Letters of Thomas Charles VII: The Conscience of the Believer
In this episode of The Whole Counsel Podcast, John Snyder returns to the writings of Welsh pastor Thomas Charles, examining his 1784 essay “Natural and Renewed Conscience” taken from Thomas Charles’s Spiritual Counsels. Charles explores the difference between the conscience of an unconverted person and the conscience of a believer whose heart has been renewed by the Holy Spirit. Both may recognize sin and condemn it, but the believer truly hates it and, by the Spirit, has the power to overcome it. The natural conscience can warn us of wrongdoing while our hearts delight in the very sins we condemn. As Charles explains, “Conscience acts as a judge of sin, but grace acts as an irreconcilable adversary. Conscience condemns sin, but grace slays it.”
Charles emphasizes that grace continually looks to Christ for strength, feeds on the gospel, and finds in it what it needs to persevere. The Christian life begins by grace through faith and continues by that same grace. The believer’s hope is not merely that sin will be exposed or condemned, but that, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the sustaining truth of the gospel, sin will progressively be put to death, and the soul brought into greater conformity to Christ.
SHOW NOTES
📖 Thomas Charles’s Spiritual Counsels | Banner of Truth
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