Click on audio player to download mp3 or to change listening speed
The Bible and Your Conscience, Part 3
Your Conscience and Other Believers
Bruce A. Hess
Now, we are involved in a series of messages, and this is part 3 in the series we are going to be doing today, which we have entitled, “The Bible and Your Conscience.” If you’ve missed the first two parts, I would encourage you to listen to them or to watch them, because we are going to be building on the foundation of those first two messages as we look at this third message in the series.
But I do just simply want to give you a little bit of a mini summary of what we covered in the first two. In the first message we talked about What is the Conscience? We asked that question, and we answered that question. One of the things we did is we gave a definition of conscience. I defined it as “An intuitive sense of rightness and wrongness regarding our words, attitudes, and actions.” We pointed out in that very first message that if we violate our conscience, it condemns us…we experience feelings of shame, regret, and anxiety. But if we follow our conscience, it commends us…and we tend to experience joy and peace and affirmation.
So, message number two, we looked at Some Anatomy of our Conscience. We looked at a number of things but I want to highlight two things we looked at. One is that The Holy Spirit is Not our Conscience. The Holy Spirit works in conjunction with our conscience, in tandem with our conscience. Secondly, some of what we covered is that Our Conscience Needs to be Calibrated to God’s Standards. Our conscience needs to be educated to and retrained to God’s standards. We gave in that message several illustrations of how that might look.
Also, in that second message we took some time to look at Some Conditions of our Conscience as described in the New Testament. We looked at a Clear or good conscience. We looked at an Evil conscience. We looked at a Seared conscience and we looked very briefly at what is called a Weak conscience, which we only defined at the time as a less developed conscience.
What we’re really going to do in this message is zoom in a little bit more on that idea of a weak conscience. But the thrust of what we are going to be looking at is found in the message title I have given to the message today and that is, “Your Conscience and Other Believers,” your conscience and other believers. How do we relate to one another with our consciences?
One of the things we want to note is that No Two Believers have Consciences that are Exactly the Same. For each one of us our conscience is unique on some level, so we are all different in some respect. We are all at different stages of calibration of our conscience. So, it is very important we understand this:
- No two believers have consciences that are exactly the same.
- We are unique on some level.
- We’re different in some respect.
- We’re at different stages of calibration.
Now, here is what I want you to watch: how this works out with our conscience and other believers’ consciences. So, our conscience is our internal sense of right and wrong, correct? Yes, it is. Now, if someone is different from me, if someone senses in their conscience things differently from me—and we’re talking here about issues that are not directly addressed in Scripture. For example, stealing is very clearly wrong, but there are issues that are not directly addressed in Scripture.
If someone has a conscience different from me, here is what the tendency is that we have: the tendency to assume, well, they must be wrong. They must be flawed in some way; they don’t view that issue the same way as me. That assumption can breed a sense of pride and even superiority.
This is why this is all important. If we are not alert to that tendency that we have; if we’re not alert to that, you know what it leads to? It leads to conflict; it leads to judgmentalism. It actually feeds Satan’s strategy in the church. Do you know what his primary strategy in the church is? It is to create conflict and to create division. If we’re not alert to this—our tendency to think, well, they must be wrong—it can lead to conflict and judgmentalism, and ultimately lead to division, which, in turn, detours us from a united focus together on making disciples and glorifying God.
It is very important we understand this when we talk about Our Conscience and Other Believers. It is our internal sense of right and wrong. If someone is different than me, we generally conclude they must be wrong. And, if we’re not alert, that can cause conflict and judgmentalism, which feeds Satan’s strategy to create conflict and division in the church, which in turn detours us from making disciples and glorifying God.
You say, well, I don’t know, how does that work exactly? Well, there are two real-life examples of this in the New Testament. One is found in Romans, chapter 14, and the other one is found in 1 Corinthians, chapter number eight. Let’s take a little closer look to see if we get a better understanding of how this displayed itself historically.
First of all, we are going to look at Romans, chapter 14. Now it is important we understand, in the church at Rome there were obviously many Gentile new believers in Jesus. But there also were a number of new followers of Jesus who were Jews, by way of their background.
What we have in Romans 14 is that some of those new Jewish believers–even though they were now followers of Jesus—decided, because of my heritage and my family line and everything, I think it is still right to observe the Sabbath day, which was Saturday. I think it is still right for me to eat only kosher food, which is what my family has always eaten. I think it is right for me to observe all the Old Testament festivals that I have been observing all my life.
