ACTS 23:1 - A Clear Conscience

Introduction

(Read Acts 23:1-5)

There’s an old European proverb that says “There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.” So, how soft was your pillow last night? Do you have a clear conscience? Could you wake up this morning and look in the bathroom mirror and be at peace with the decisions that you made this past week? As we observed last week, the conscience that God has placed in each one of us is able to either excuse our behavior or accuse us for our behavior—even though it comes from your own thoughts, your conscience acts like an independent third party, doesn’t it?

And here’s another thing about your conscience—it is your conscience. It belongs to you personally, and your conscience can’t dictate someone else’s life (and their conscience can’t dictate your life, either!) Think, for example, of the two men we talked about at the beginning of last week’s sermon, Alvin York and Desmond Doss. Both men came to very different conclusions about the morality of taking human life in war, but both men followed their consciences.

So which one was right? One valid way to answer that question is that both of them made the right decision because both of them followed their conscience. Both of them did what they believed was right.

And I think that this serves as a good definition of the conscience—one that I aim to support and illustrate through the Scriptures as we move through this study. We can define the conscience as

CONSCIENCE: Your PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS of what is RIGHT and WRONG

This definition is adapted from a very helpful book called Conscience: What it is, how to train it, and loving those who differ by Andrew Naselli and J. D. Crowley, and I commend it to you as we go through this study.

One of the things that we will see as we move through this series—and something that is illustrated by the difference between Sgt. York and Cpl. Doss is that an act of “good conscience” can differ between two people. One man had a clear conscience in killing the enemy in war, and the other had a clear conscience in refusing to take a human life.

Now, we have said before (and we will see in future installments) that it is always wrong to violate your conscience—if your conscience tells you it is a sin to take human life in war (or go to a restaurant on Sunday or eat trans-fats or drive without a seatbelt), then you are sinning if you do those things—you are deliberately doing what you believe God forbids. And that is sin (even, as we will see, if the action itself is not inherently sinful!)

Now, at this point you might be thinking, “Well, if conscience can make something a sin that isn’t really a sin, then what stops us from complete relativism in our morality?” Or to put it another way, this sounds like the world’s version of “living according to ‘your truth’”—that you can have your sense of right and wrong, and I can have my sense of right and wrong, and you can’t tell me what is right for me and I can’t tell you what is right for you… We certainly don’t want any part of that kind of foolishness, do we?

So how do we keep from sliding down that slope into relativism? Because there are people out there who have a “clear conscience” that frankly shouldn’t. And there are people out there struggling with weak, wounded consciences over issues that they don’t need to struggle over. Some people can commit the most heinous acts of blasphemy and hatred and cruelty and sleep like a baby on their downy soft pillow of a good conscience, and others who are tormented by an oversensitive conscience that rails against them and accuses them over things that are not sinful at all.

And so here is what I want to do this morning—I want us to look at the Scriptures and see how the conscience is described, with an aim to showing you that

The closer that you WALK with CHRIST, the CLEARER your conscience will be

In the passage that I just read a few moments ago, the Apostle Paul is standing trial before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem—the high council of seventy ruling elders of the Jewish people. (Paul used to be a member of the Sanhedrin before he came to saving faith in Jesus Christ). In Acts 21, Paul had been at the center of an upheaval in Jerusalem over false charges that he had desecrated the Temple. He was taken into custody by the Romans, who eventually set him before the Sanhedrin so they could examine him and explain “the real reason why he was being accused” (Acts 22:30).

So as Paul is standing there before the council that he used to belong to, his first words to them were, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.” In other words, Paul said, “My conscience is clear concerning everything I have ever done in my life up to now!” And in verse 2 we see the response that his statement brought:

Acts 23:2 (ESV)

2 And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth.

Clearly Ananias believed that Paul should not have a clear conscience about his deeds! And yet Paul said that he had—both in the past and in the present—a “good conscience before God”.

