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

by D.A. Carson

No garden can be neglected for long without such consequences.

What are some reasons that your conscience may change? Here are three: 1. Your conscience might become more hardened through the deceitfulness of sin

2. Your conscience might follow the standards of other people such as your culture, family, or spiritual leaders.

3. Your conscience might conform more to truth, especially the truth of God

1. You are sinning against your conscience when you believe your conscience is speaking correctly and yet you refuse to listen to it.

2. You are calibrating your conscience when Christ, the Lord of your conscience, teaches you through his Scripture that your conscience has been incorrectly warning you about a particular matter, so you decide no longer to listen to your conscience in that one matter.

Peter’s faith in Christ was not weak; he was an apostle who understood and believed the gospel.

1. Calibrate your conscience by educating it with truth

2. Calibrate your conscience with due process. This is a wisdom issue. Sometimes it will take a lot of time to work through a particular matter.

But sometimes it can take us years to calibrate our conscience on a particular issue.

Sometimes we need to calibrate our conscience by adding commands to it. Something’s missing that ought to be there.

They need to calibrate their conscience by educating it with truth: (1) Sexual immorality is a sin against God and others. (2) Abortion is murder. (3) Gossip is sin. (4) Lying is sin. (5) Getting drunk is a

If a police officer pulls you over for going eighty miles per hour in a forty-mile-per-hour zone, do you think he’ll let you go if you appeal, “But officer, my speedometer indicated that I was going only forty miles per hour”? “That’s your problem,” he’d say. “Calibrate your speedometer.” When it comes to sin, you’re responsible to calibrate your conscience.

1. Should you view sexually charged nudity in videos?

2. How far is too far in a dating relationship? Should unmarried people passionately kiss each other or have nonintercourse sex?

3. Is it okay to use certain forms of reproductive technologies and other forms of genetic engineering such as gene therapy and stem cell technology?

4. Should I spend a lot of time on sports (or other hobbies)?

or to any other time-sucking hobby,

As we’ll learn in more detail in chapter 6, we need to think about other things besides just our freedom to do something hip and cool. And for us, this is the most important: A tattoo could make us less missional.

2. Is it sinful to use certain instruments in congregational worship?

3. Is it sinful to listen to particular styles of music? I (Andy) grew up in church contexts where my godly Christian leaders taught that particular styles of music—especially contemporary music—inherently communicate sinful sensuality and rebellion in all times and all cultures.

4. Is it sinful to celebrate Halloween?

In a culture where garage doors often function like castle gates, we jump at the opportunity to interact face-to-face with our neighbors in a friendly, nonconfrontational

5. Is it sinful to bite your fingernails?

6. Is it sinful for guys to wear shorts or jeans?

We could easily multiply examples: 1.watching mixed martial arts for entertainment 2.how to treat Sundays 3.listening to “secular” music 4.dressing modestly 5.capitalism vs. socialism 6.fair-trade coffee 7.global warming 8.watching particular movies or TV shows 9.playing video games 10.reading J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series 11.ladies wearing makeup 12.following the schedule in Growing Kids God’s Way 13.homeopathic medicine vs. antibiotics 14.public school vs. private school vs. private Christian school vs. homeschool 15.eating fast food that is unhealthy24 16.a church with multiple services and multiple sites 17.Christian hip-hop 18.body piercings 19.smoking cigars 20.drinking alcohol in moderation 21.going into debt 22.dating vs. courtship 23.when married couples should start trying to have children 24.how many children married couples should have 25.practicing daily family devotions 26.being overweight 27.perpetuating the Santa Claus myth

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the greatest preachers of the twentieth century, and we esteem him highly. But in March 1924, when he was twenty-four years old, he shared some convictions (i.e., firmly held opinions) in a way that we suspect he later regretted. His statement is instructive for the rest of us: I cannot possibly understand a man who wears silk stockings or even gaudily coloured socks; rings, wrist-watches, spats, shoes instead of boots, or who carries a cane in his hand. . . . The modern method of installing a bath in each house is not only a tragedy but it has been a real curse to humanity. . . . If I had to spend a life-time with a companion who had one bath a day or with one who had one bath a year, I should unhesitatingly choose the latter, because a man’s soul is more important than his skin. . . . When I enter a house and find that they have a wireless apparatus [i.e., a radio] I know at once that there is something wrong. . . . Your five-valve sets may do wonders, they may enable you to hear the voice of America, but believe me, they will never transmit the only Voice that is worth listening to.26

And when rules like that become embedded in your conscience, you may misinterpret the Bible to make it support your view. Here’s an embarrassing example. When I (Andy) was in eighth grade, the youth pastor of our small church asked me to give a devotional to the youth group on a Wednesday evening. I don’t remember what my train of thought was, but it must have been something like this: “What is something that I can say to my peers? I’ve been to their homes, and some of them live like slobs. Hmmm. I know what to speak on!” So the first devotional I ever gave was on why you should keep your room clean. I’m not kidding. But it gets worse. The text I chose to support my argument was 1 Corinthians 14:40: “All things should be done decently and in order.” In case you didn’t know, that passage of Scripture isn’t talking about why you should keep your room clean. And my youth pastor kindly and wisely let me know that in front of my peers after I finished.