Now, the Bible clearly said you don’t do these things in order to be saved. They’re not talking about that. They’re just saying, you know what, I just feel like it is right for me to continue to observe the Sabbath; to eat kosher things; to observe the festivals. But not everybody felt that way at all. There were others among the new Jewish believers who felt they were free to no longer follow all the practices they had followed for all their life. They said, I don’t feel like I need to observe any of the Sabbath anymore. I don’t really feel like I need to only eat kosher food anymore. I don’t think I need to observe all of the festivals anymore. This difference of conscience began to cause conflict and division in the church.
Here is the question: who was right? The Scripture doesn’t directly address that. It doesn’t say, oh, you know, you probably if you’re Jewish in background ought to continue to observe the festivals. It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say you should no longer observe all those festivals. It doesn’t directly address that.
But remember our problem is, we have this tendency, this is just being truthful, to look at other people whose conscience conviction is different from ours and we say, you know what, I think they are wrong. That causes conflict and division. So, you see that in Romans 14.
We see a different situation in 1 Corinthians, chapter number 8. This can get a little complicated, but I want to unpack this as simply as I can because it’s not where I want to park. Here is basically what was going on in chapter 8 among the Christians in Corinth: there was an issue of eating, or buying, meat that had been sacrificed to idols. That was really the basic issue that was going on.
Now just so you have a little bit of background, when someone would sacrifice an animal to one of those idol gods, you would always pick the choicest cuts or the choicest animals to be sacrificed.
For example, one of the temples in the city of Corinth was the temple of Aphrodite. Aphrodite was supposedly the goddess of love and Aphrodite had hundreds of temple prostitutes who worked at that temple. When they would do a sacrifice of a truly choice animal, often what would happen is the priest would consume the meat from that. But often there was more sacrifices than the priest could consume. So, what they decided to do is to sell some of that meat in the marketplace. Now think about it, these are choice animals. This is the choice meat and when they would sell some of that surplus in the marketplace, they would do it at a reduced price.
Here is what was happening in Corinth: there were some believers in Corinth who were saying, what a great deal! I mean, what a great way to feed my family. I mean, we can get really great stuff at a reduced price. After all, I mean, Aphrodite is just a fake god, Aphrodite doesn’t really exist. There is only one true God. The Scripture doesn’t directly tell us, can you buy the choice meat at a reduced price in the marketplace, yay or nay? Scripture doesn’t say that, and so some concluded it’s okay for us to do that. That is the way that some felt.
But there were others in the body of Christ in Corinth—especially those who had to come to faith out of pagan worship, many of them had just come right out of pagan worship and trusted in Jesus—they felt differently. They said, it’s not right. I mean, a Christian should not have anything to do with anything that relates to pagan ceremonies.
They concluded, I will never, ever buy any meat—I don’t care how good it is or what the price is—that was part of a ceremony, maybe in the temple of Aphrodite. Part of, I think, what their concern was, that if they maybe would go into the marketplace and look at the meat, maybe they might even be tempted to think about going back and getting involved in some of the old worship practices. So out of fear they said, no way, no way, we’re not doing that.
Now it is this second group that is described in 1 Corinthians 8 as having a weak conscience, a weak conscience. What does that really mean, a weak conscience? Well, this word, in the original language, is a word that just means ‘a limitation.’ It depends on the context to what limitation it’s talking about. For example, this same word could be used of having a limitation physically, and if you have a limitation physically, that means you are sick. So, whenever you see this term being used, there is a limitation being communicated but it varies by context as to what that may be.
What we learn from this passage, when you look at it in 1 Corinthians 8, is the opposite of being weak is ‘knowledge.’ The noun and the verb of ‘knowledge’ is used ten times in verses 1-11. Part of the argument is going to be: not everyone has this knowledge. Not everyone has the knowledge of some people that these “idols” really aren’t gods. Those who don’t embrace that truth (in other words, they still view them as real entities), their conscience becomes weak.
So, what I want to do is just to help clarify this. I want to look at what the true facts were and verses 4-6 give those to us. I have here the translation of the New Living Translation because I think it maybe clarifies this even more. So, here’s what the true facts are, verse 4: “So, what about eating meat that has been offered to idols? Well, we all know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God. Verse 5, There may be so-called gods both in heaven and on earth. Verse 6 ”…But for us, there is one God…the Father, by whom all things were created, and for whom we live. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created, and through whom we live.” Those are the facts of knowledge we see in verses 4-6.
But now I want you to see the issue, which is really in verse 7 (NLT), “However, not all believers know this. Some are accustomed to thinking of idols as being real, so when they eat food that has been offered to idols, they think of it as the worship of real gods, and their weak consciences are violated.” Alright? So, you see the way that that works? You have some believers who have one view of some things, some believers who have another view of things, but part of the problem is basically some people have less knowledge.
