Gold Nugget 138 - The Wonderful Endowment
Defilement of … mind (nous) means that the thoughts, wishes, purposes, activities, are all stained and debased. … The conscience (suneidesis), is the moral consciousness within, and that which is ever bringing up the memory of the past, with its omissions and commissions, its errors, its cruel, heartless unkindness, its selfish disregard of others. When this is defiled, then this last safeguard of the soul is broken down. The man and woman of the defiled conscience is self-satisfied, hard, impenitent to the last. Every part and faculty of the soul is stained with sin. …
We are not necessarily the creatures of the outward; we have within the power to bend circumstances to our will, to get good out of evil, to turn outward dissonance into music, deformity into beauty, poison into nourishment. Let us adore our Maker for this wonderful endowment – an endowment which guards us from the coercion of outward forces, secures to us an inward freedom of action, and enables us to put all outward things in subjection to our own spiritual selves.
The Pulpit Commentary, Titus p.23, Titus 1:15-16, (D. Thomas)
Gold Nugget 138
This Wonderful Endowment
