Avoiding Spiritual Calluses

Our consciences are designed to help us avoid sin by hurting when we go astray. But if we keep sinning, we can sear our consciences and harden our hearts. These calluses can be very dangerous to our spiritual life.

“A callus is an especially toughened area of skin which has become relatively thick and hard in response to repeated friction, pressure, or other irritation” (Wikipedia).

Throughout life we all do things that cause calluses to form on our skin. This happens because we do something that hurts. When we continue doing it, the skin grows tough so that we don’t feel the pain anymore. This can be useful or painful depending on the situation.

Seared and senseless

But how does this relate to our spiritual life?

Consider what the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:1-2).

John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible says, “Consciences are cauterized and hardened, and past feeling … the searing of flesh with an iron, or cauterizing it, whereby it grows callous and hard.”

Can we become senseless and unfeeling? Calluses are the effect of deadening the senses. When we sin, that sin causes pain. And because of our conscience, we can feel that pain and it truly hurts. But if we ignore our conscience and fail to repent of that sin, we become a little less sensitive. Next time we commit that sin, we won’t feel as much pain. We’ve become a little harder and have started building up a callus to that sin.

If we continually neglect our conscience, this process will continue to the point that we have become so hardened to the pain of sin that we don’t even feel it. We deaden that sensitivity to sin.

A hardened attitude doesn’t happen all at once. It’s from a habitual state of mind through the increasing insensitivity of our conscience.

“Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today,’ lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:12-13).

Removing spiritual calluses

We cannot afford this kind of spiritual calluses. We need to do what we can to prevent them. We have to stay on guard and be led by the Spirit of God. When we are given God’s Spirit, we start the process of changing our stony hearts to hearts of flesh.

If we have spiritual calluses caused by sin, we have to remove them through repentance. If you’ve ever pulled off a callus, you know how painful it can be. Repentance is not an easy process. It is painful. But the positive end result is far greater than any pain we will endure.

Don’t neglect God’s Spirit. We must not grow dull to feeling the pain caused by our sins, but must repent and overcome them.

Johnathan Armstrong attends the Little Rock, Arkansas, congregation of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, and is a graduate student working on his doctorate in physics.