So the first thing I we can know is that it is possible to have a “clear conscience”—it is possible that

I. The Conscience can be CLEAN

Paul says that his conscience did not condemn him for his past—that he had no trouble looking at himself in the mirror every morning. As we read through the New Testament we see several places where we are told that it is possible to have a clean conscience

For GOOD reasons (1 Timothy 1:5)

Paul writes to his disciple Timothy that as he is planting churches in Macedonia that

1 Timothy 1:5 (ESV)

5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

If you have a pure heart and a sincere faith, you will also have a good conscience. A good conscience is a wonderful gift from God—the more that your heart and your faith are aligned with God’s character and His will, the clearer and cleaner your conscience will be.

We read something similar in Hebrews 13, where the author writes

Hebrews 13:18 (ESV)

18 Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.

Here again we see that the conscience drives us to “Act honorably”. Honorable acts are a good reason to have a clear conscience.

In 1 Peter 3:16, Peter says that your good conscience enables you to act with integrity and honor when you are slandered and reviled for the sake of Christ:

1 Peter 3:16 (ESV)

16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

Again—see here that a good conscience is only “good” as far as it reflects the goodness and character of God—sincere faith, acting honorably, good behavior in Christ. Instead of a murky “your truth / my truth” kind of relativism, the Scriptures show that a “good conscience”, a “clear conscience” comes from a sincere faith and good behavior in the goodness and holiness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The closer that you walk with Christ, the clearer your conscience will be.

Now, it is vitally important to note that there are a lot of people out there who have a “good conscience”—they can sleep like a baby at night and look themselves in the mirror without blinking—while being guilty of terrible acts of cruelty, deception, wickedness or even violence. They have what they think is a good conscience, but they are far from walking with God

You can have a “clear conscience” for good reasons, and you can have a “clear conscience”

For BAD reasons (Acts 23:1)

And we don’t need to look any further than Paul’s own admission in Acts 23 for an example, do we? Consider again—he told the Sanhedrin that he had lived his life before God “in all good conscience!” If you know Paul’s “backstory”, then you know what kind of person he was, right? Let me read you a few verses from Acts (and Paul’s own letters) that describe what kind of man he used to be:

Acts 8:3 (ESV)

3 But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.

The word “ravaging” means “laying waste”—a “scorched earth” policy against believers, throwing them into hostage pits without mercy

Acts 9:1 (ESV)

1 But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest

Murderous threats against believers were Paul’s every breath—his every waking moment was filled with hatred and a desire to see them die.

Paul himself describes his life before he met Christ in Galatians 1, where he says

Galatians 1:13 (ESV)

13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.

And in 1 Timothy 1 he writes

1 Timothy 1:13 (ESV)

13 ...formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent...

And all the while, Paul said, he did all of these things in good conscience! He says in Philippians 3:6 that all of that hatred and murderous threats and violence and blasphemy was “zeal” for God!

Philippians 3:6 (ESV)

6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Paul had a “good conscience”—but he shouldn’t have! Here’s what we learn about the conscience from these things: A conscience that is not faithful to God cannot be trusted—at the time that Paul had done all these things he was rejecting Jesus Christ. He rejected the truth that Jesus is the Son of God, and so his conscience told him that Jesus was a blasphemer—and the Law said that blasphemers (and those who follow them) should be executed:

Leviticus 24:16 (ESV)

16 Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.

So if a good conscience is good to the extent that it loves and obeys God through faith in Christ, then a conscience that rejects Christ will necessarily not be a “good” conscience—no matter if it feels like it is “right”.

In fact, the Scriptures speak a great deal about ways that

II. The Conscience can be WARPED

The New Testament speaks in several places about ways that the conscience can be unhealthy or distorted. In 1 Corinthians 8, for instance, Paul writes about how

We can have a WEAK conscience (1 Corinthians 8:10)

In 1 Corinthians Paul is dealing with some Christians who believed that it was a sin to eat food sacrificed to idols—which Paul himself said was not a sin, but that there were some whose consciences were telling them that it would be a sin:

1 Corinthians 8:10 (ESV)

10 For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols?

In other words, our conscience can be “oversensitized” and believe that something is sinful when it is actually a matter of indifference one way or another. But a weak conscience will lead someone to believe he is sinning, and as we have said earlier that if you believe it is a sin to do something, then it is sinning for you if you violate your conscience to do it. (And as we will see later on in this series, a “weak” conscience is not necessarily a sign that a believer is not walking with Christ, or is unspiritual or is somehow a “defective” Christian. But there are ways that believers can strengthen their weak conscience in a way that gives them liberty and glorifies God.)

