HoHum:
Adam Clarke was a sales clerk in a store that sold fine silk to people of the upper classes in London. One day his employer showed young Adam how he could increase sales and profits by stretching the silk as he measured it out. Young Adam Clarke looked his employer straight in the eye and said, “Sir, your silk may stretch by my conscience won’t.”
WBTU:
What do we do when someone is different from us and claim to be Christians. We have gone over the principle of acceptance, principle of personal conviction, principle of edification and tonight we conclude all of this with the principle of conscience
The apostle Paul through inspiration of the HS ends this discussion by explaining more about Christian freedom and its relation to the conscience. “whatever you believe about these things”, talking about a belief that something we do (or don’t do) is right before God even though not directly discussed in Scripture. Paul is repeating his encouragement to develop personal convictions, but he also is implying that we should strive to keep them to ourselves, especially in situations where they may cause sin or division or be harmful in some way to other Christians. He encourages us to enjoy the freedom we have in Christ, and to enjoy the good things that God has given us, even if others might have problems with this. According to Paul, we are blessed when we do not feel guilty or think we are sinning, in doing things that the Lord allows.
To all of this Paul adds a warning: no one should act against his or her conscience. It is not spiritually healthy to do so, and it is also displeasing to God. He who doubts that what he is doing is right, the Scripture says, is condemned if he does it. From the context, we know that this statement applies even to activities that are not wrong, like eating meat offered to idols. Paul has already expressed the HS take on this.
For we are told that someone who eats meat, or does anything else the Bible does not address, is sinning if he is not sure it is right. How can this be? Paul explains this: “because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.”
If we think something is wrong to do, and we do it anyway, it is sin- even if God never said that the activity itself is wrong. This is because our choice has not been made because of faith, but because of some other motive, usually to please people instead of pleasing God.
It is not the action itself, but the choice, that is displeasing to God. A helpful illustration would be a woman who was taught while growing up, by her parents and other Christians, that wearing pants is wrong. Men wear pants, the argument goes, so women should not wear pants. This idea comes from “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.” Deuteronomy 22:5, NIV. This is talking about transvestites. It is not meant to address pants, because men and women wore skirt like robes and tunics in Bible times (nobody wore pants!). When it comes to the NT teaching on modesty, the fact is that in some situations pants are more modest than dresses. Although it is fine for a particular woman to decide that she will not wear pants, this should not go into legalism, making an extra biblical standard for everyone.
No matter the lack of biblical guidelines on this, this woman has heard it over and over again that it is wrong for woman to wear pants. Any idea has a certain power when we hear it again and again from the people we love and respect, especially when we are a child. She has been convinced that it is wrong for her to wear pants.
Now suppose this woman is getting ready to go out for the evening with some girlfriends, who are all wearing jeans and begin to encourage her to do the same. They may even poke fun at her hesitancy, and may even browbeat her into breaking her tradition. If she decides to put the jeans on while she still thinks it might be wrong, she will be sinning, because at that moment this is more important to her than pleasing God. It will not be her faith in Christ that motivates her to put those jeans on, but her fear of what her friends will think.
Can her conscience be realigned, or retrained, so that she could wear pants without feeling guilty? Yes, this is a good step. But until that happens, she should not wear pants, because doing so will come between her and God. It will damage that most important relationship she has, because when she prays to Him she will not be able to pray “in faith” believing that he hears her because of the “sin” against her conscience. She will be thinking something like this: “I don’t know if I should be wearing these pants- God might be upset with me.”
Our conscience is like a diagnostic program running at all times on our computer. Depending on the information it has been given, it will judge whether we are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. If it judges that we are doing the wrong thing, it will flash a warning light (we call this “feeling guilty”). That warning light of guilt is very helpful in keeping us from moral crashes, but sometimes a conscience can be overactive on some issue, because it has been given wrong information. So like a computer, it can be reprogrammed with different and better information, so that it will not set off an alarm when not really necessary. Our goal should be to have a conscience that is fully informed by Scripture, which will keep us from doing that which is displeasing to God, and not from doing the good things we have the freedom to enjoy.
Paul identified the conscience as an inner knowledge of right and wrong among all mankind as the law “written on their hearts” Romans 2:14-15. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant said this, “Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe- the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
Sometimes our consciences need to be retrained on some issue, but as long as we think something is wrong, don’t do it. Because if we act against our conscience repeatedly, then we develop what the Bible called a “seared conscience”: “whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.” 1 Timothy 4:2, NIV. In such a conscience, the warning light has been ignored so often that it no longer flashes, and we find ourselves blind and enslaved to sins that will eventually destroy us. Years ago a wise man wrote this, “In my heart is an arrowhead with sharp edges. If I do wrong, it turns and it cuts me. If I do wrong too much, I wear out the edges and it doesn’t hurt quite so much.”
The old saying, “Let your conscience be your guide,” while having a kernel of truth, is not entirely true. Our conscience can be wrong, and may need to be retrained, as in the case of the woman who cannot wear pants. Our conscience should not be our guide in determining truth (the Bible should be our guide), but it should be our guard in the sense that it can keep us from wrong paths that lead to destruction. We should never push past this guard, but sometimes we might persuade it through biblical reasoning to move out of the way and not to be so sensitive in areas that biblically do not mean much.
This is why it is important for us to be arming our conscience with principles from Scripture, so it can protect us from choices that would hurt us in the end. Our nation needs this as well. Adolph Hitler said this, “I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality. We will train young people before whom the world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence- relentless and cruel.”
Thesis: What defiles our consciences that needs to be avoided?
For instances:
Doubt
Romans 14:23, been talking about this.
We should avoid violating our consciences. “Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled.” 1 Corinthians 8:7, NIV.
2. Apathy
“Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” James 4:17, NIV.
We should care about the evils around us. It should stir within us a desire to act. What Jesus warned is coming true: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,” Matthew 24:12, NIV. At the least we need to care about our fellow man. “Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Romans 13:10, NIV. How much harm do we do when we do nothing about the evils against our fellow man?
Need to do what we know is right even to the point of suffering. “For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.” 1 Peter 2:19
Willful sin
“Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.” Romans 13:5, NIV.
We need to live honorably. “Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way.” Hebrews 13:18, NIV.
Conclusion and invitation:
We need our consciences cleansed by Christ. “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” Hebrews 9:14
How can our consciences by cleansed by Christ? “let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” Hebrews 10:22, NIV.