We understand that sometimes we have to prioritize. Some things are more pressing and more important than other things.

theological triage.1 Some Bible teachings are more important than other Bible teachings. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:3, “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.” The words “first importance” imply that although everything in the Bible is important, not everything is equally important.

First-level issues are most central and essential to Christianity.

Second-level issues create reasonable boundaries between Christians, such as different denominations and local churches.

Third-level issues are disputable matters (also called matters of indifference or matters of conscience

Disputable matters aren’t unimportant, but members of the same church should be able to disagree on these issues and still have close fellowship with each other.

Romans 14:1–15:7. In the greatest letter ever written in the history of the world, Paul spends about 10 percent of his time addressing the subject of conscience controversies within the church.

A typical church in Paul’s day consisted of both Jewish and Gentile Christians. Coming from a religious culture that put a high premium on eating food that only the law of Moses allowed, most Jewish Christians carried that strictness into their new faith.

In Corinth some of the believers with a strong conscience grew overconfident and had the gall to accept invitations to the banqueting halls connected to the pagan temples (see 1 Corinthians 8

We have the Lord’s Supper, and they have Satan’s supper (1 Cor. 10:19–21). Paul condemned this overconfidence in the strongest way (1 Cor. 10:12).

But the strict fell into heresies as well. In Galatia, some of the strict believers went so far as to insist that if people didn’t obey the Mosaic food and circumcision laws, they couldn’t be Christians at all (see Acts 15:1; Galatians 1

Rather than lay down a law, Paul appealed to love. His concern was unity, and ours should be too. Doug Moo puts it well: One of the most important points in Romans 14 is something that Paul does not say: that the weak in faith must change their view. He makes clear that he does not agree with them, and by labeling them weak he implies also that they have room to grow on these matters. But he does not tell them to change their mind; he does not berate them for being “immature”; he does not tell them to “get with the program.” Yet this is usually our first reaction to someone who differs with us. We want to change their minds, to convince them we are right. Paul would undoubtedly support the church’s efforts to educate its members as fully as possible about the gospel and its implications. But he is wise enough to know that there is a time and a place for such efforts. . . . All of us have our traditions, and they are not easy to give up. As long as they are not contrary to the gospel and hindering the work of the church, we should learn to tolerate these differences.7 What was Paul’s solution? How would he bind these two potential factions together? His solution was love, not law. Table 6 inserts Paul’s threefold solution in the place of the growing split between those with a strong conscience and those with a weak conscience. Only the three center columns please God and result in unity. On any given disagreement over disputable matters, God calls us to land on one of these...

Likewise, even though Paul agreed with the free group that all food and drink is allowable for a believer (Rom. 14:14, 20), he was so filled with Christ’s welcoming love that he happily (not grudgingly) gave up any personal preference if that might result in peace within the church or success in winning people outside the church to Christ.

asked himself these two questions: (1) How does this particular action affect other believers? and (2) How does this particular action further the gospel of Christ? “Paul’s overriding concern in this passage,” Moo observes, “is not with who is right and who is wrong. He is concerned about unity.

Twelve Principles about How to Disagree with Other Christians on Disputable Matters

1. Welcome those who disagree with you (Rom. 14:1–2). As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions [NIV: “without quarreling over disputable matters”]. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.

His conscience lacked the confidence (faith) to do those things without self-condemnation. We are not saying that the faith to eat and faith in Christ are completely unrelated. We believe that the more you understand what faith in Christ means, the more you will be set free from unnecessary regulations in your life.

those with a strong conscience do not necessarily please God any more than those with a weak conscience.

The designations weak conscience and strong conscience apply not to groups of persons across the board but to how each individual approaches specific issues.

2. Those who have freedom of conscience must not look down on those who don’t (Rom. 14:3–4). Let not the one who eats despise [NIV: “treat with contempt”] the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on [i.e., be judgmental toward] the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

3. Those whose conscience restricts them must not be judgmental toward those who have freedom (Rom. 14:3

1.Have the right spirit. Don’t be judgmental toward others who are either more or less strict than you. “Do not adopt a critical spirit, a condemning attitude,” to quote D. A. Carson.12 As a general rule, be strict with yourself and generous with others. 2.Have the right proportion. Keep disputable matters in their place as third-level issues. Don’t treat them like first- or second-level issues. And don’t become preoccupied with them or divisive about them. They shouldn’t be so important to you that it’s all you want to talk about. They shouldn’t be the main reason that you choose what church to join. They shouldn’t be issues that you are the most passionate about such that you are constantly trying to win people over to your position and then looking down on them if they decide not to join your side.