Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ

by D.A. Carson

1. You are sinning against your conscience when you believe your conscience is speaking correctly and yet you refuse to listen to it. Emphasis on “you believe”: you must obey your conscience if you believe it’s functioning accurately. It may not be functioning accurately, but if you think it is, then you must follow it. If you think that it’s wrong to drink root beer, then you are sinning if you drink root beer. As Mark Dever puts it, “Conscience cannot make a wrong thing right, but it can make a right thing wrong.”12 2. You are calibrating your conscience when Christ, the Lord of your conscience, teaches you through his Scripture that your conscience has been incorrectly warning you about a particular matter, so you decide no longer to listen to your conscience in that one matter. This is calibrating or adjusting or training your conscience, not sinning against it. In the early stages of calibration, deciding not to listen to your conscience may feel like you’re sinning against it. When you drink your first root beer after becoming completely convinced that root beer is okay, your conscience may warn you. Ignoring that warning is not searing your conscience but calibrating it under the lordship of Christ.

how do i know if i'm calibrating or sinning againsst conscience