreement.
Jesus said, “by the mouth of two or three witness every fact (word) may be confirmed”… (Matthew 18:16; he is quoting Deuteronomy 19:15). They (the Holy Spirit and the person) become the two witnesses “to confirm all things.” It is “in” the conscience that this function occurs.

Out of this wonderful indwelling comes the formed, and forming, conscience. If a person is not ruled by this inner response of the Holy Spirit…that person will always be ruled by something exterior to man…rules, laws, creeds, traditions, or ‘tablets of stone’ in some form.

We are either ruled from within in our inner person by the Holy Spirit…or we are ruled from without by some other rules and regulations. Either the Holy Spirit confronts us in our conscience…or we must depend, or be influenced, on the exterior responses that form us. Only the conscience can cause us to willfully follow the Father from within…which is a response of agape love. Any other following is often legal or based in fear and performance (like trying to be good).

“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, namely, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, He will testify about me.” Jesus

“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” Jesus