Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ

by D.A. Carson

If your conscience tells you that it’s wrong to eat animals, there goes your ministry to 90 percent of the people in the world. If you think privacy is next to godliness, you won’t last long in most countries. If your conscience won’t let you dance to tribal hymns, stay away from Africa. Or just import all Western hymns, and sing them exactly like you do at home—and don’t forget to take a piano!

Ponder this. The Son of God, who was not a Jew (he “became” one), left his complete freedom in heaven and became a good little Jewish boy and then a good, law-keeping Jewish man. The whole time he perfectly obeyed the very laws that he himself had given at Mount Sinai—even obeying laws that he knew were temporary because he designed them to be temporary (e.g., don’t eat pork, worship only in Jerusalem). The only laws he pushed back against were those that the Pharisees and others had added or completely misunderstood. Jesus in his life practiced what he later preached through Paul in Romans 14. He became a servant to people who were very different from him. He submitted himself to a culture that was foreign to him. He welcomed Jewish culture. He fit into Jewish culture. He wasn’t some counter-cultural hippy who railed against everything traditional. He wasn’t a weird outsider or misanthrope. He went to synagogue with his parents, and he went to the temple when he was twelve. He regularly celebrated Passover and other feasts in Jerusalem. He rested on the weekly Sabbath and attended synagogue service. He became a servant to the Jews and their culture.

Jesus entered in hisstory and becamme Jewish