Conscience
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συνείδησις means conscience, the inward moral witness by which a person registers guilt, integrity, obligation, accusation, or approval before God and others. It is not infallible, and it is not irrelevant.
Reader summary
Full entry for συνείδησις (G4893) · Open the biblical lexicon
συνείδησις means conscience, the inward moral witness by which a person registers guilt, integrity, obligation, accusation, or approval before God and others. It is not infallible, and it is not irrelevant.
The BSB source-word alignment has 30 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include conscience (21), consciences (4), - (1), [the] conscience (1), for the sake of conscience (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Acts 23:1. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Corinthians (8), Hebrews (5), 1 Timothy (4), 1 Peter (3).
συνείδησις means conscience, the inward moral witness by which a person registers guilt, integrity, obligation, accusation, or approval before God and others. It is not infallible, and it is not irrelevant. The conscience can be good, clear, weak, wounded, defiled, seared, cleansed, or rejected. In the Pastoral Epistles, conscience sits near the center of ministry formation.
Paul says instruction reaches its goal when love rises from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and sincere faith. Some reject a good conscience and shipwreck their faith. Deacons must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. False teachers can have consciences seared as with a hot iron. Paul serves God with a clear conscience. Titus warns that to the defiled and unbelieving, both mind and conscience are defiled.
The word therefore helps teachers speak about moral awareness without making private feeling lord. Conscience must be instructed by truth, kept tender before God, cleansed by Christ, and protected from both violation and corruption.
συνείδησις names conscience as a real but dependent moral witness. The Pastoral Epistles show conscience as clear, good, rejected, seared, or defiled, and they connect it directly to love, faith, leadership, and perseverance.
The goal of our instruction is the love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith.
A clear conscience is one source condition for the love that sound instruction aims to form. Conscience belongs to doctrine's pastoral goal.
Holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and thereby shipwrecked their faith.
Rejecting a good conscience is spiritually dangerous. Paul connects conscience to perseverance in faith, not merely private moral comfort.
They must hold to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.
Church servants must hold gospel truth with a clear conscience. Orthodoxy and moral integrity belong together.
Influenced by the hypocrisy of liars, whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.
False teaching can coexist with damaged moral awareness. A seared conscience no longer responds rightly to truth.
I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience as did my forefathers, as I constantly remember you night and day in my prayers.
Paul's ministry is lived before God with a clear conscience. The word names integrity in worship, service, and prayer.
To the pure, all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Indeed, both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
Conscience can be defiled along with the mind. Moral awareness is not self-cleansing when unbelief and impurity govern the person.
Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
The gospel reaches the conscience by cleansing guilt. Conscience is not healed by denial but by drawing near through Christ's priestly work.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Inner moral awareness that accuses or approves one's actions through self-judgment.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 32 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
the conscience
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 5 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 8 selected witnesses from 30 lexical occurrence verses.
συνείδησις is built from this root:
Grounds obedience in accountability before God.1 Timothy 1:18-20
Conscience serves as an internal witness to God’s moral law, reinforcing universal accountability.1 Timothy 3:8-13
Highlights the internal limitation of old covenant sacrifices.1 Timothy 4:1-5
Anchors Paul’s defense in accountability to God.Acts 22:30-23:5
Emphasizes integrity in life and defense.Acts 24:10-21
A violated conscience undermines spiritual stability and opens the door to doctrinal collapse.Hebrews 9:1-10
Practical service must be grounded in internal integrity and doctrinal conviction.Romans 13:1-7
Doctrinal corruption is linked to moral corruption; a seared conscience leads to distorted teaching.Romans 2:1-16
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
συνείδησις matters because the Christian life is lived before God, not merely before public opinion or private feeling. A clear conscience can strengthen love, leadership, service, and prayer. A rejected conscience can shipwreck faith. A seared conscience can make false teaching feel plausible. A defiled conscience can misread everything through impurity and unbelief.
That range keeps the church from simplistic counsel. We should not tell believers to ignore conscience, but neither should we tell them that conscience is always right. It is a witness that must be trained by truth, kept clear through obedience, and cleansed from guilt by the work of Christ.
1Tim.1.5
The noun combines the idea of knowing with oneself, but its biblical use is not mere self-awareness. It names moral witness before God, capable of testimony, distortion, defilement, and cleansing.
The Old Testament trains God's people to live before the Lord who searches the heart, while the New Testament names conscience as a moral witness that must be kept clear and cleansed by Christ. The Pastorals locate that witness inside church leadership, sound teaching, and the fight to persevere in faith.