President Boyd K. Packer explained the value remorse of conscience can have:
“It is my purpose to ease the pain of those who suffer from the very unpleasant feeling of guilt. I feel like the doctor who begins his treatment by saying, ‘Now, this may hurt a little. …’
“Every one of us has at least tasted the pain of conscience which follows our mistakes.
“John said, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ [1 John 1:8]. Then he said it more strongly: ‘If we say that we have not sinned, we make [the Lord] a liar, and his word is not in us’ [1 John 1:10].
“All of us sometime, and some of us much of the time, suffer remorse of conscience from things we did wrong or things left undone. That feeling of guilt is to the spirit what pain is to the physical body. …
“We all make mistakes. Sometimes we harm ourselves and seriously injure others in ways that we alone cannot repair. We break things that we alone cannot fix. It is then in our nature to feel guilt and humiliation and suffering, which we alone cannot cure. That is when the healing power of the Atonement will help.
“The Lord said, ‘Behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent [D&C 19:16]” (in Conference Report, Apr. 2001, 27–28; or Ensign, May 2001, 22–23).
President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) spoke of the value of a sensitive conscience: “How wonderful that God should endow us with this sensitive yet strong guide we call a conscience! Someone has aptly remarked that ‘conscience is a celestial spark which God has put into every man for the purpose of saving his soul.’ Certainly it is the instrument which awakens the soul to consciousness of sin, spurs a person to make up his mind to adjust, to convict himself of the transgression without soft-pedaling or minimizing the error, to be willing to face facts, meet the issue and pay necessary penalties—and until the person is in this frame of mind he has not begun to repent. To be sorry is an approach, to abandon the act of error is a beginning, but until one’s conscience has been sufficiently stirred to cause him to move in the matter, so long as there are excuses and rationalizations, one has hardly begun his approach to forgiveness. This is what Alma meant in telling his son Corianton that ‘none but the truly penitent are saved.’ (Al. 42:24.)” (The Miracle of Forgiveness [1969], 152).