Announcing a New Series

I’ve earned two degrees from two different seminaries: a master’s in systematic theology and a doctorate in cultural apologetics. I share this to help you appreciate my embarrassment a few years after earning my master’s. The year was 1992. I was attending a conference for evangelical ministers and looking forward to a breakout session where one of my favorite professors from seminary was speaking. His topic? Conscience.

To be exact, his topic was the connection between the Great Commission and human conscience. For eight years prior to attending seminary, I had been in a campus ministry committed to fulfilling the Great Commission. So I was more than curious to hear what this professor had to say about the Great Commission and conscience.

He didn’t disappoint. Beginning in Genesis, he uncovered how conscience is implicit in the Old Testament. Then he took us to the New Testament and showed us how this helps us better understand the Great Commission. I had never made the connections. He widened how I imagined conscience. I was mesmerized.

But early on in his session he said something I’ll never forget. He mentioned how the Greek word for conscience appears thirty-one times in the New Testament. Huh? I couldn’t recall ever seeing the word conscience in the New Testament (and I had a master’s in theology!). Embarrassing.

But awakening. So much so that upon returning home, I pulled out my trusty Greek Concordance, a book which lists every occurrence of a word in the New Testament (like the word conscience). Yep, there was conscience, appearing thirty-one times. That year, 1992, I began what has become a lifelong study of human conscience.

Over the past 33 years, I’ve come to appreciate how conscience is implicit in the Old Testament while it’s explicit in the New. More importantly, I’m learning how, throughout the entirety of scripture, conscience is central to becoming a fully alive Christian.

And so, without further ado, I’m launching a new series on conscience. I’m seeking to widen how we imagine conscience. For that reason, I’m making all my posts on conscience available to all subscribers, paid and unpaid. Of course, I hope some of you will become paid subscribers, but I’ll leave that to God. My fondest hope is that you’ll come to see why the Apostle Paul wrote, “I strive at all times to have a clear conscience before God and man” (Acts 24:16). In the coming weeks and months, let me know if I succeed.