Now we went all through that and you’re probably thinking that’s wonderful history, Bruce. Thank you so much for that history, but that has nothing to do with me today. Those are not issues that we face today! It’s true. We don’t face those same issues from Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8. But we also—let’s be real about this—have issues of disagreement when it comes to the practice of our conscience. We have some disagreements about issues where there is no chapter and verse in the Bible about it, where Scripture does not directly address whether something is right or wrong for a believer.
I’m just going to give you some illustrations. So, we may not be Romans 14; we may not be 1 Corinthians 8; but we also have different viewpoints on some things. I have up here a list of several things, issues where there is no chapter and verse, where the Bible does not directly address it. Are they right or are they wrong for a believer??
The first one is drinking an alcoholic beverage. Is that right or wrong for a believer? Now the Bible is very clear that we’re not to be drunk [Ephesians 5:18], but what about drinking an alcoholic beverage?
It is very interesting that if you go to Europe and you’re among conservative believers there, folks who take Scripture very seriously, it is very common for them to just be naturally accepting of drinking a fermented beverage. You come to our culture in the United States and it’s a little different than that. There are some people who feel that way, and there’s a whole lot of people who go, Oh, no, no, no! That’s wrong, it’s wrong to drink an alcoholic beverage.
How about, is it right or wrong to play sports on a Sunday? Or, to attend an NBA, a National Basketball Association, game on a Sunday? Is it wrong to do yard work on a Sunday? Where’s the verse that tells us: you shall not do yard work on a Sunday, or you are free to do yard work on a Sunday? See the Bible doesn’t give us any direct information about that.
Right or wrong? Video games, yay or nay? What does the Bible say? What’s the verse on video games? Anybody know where that verse is? How long should someone play video games?
What about Tik Tok? Is that right or wrong? Where’s the Tik Tok verse? Anybody know the Tik Tok verse?
What about clothing? I mean, how revealing should clothing be? How revealing is revealing? What is revealing?
How about body piercing? What verse is there about that, that tells us whether that is right or wrong? By the way, if you’re a young person and you are still living at your home, when you start talking about things like video games, Tik Tok, how revealing clothing should be, body piercing, just remember, if you are still at home with your parents, you should be honoring and obeying your parents on those subject matters. Yes! Some parents are going, Yeah, thank you so much, Bruce!
Right or wrong? Can you smoke a cigar and be a believer in Jesus Christ?
How about subscribing to a premium TV movie channel? Can you do that? Is that right or wrong?
How about Halloween? We’re about ready to come into that time. You know there are some believers who go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Halloween is full of satanic roots; we need to reject it totally. Yet you have other believers who go, Well, no, we don’t need to get into the satanic end of it, but we can just have a fall or harvest theme. We can have our kids dress up as their favorite animal or favorite athlete, or favorite movie character. What’s the right or wrong about Halloween?
One of my favorite ones is the one at the bottom there. What’s a true believer supposed to do with your kids? Do you send them to Christian school? If you’re really a believer that’s serious, do you home school all of them? Do you send them to public school?
You see, Scripture does not directly address these things and I could have a hundred more up here. A hundred more! But here is what we get in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8: Paul lays out several clear principles that apply to our conscience and how we relate to other believers. Those chapters are there for a reason. Not because those are the issues, but because the principles are going to be universal when we apply them. So that’s what we want to look at, we want to look at the principles related to our conscience and other believers. So, we’re going to look at Principles Related to our Conscience and other Believers.
Here’s principle number one, you ought to write these down if you can or take a picture of the screen. Okay, these are going to be important. Principle number one, Develop your Own Convictions, develop your own convictions. Romans 14:5, “One person esteems one day as better—as more holy or more special—than another, while another esteems all days alike. They’re all equally special to me. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.”
That’s the challenge that we’re given, to be fully convinced in our own mind. What does that mean? How do we do that? Well, you begin to pray through that. You begin to reason through that Biblically. What Biblical principles might apply to this? You look to the ministry of the Holy Spirit who is there to be your helper, to help lead us through this.
So, the first principle is, Develop your own Convictions. Principle number two, Don’t Judge Other Believers who come to a Different Conviction. Now here is the way it works. If I’m to be fully convinced, when I become fully convinced in my heart I think—whatever the issue may be—this is right.
