My point today isn’t so much about in which camp I belong, it’s to the reality of this Scripture verse that each one of us should be fully convinced in his own mind. It seems just so easy, too easy unless I’m taking it out of context which I think I am. So when you read it in context you find out that it’s not such an easy command to follow. The context is Paul writing about how certain things divide people and they’re not in the category of right and wrong. They’re more in the category of wise or foolish or even more subtly, they’re in the category of your conscience being liberated or constrained, a free conscience or a constrained one. This is sometimes called the weak conscience. In Paul’s day the arguments were about what meat you could eat and what holidays you would observe. Regarding meat, most of the butchers in the ancient world worked at the temple. You took your lamb to the temple, they slaughtered it, you took it home, you had a barbecue. Many of the ways that you ate meat in the ancient world then were done by priests or priests of different religions and they were dedicated to the Lord or they were dedicated to idols and behind idols are demons. So there was a tremendous debate in the time of Paul whether Christians should eat meat that had been offered to idols and it was very divisive. Some people said, “Well, meat is meat, it’s just meat. God created the animal, it gives us something to eat, let’s eat it.” Others said, “No, how can you eat meat that you’re worshiping and inviting the demons into your life? We can’t possibly do that.” Paul belonged to one of these camps. He really believed that his conscience was free to eat the meat but he also said that we need to be sensitive to what other people’s conscience is constraining them to do. We must respect it, honor it and not knock the stuffing out of them concerning their own convictions. There’s lots of applications for this.
Another one was holidays, which days you would celebrate. That issue in Paul’s day led him to say, “The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord and the one who eats eats in honor of the Lord since he gives thanks to God while the one who abstains abstained in the honor of the Lord.” In other words, there are some categories that are not right and wrong. They’re free or constrained according to your own conscience. And some people have a conscience that says, “I can enjoy this before the Lord and give him thanks for it.” And others would say, “No, I cannot do that and thank the Lord and feel good in my spirit towards Him.” This is the dividing point.
There’s lots and lots of examples of this. A couple years ago and maybe ongoing, there’s a debate over whether you should take a COVID shot. Some people feel free to do it, others say, “No, you’re foolish if you do it.” Halloween in my family was one of these areas. We grew up in a family where we did not really celebrate Halloween at all. We just ignored it because in many ways it seemed to me that Halloween was just connected to the dark side in ways that I felt very uncomfortable. And even though you could reduce it to kids dressed up as hobos, ballerinas or with a sheet over their head as a ghost or whatever, I felt it was just too dark for me and I didn’t want to celebrate it. We had the same problem even with Christmas in our family. My conscience was more constrained in ways that almost everybody else in my life and around me felt I was kind of foolish and silly. But we didn’t really set up little signs or decorations with Santa. We kept the focus more on Jesus and we made a conscious decision not to bring Santa into our Christmas time. Well, lots of other people sort of thought that was silly. They said, “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with Santa.” And of course there isn’t, except in my conscience it just felt like I was stealing something away from the focus that should be on Jesus. So I was constrained in my own conscience and raised my children in a home where we didn’t really put much focus on Santa. These things made no sense to friends of mine. And yet it was me trying to follow my own conscience in this regard. In that regard, I had the weak conscience. I was not free to just reduce Santa to a celebration and a fun family thing. So I just had to follow my own conscience.
That’s the call of Paul. He’s saying we should be convinced in our own mind, which leads to a couple of conclusions. Number one, we ought not to be passing judgment on people when we’re dealing with categories that are not moral in nature. We don’t make things like food, holidays and how you do things, raised up to the level of right and wrong. Paul says in verse 10 of this chapter, he says, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother?” Meaning know what category you’re dealing with. If some people drink alcohol and others think it’s wrong, don’t pass judgment on one camp or the other. Find out which camp you belong to and follow your own conscience. That’s the point of this kind of verse. So that’s the second thing. Don’t pass judgment and follow your own conscience. If you don’t, bad things happen.
I will close with this very sad story that relates to our work. In fact, I would say if we could convince people to follow their own judgment, their own conscience, and to live within the boundaries of their own conscience, we would probably cut abortion by 50% in the world overnight because most people who have abortions don’t believe in them. They’re yielding and compromising their own convictions to please others. Here’s a testimony: “My family would not support my decision to keep the baby. My boyfriend said that he would give me no emotional or financial help whatsoever. All the people that mattered to me told me to abort. And when I said that I didn’t want to, they started listing reasons why I should, that it would be detrimental on my life and career and on my health and I have no social life and no future. I am so angry at myself for giving in to the pressure of others.” This is a person who did not follow their own conscience. They yielded to the pressure and the effect is to have the stuffing knocked out of them. Paul says, “A very challenging command that each one of us should live according to how his own mind and conscience is settled on the subject.” We do well to encourage people to follow their conscience even if it leads them down a path that we’re not ready to join them on. We’re serving them well and I want over these elections and other issues to really remind people that we love our neighbors well when we respect their own conscience and encourage them to stay within it. Thanks.