For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you. For we write nothing else to you than what you read and understand, and I hope you will understand until the end; just as you also partially did understand us, that we are your reason to be proud as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus. (1:12–14)
On the night of November 27, 1983, Avianca Flight 011, en route from Paris to Bogotá via Madrid, approached Madrid’s Barajas airport. The weather was good, and there were no mechanical problems with the 747 jet. The crew was experienced; the pilot had more than 20,000 hours of flying time and had made this same approach twenty-five times before. Yet, with its flaps extended and its landing gear down, the jumbo jet smashed into a series of low hills about seven miles short of the runway. The plane cartwheeled, broke into pieces, and came to rest upside down. Tragically, 181 of the 192 people on board lost their lives. Investigators determined that a series of errors by the crew caused the crash. The crew misunderstood the reality of their location. They thought they knew the truth about the plane’s position, but they did not. Shockingly, the final
and fatal error came when the pilot, so sure he knew where he was heading, ignored the computerized voice of the plane’s GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System), which repeatedly warned him, “Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!” The cockpit recorder had his strange reply to the warning. He said, “Shut up, gringo” and switched off the warning device.
The next moment, he was dead with the rest of the victims.
That tragic story is a compelling illustration of the way people often ignore the truth of their life’s direction and the warning messages from their consciences. The conscience is a warning system, placed by God into the very framework of the human soul. Like physical pain, which warns of damage to the body, the conscience warns of damage to the soul. It reacts to the proximity of sin, warning the soul to “Pull up!”
before it suffers the terrible consequences of sin.
But today’s culture aggressively and systematically tries to silence the conscience. People have been taught to ignore any and all guilt feelings conscience produces, viewing them as harmful to their self-esteem. They believe their problems stem not from their sin but from external factors beyond their control. Sin and guilt are viewed as psychological issues, not moral and spiritual ones. Thus, people imagine that their guilt feelings are erroneous and harmful attacks on their self-esteem. But the voice of conscience cannot be safely rejected; those who attempt to do so face spiritual ruin (cf. 1 Tim. 1:19; 4:2; Titus 1:15).
The conscience is the soul reflecting on itself; both the Greek word suneidēsis (conscience) and the English word
“conscience” have the idea of knowing oneself. According to Romans 2:14, even those without God’s written law have an innate moral sense of right and wrong: “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves.”
The conscience either affirms right behavior or condemns sinful behavior.
The conscience, however, is not infallible. It is neither the voice of God, nor His moral law, as Colin G. Kruse helpfully observes:
The conscience is not to be equated with the voice of God or even the moral law, rather it is a human faculty which adjudicates upon human action by the light of the highest standard a person perceives.
Seeing that all of human nature has been affected by sin, both a person’s perception of the standard of action required and the function of the conscience itself (as a constituent part of human nature) are also affected by sin. For this reason conscience can never be accorded the position of ultimate judge of one’s behavior. It is possible that the conscience may excuse one for that which God will not excuse, and conversely it is equally possible that conscience may condemn a person for that which God allows. The final judgment therefore belongs only to God (cf. 1 Cor. 4:2–5). Nevertheless, to reject the voice of conscience is to court spiritual disaster (cf. 1 Tim. 1:19). We cannot reject the voice of conscience with impunity, but we can modify the highest standard to which it relates by gaining for ourselves a greater understanding of the truth. (The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], 70–71)
Since the conscience holds people to their highest perceived standard, believers need to set that standard to the highest level by submitting to all of God’s Word. As they continually fill their minds with the truths of Scripture,
believers clarify God’s perfect law. Their consciences will then call them to live according to that law.
The conscience functions like a skylight, not like a lamp; it does not produce its own light, but merely lets moral light in. Because of that, the Bible teaches the importance of keeping a clear or good conscience. “The goal of our instruction,” Paul wrote to Timothy, “is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim.
1:5). A few verses later Paul stressed the importance of
“keeping faith and a good conscience, which,” he warned,
“some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith” (v. 19). A necessary qualification for deacons is that they hold “to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience” (1 Tim. 3:9). Peter commanded believers to
“keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame” (1 Peter 3:16). Both Paul (Acts 23:1; 2 Tim. 1:3) and the writer of Hebrews (Heb. 13:18) testified that they had maintained good consciences.
