EXACTLY!
Even those who are spiritually dead have within them a self-assessment which often produces remorse or other negative feelings such as guilt and shame. In the following passage Paul speaks of a person's "conscience" which bears witness to the law written in the heart of all people, even those who are spiritually dead:
"for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them" (Ro.2:14-15).
John Calvin said the following about these words of Paul:
"They have then a law, though they are without law: for though they have not a written law, they are yet by no means wholly destitute of the knowledge of what is right and just; as they could not otherwise distinguish between vice and virtue; the first of which they restrain by punishment, and the latter they commend, and manifest their approbation of it by honoring it with rewards. He sets nature in opposition to a written law, meaning that the Gentiles had the natural light of righteousness, which supplied the place of that law by which the Jews were instructed, so that they were a law to themselves."
In the following verse Paul speaks about preaching the gospel in such a way that "everyone's conscience" bears witness that it is true:
"But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Cor.4:2).
Albert Barnes wrote, "
the consciences of people are on the side of truth, and the gospel may be so preached as to enlist their consciences in its favor. Conscience prompts to do right, and condemns us if we do wrong. It can never be made to approve of wrong, never to give a man peace if he does that which he knows to be evil... They approve of it as a just, pure, holy, and reasonable system; as in accordance with what they feel to be right; as recommending that which ought to be done, and forbidding that which ought not to be done."
In his commentary on this verse John Calvin wrote that "
He [Paul] claims to himself this praise--that he had proclaimed the pure doctrine of the gospel in simplicity and without disguise, and has the consciences of all as witnesses of this in the sight of God."
In
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges we read that "
The individual conscience is, and always must be, the ultimate tribunal to which all teaching must appeal, and St Paul assumes that in it there resides a faculty of appreciating and acknowledging truth."