Here is what often happens: I then think I need to convince other people that my conviction is right for everyone and we start exporting morality to one another. What does it say? (14:3) “Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats.” Now, I want you to look at that verse and ask the question, why not? Why not? The answer is given in the next verse (14:4), “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls.”
See how this works? Verses 10 and 12 of the same chapter, Roman 14, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or why do you despise your brother?” See what the context is? They have a different view of conscience and conviction than I do. To whom do we answer? “For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.” We’re all going to stand there. “So, then each of us will give an account of himself (regarding how we operated within our conscience, we will give an account of ourselves) to God.”
This principle means that it is not our job to police [idiom for controlling and keeping others in order] other people. If someone is violating a clear Scriptural value that’s different, but it is not our job to police others. It’s not our job to force others to embrace our conviction. One day each one of us will give an account for the convictions of our conscience.
Principle number three, Be Alert to Another’s Potential Vulnerability, another’s potential vulnerability. Romans 14:13, “Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another brother.” Verse 21 of the same chapter, “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.”
Then, you will notice it says in 1 Corinthians, chapter 8, verses 9-13—I’m just going to read those verses—chapter 8, verses 9-13, “But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple (which would be a step up from buying meat in the market) will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so, by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”
Now, these verses can confuse some people, so I want to clarify a couple of things, alright? I want to talk about what this does NOT mean. These verses do NOT mean that we never do anything if someone else disagrees with it. It does NOT mean we never do anything if it irritates or annoys somebody else. It’s not saying that. I mean, if we did that, if we never did anything if someone else disagrees with it; if we never did anything if it irritates or annoys someone else; you know what would happen if we did? We would ALL be totally paralyzed. We couldn’t do anything if we couldn’t do it if someone else disagreed with it, or if they said, well that irritates or that annoys me—we couldn’t do anything!! We would all be paralyzed.
Think about the difference in the consciences between Jesus and His disciples. Remember when Jesus said to the disciples, I have to go through Samaria. And the disciples’ consciences said what? Oh no, we’re not going through there! [Bruce whispers like the disciples might have whispered among themselves] “we’re not supposed to go through Samaria!” Then they go through Samaria and Jesus starts talking to a Samaritan woman! And, the disciples’ consciences are reacting: we’re in Samaria and you’re talking to a Samaritan woman!
Who had more knowledge in the situation? Jesus did. Who had the weak conscience? The disciples did. I mean, just think about this, if Jesus limited Himself to the Pharisees’ convictions in what He ought to do, no one would have been healed on the Sabbath day. If Jesus limited Himself to the Pharisees’ convictions, He never would have eaten with the tax collectors. So, it does not mean if anyone else disagrees with it; if anyone is irritated or annoyed by it, that we don’t do it. It doesn’t mean that.
What does it mean? Well, here’s what it means: it means that we need to be alert on how another might struggle spiritually as we act in our conscience conviction. We need to be alert how it might potentially put someone else in spiritual danger.
Now I need to illustrate this and I’m going to illustrate this with just one arena. The one arena I want to illustrate this with is the arena of alcoholic beverages. I had a relative—I still have a relative—but this relative at one point was an outright alcoholic, consuming one and a half cases of beer every day. He later got free of that. But just imagine that this relative is invited over to my house and my conscience says it’s okay to drink a beer (by the way I don’t drink beer, but let’s just say I think it is okay to drink beer). So, he comes over to my house and I say to him, hey, have a beer. Am I really being alert to how he might be tempted to revert? Maybe he might think, you know, Bruce drinks a beer, and even though I have a negative beer background, I guess it’s okay for me to do it. Then, suddenly boom, he spiritually trips up; he has a spiritual collapse in his life. That’s just one illustration of what Paul is getting at here.
Let me give you another illustration. We’re just going to pretend—this doesn’t come from reality here, but we’re going to pretend—our college group is getting together and our college group is going to take a trip out after meeting together to a restaurant and bar. They decide to invite this newer believer. I’m just going to call her Kennedy, there is no Kennedy, but I’m going to call her Kennedy. They say, Kennedy, come along with us, we’re going to go out to the restaurant and bar. Kennedy says, no, I don’t think I’m going to go. The college folks who are inviting her say, well, why? Why would you not want to come out with us? She says, well, before I knew the Lord, frankly, I drank too much and some of my behavior that came out of that was not good. So, I don’t feel comfortable going to the restaurant and bar.
What if the college group goes on to say, aww, come on anyway! We’re not going to drink a lot, come on! Well, that is not being alert to another person’s vulnerability. That is what this principle is about, being alert to another person’s vulnerability.