At salvation, God cleanses the conscience from its lifelong accumulation of guilt, shame, and self-contempt. The writer of Hebrews wrote that “the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, [will]
cleanse [the] conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14). As a result, believers have their “hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience” (Heb. 10:22). The cleansed conscience no longer accuses because of past sins, which are pardoned (Pss. 32:5; 103:12; Prov. 28:13;
Mic. 7:18–19; Col. 1:14; 2:13–14; 1 John 1: 9) through the blood of Christ (Eph. 1:7; 1 John 1:7; Rev. 1:5).
Believers’ must guard the purity of their cleansed consciences, winning the battle for holiness on the inside where conscience works. Paul gained victory at that point, so that he declared to the Sanhedrin, “I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day”
(Acts 23:1), and to the Roman governor Felix, “I also do my
best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men” (Acts 24:16). He wrote to Timothy, “I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience” (2 Tim.
1:3). He reminded his young protégé that “the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5) and exhorted him to keep
“a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith” (1 Tim. 1:19). As noted above, Paul instructed that deacons must hold “to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience” (1 Tim. 3:9).
Christians must also be careful not to cause other believers to violate their consciences (1 Cor. 8:7–13; 10:24–29).
Paul wrote 2 Corinthians to defend himself against the assaults of the false apostles at Corinth (2 Cor. 11:13).
Those lying deceivers sought to discredit him, undermine his authority, and then replace the truth of God with their satanic lies. They attacked his integrity, falsely accusing him of not being honest and sincere in his dealings with the Corinthians. The false apostles also portrayed Paul as a manipulator, scheming to defraud the Corinthians and to promote his personal agenda. In short, according to the false apostles, Paul’s motives were corrupt, his words untrustworthy, and his actions devious.
As he answered those outrageous lies, Paul’s primary concern was not to defend himself but protect the people from the deceivers. He knew that before they could peddle their demon doctrines to the Corinthians, the false apostles first had to destroy the Corinthians’ trust in Paul. Thus, their savage personal attack on Paul was merely the prelude to an all-out assault on divine truth.
In his defense, Paul did not call on friends to verify his spiritual integrity; rather, he appealed to the highest human court: his own conscience. The apostle’s proud confidence was in the testimony (witness, evidence) of his conscience. Paul frequently used kauchēsis (proud confidence), the related noun kauchēma, and the verb
kauchaomai in this letter—twenty-nine of their fifty-nine uses in the New Testament are in 2 Corinthians. Negatively, kauchēsis describes unwarranted boasting in one’s achievements and merits (cf. Rom. 3:27; James 4:16). It can also be used, however, of legitimate confidence in what God is doing in one’s life (cf. 2 Cor. 7:4, 14; 8:24; 11:10; Rom.
15:17; 1 Cor. 15:31), as it is here. Boasting in the Lord and what He accomplishes in His people is proper; in fact, God Himself delights in such boasting:
Thus says the Lord, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth;
for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord. (Jer.
9:23–24; cf. 1 Cor. 1:31; 2 Cor. 10:17).
In proving his integrity, Paul’s clear conscience was a source of peace, comfort, and joy to him. Others might falsely accuse him of heinous sins, but Paul’s conscience did not accuse him. It exonerated him of their charges and protected him from false guilt.
The false apostles had launched a three-pronged attack on Paul’s credibility. On the moral level, they accused him of secretly being a wicked sinner, justly suffering all the time because of the chastening of God. On the relational level, they accused him of being insincere, deceptive, and manipulative. They charged that he was not what he appeared to be on the surface; that in reality, he was using the Corinthians for his own selfish purposes. On the theological level, they charged that Paul misrepresented God’s Word and was a liar and a false teacher. What hurt Paul more than those baseless, slanderous lies was the sad
fact that many in the Corinthian congregation believed them.
In this passage Paul appealed to the supreme human court, his fully informed conscience, to overturn the false verdicts of Satan’s messengers. His conscience exonerated him of moral, relational, and theological wrongdoing.