36 良心——神教导并洁淨人心Conscience - God teaches andcleanses the heart
《简明神学》Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs，巴刻（J. I. Packer）著/張麟至译，更新传道会，2007年。
36 良心——神教导并洁淨人心
Conscience - God teaches and cleanses the heart
地被其上的居民污秽；因为他们犯了律法，废了律例，背了永约。（赛24:5）
良心是神创造在我们心思内的能力，好将道德判断传遁给自己，使我们可以同意或反对自己的态度、行动、反应、思想和计划，同时也告诉我们，当良心反对我们所行所为时，我们应当为自己的这种行为受苦。良心有两个要素：（1）观察事理的对错；（2）将律法和规则应用到特定情况的能力。良心有别于我们心思和其他的能力，这点是很独特的；它好像是另外一个人，总在我们要它安静时讲话，而且尽讲些我们不要听的话。我们可以决定要否听良心说话，但是我们却决定不了它要不要说话；我们的经验是这样的；良心对发言与否有它自己的裁决权。因为良心坚持用我们所知道的最高标准来审判我们，因此我们可称良心为神在人灵魂里的声音；就最高的程度来说，它的确是如此。
保罗说，神在每个人的心上，写下了一些祂律法的要求（罗2:14-15），人的经验也肯定这一点。（[心]在圣经上通常[良心]的同义字；撒上24:5的希伯来文[大卫心中自责]亦可译作[大卫的良心自责]，此外还有许多其他的例子。）可是良心有时也可能会被误导，或被约制成视恶为善，或因屡次犯罪麻痹了、变钝了（提前4:2），在此类情况下，良心就不能代表神的声音了。良心特定的审判，只有和圣经上神自己的真理与律法相符合时，才可以视之为神的声音。所以良心必须要受教导，才能作出符合圣经的审判。
个人的良心可能反映出家庭和社会的一些标准，或缺乏某些标准。师士记就告诉我们，当[个人都凭着自己所看为对的去行]（士17:6；21:25直译）时，所做出的许多可怕的事。
迷信或吹毛求疵也可能使人将神没有宣布为有罪的行为，当做是有罪的；对良心这样软弱的人而言（罗14:23）。因此，我们绝不可勉强软弱的人去做令他们良心不安或者不能做的事。
新约圣经的理想乃是要求我们要有无亏的、清洁的良心（因为人若能以公义为他们的目标，他就会避免犯罪，徒24:16；提前1:5,19.来13:18；彼前3:16）。不过要有这种良心，我们就需得先用基督的血洗净它；我们必须看见因为基督在祂牺牲之死里，如何为我们所有的恶行忍受了我们该当的苦难，使得那些恶行不再成为我们与神交通的阻碍（来9:14）。
CONSCIENCE
GOD TEACHES AND CLEANSES THE
HEART
The
earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws, violated the
statutes and broken the everlasting covenant. ISAIAH 24:5
Conscience
is the built-in power of our minds to pass moral judgments on ourselves,
approving or disapproving our attitudes, actions, reactions, thoughts, and
plans, and telling us, if it disapproves of what we have done, that we ought to
suffer for it. Conscience has in it two elements, (a) an awareness of certain
things as being right and wrong, and (b) an ability to apply laws and rules to
specific situations. Conscience, as distinct from our other powers of mind, is
unique; it feels like a person detached from us, often speaking when we would
like it to be silent and saying things that we would rather not hear. We can
decide whether to heed conscience, but we cannot decide whether or not it will
speak; our experience is that it decides that for itself. Because of its
insistence on judging us by the highest standard we know, we call it God’s
voice in the soul, and to that extent so it is.
Paul
says that God has written some of the requirements of his law on every human
heart (Rom. 2:14-15), and experience confirms this. (“Heart” in Scripture is
often synonymous with “conscience” : the NIV rightly renders the Hebrew
“David’s heart hit him” as “David was conscience-stricken” in 1 Sam. 24:5, and
there are other examples.) But conscience may be misinformed, or conditioned to
regard evil as good, or seared and dulled by repeated sin (1 Tim. 4:2), and in
such cases conscience will be less than God’s voice. The particular judgments
of conscience are to be received as God’s voice only when they match God’s own
truth and law in Scripture. Consciences must therefore be educated to judge
scripturally.
The
consciences of individuals are likely to reflect family and community
standards, or lack of them. The book of Judges tells grisly stories of things
done at a time when “everyone did as he saw fit” (17:6; 21:25).
Superstition
or scruple may lead a person to view as sinful an action that God’s Word declares
is not sinful; but for such a “weak” conscience (Rom. 14:1-2; 1 Cor. 8:7, 12)
to do what it thinks sinful would be sin (Rom. 14:23), and therefore “weak”
persons should never be pressed to do what they cannot conscientiously do.
The
New Testament ideal is a conscience that is “good” and “clean” (because
righteousness is one’s purpose, and sin is being avoided: Acts 24:16; 1 Tim.
1:5, 19; Heb. 13:18; 1 Pet. 3:16). But for this our conscience must first be
“cleansed” by the blood of Christ; we must see that because Christ in his
sacrificial death endured the suffering due to us for all our wrongdoings, they
no longer constitute a barrier to our communion with God (Heb. 9:14).