Principle number four, principle number four says Operate Out of Love; Assume the Best in Others; Aim to Build up one another. Romans 14:6, “The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord.” They’re out to honor the Lord. “The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord…while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord.” Don’t assume that they’re doing something differently merely out of contrariness. They are likely seeking to live out the conviction they feel before the Lord. Then, in verse 19, “So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.” Remember, Satan’s strategy is to create conflict and division in the church.
Paul’s ultimate solution is not to come up with a whole new list of rules. It’s not law, it’s love! That’s how we are to operate.
Principle number five is Seek to Honor God. Romans 14:17, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
So those are principles—hopefully you’ve gotten them—that tell us how we are to relate to other believers who have different conscience convictions than we do. But there is another question I want to address that is very important. Those are principles on how we are to relate to one another when we have different convictions in our conscience. But here is another key question: how do I develop a conscience conviction about an issue or practice that Scripture does not directly address? How do I do that?
That is a good practical question and that is what I want to talk about now. How do we develop a conscience conviction about an issue or practice when Scripture does not directly address it? In other words, how do we decide whether or not to:
- Watch certain things
- Whether or not to do certain things
- Whether or not to go to certain places?
How do we practically decide that? Part of this is inviting the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who is our Helper, to come in and to lead us and assist us in answering these questions and developing our conscience. But, one of the things I think God wants us to utilize is something that I have called the Principles of Grace. We can utilize the Principles of Grace as we work our way through developing these convictions. These Principles of Grace transcend cultures. In fact, I have had them written in my Bible for more than fifty years because these Principles of Grace help us in developing our conscience. So, I want to share with you these Principles of Grace.
They’re found in the book of 1 Corinthians, which is the letter to the church that was the most divided church in the New Testament. Here they are, I want you to see them. Principle number one is the principle of Mastery. It’s found in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6 and verse 12. It asks the question, Does it Tend to Control Me? When the Bible doesn’t directly address it and we want to develop a conviction about it, the principle of mastery asks the question, Does it Tend to Control Me?
The second principle is the principle of Love from 1 Corinthians, chapter 8, verses 9 and 13. It asks the question, Could it Hurt other People? Could it cause someone else to be led into a spiritual collapse?
The third principle is the principle of Testimony, 1 Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 12. As I’m trying to work through having a conviction about this, Will it Impede my Witness? Will it help to draw people to Christ or repel people from Christ? Is it an obstacle or an opportunity for God to be at work in my life?
Principle number 4, the principle of Edification, 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 23. It asks the question, Does it Build me up or Does it Tear me Down Spiritually? Does it build me up or tear me down spiritually?
Principle number 5 is the principle of Example, 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 1. Is it Worth Imitating? Because all of us—I don’t care how old you are—there’s always people watching us. So, as we’re developing our convictions we ask, Is it Worth Others Imitating it?
Lastly, my favorite one of all is the principle of Honor, 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 31. Will it Honor God? I call this last principle the magnificent all-permeating main thing. It’s the principle we should never, ever forget. We’ve been bought with a price, therefore we glorify God in our body. Will it glorify Him? Will it honor Him?
Let’s pray together. Father, we just thank You so much again for this book that is alive, so practical and so helpful. We think of all the principles we’ve learned about how to relate to one another when we have different viewpoints; different convictions. Plus, all these Grace principles about how to develop a conviction about an area that Scripture does not directly address. May we always be thinking about the magnificent, all-permeating main thing, and that is, Am I glorifying God by doing this? May You be honored, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Questions for Reflection
The Bible and Your Conscience
Message 3 – Your Conscience and Other Believers
1. Bruce listed a number of examples of perceived right/wrong issues today that
Scripture does not directly address. In your experience, what are some of the
most prominent areas where believers often view things differently?
2. Has there been a time in your spiritual walk when you considered something
as wrong, but other believers considered it as OK? Explain.
How about the reverse, where you considered some behavior as OK and others
considered it to be wrong? Explain again.
3. Have your convictions of right and wrong altered in some way after studying
Scripture more fully? Elaborate.
4. Have you ever felt pressure from someone else to violate your conscience?
How did you respond in that situation?
5. Why is it that people in the believing family can so easily view someone who’s
conscience may differ from theirs as being spiritually flawed in some way?
6. What does it mean to “never put a stumbling block in the way of a brother”?
(see Romans 14:13, 21; 1 Corinthians 8:9, 13)
7. Bruce mentioned five ‘principles of grace’ that can help us develop convictions
about issues today that Scripture does not directly address. List them out.
Personal reflection for later:
Is there anything you may be doing or saying that could encourage another believer to potentially violate their conscience?