Our conscience can be weak, believing that something is a sin when it is not. In the book of Hebrews we see another level of severity of a warped conscience—Hebrews 10:22 says that

We can have an EVIL conscience (Hebrews 10:22)

The writer of Hebrews writes that God delivers us “from an evil conscience—this isn’t just a “weak” conscience that thinks they are sinning when they are not, this is a conscience that constantly accuses us of evil, always lays on guilt, continuously grinds us with charges of sin and shame and regret—a conscience that, in fact, is our enemy. A conscience that stalks you throughout the day, waiting for a moment to pounce on you and tear you up over something that you have done or said or who you have been. A conscience that never excuses or lets you off the hook, but only wants to destroy your spirit.

And the New Testament also speaks of the worst condition of all for the conscience--

We can have a SEARED conscience (1 Tim. 4:1-2)

In 1 Timothy 4, Paul says

1 Timothy 4:1–2 (ESV)

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,

The Greek word translated “seared” is kausteriazo—where we get our word “cauterize”. The idea here is that these false teachers have “burned off all the nerve endings” of their conscience—they have no qualms whatsoever about their lies. They know they are damning people to Hell by their false teaching, deliberately lying to them to keep them from saving faith in Christ, and it doesn’t bother them one bit. They have rejected Christ, they have no desire for Him, they have turned away from Him, and so their conscience is utterly and completely warped, burned out, numbed and ruined. It does not warn them of their sin, it does not convict them of their evil, and so they go happily on their way without a twinge of conscience until the day the grave opens up to drop them into eternal punishment.

The only way to have a truly good conscience is to have a conscience that is borne of a heart that submits in loving obedience to God by faith in Jesus Christ.

The closer that you walk with Christ, the clearer your conscience will be.

And when we come back to the story of Paul in the Book of Acts we see one more truth about the conscience—a wonderful, gracious and merciful truth in the Scriptures, that

III. The Conscience can be HEALED

As Paul stood there before the Sanhedrin that day, he was able to look them in the eye (“intently”) and say, “My conscience is clear! My conscience is clear about what I did in the past, and my conscience is clear about why I am standing on trial before you today!” How could Paul, knowing the violence and hatred he had poured out on believers, say that his conscience was clear? The verse we read earlier from Hebrews gives us the answer:

Hebrews 10:22 (ESV)

22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Paul’s conscience was clear because his conscience had been

Washed by Christ’s BLOOD (Hebrews 9:14)

Hebrews 9:14 tells us that the blood of Jesus Christ

Hebrews 9:14 (ESV)

14 ...who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Paul was able to look back on his former sin and blasphemy with a clear conscience because he trusted in Jesus’ death on the Cross to purchase his forgiveness. Listen to the way he describes it to his disciple Timothy:

1 Timothy 1:12–15 (ESV)

12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

Paul’s defense against an evil conscience that would torment him and crush him with guilt over his past was a simple one: “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost!” The blinders were off, the false comfort of his warped conscience had been stripped away, and Paul no longer considered his past any kind of “good” or “righteous” in God’s sight. He had a clear conscience while he carried out all those persecutions, but now he sees them for what they were. And he is at peace because Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners!

You know what that’s like, don’t you? You look back on your life before you came to faith in Jesus and your conscience now bothers you about things that it never bothered you about then! But because “the grace of our Lord overflowed for you with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus” your conscience is renewed and refreshed and “re-tuned” so that it falls in line more and more with His character, and the longer you walk with Him the more He draws your conscience in line with His standards of right and wrong.

When you come in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ, He washes and cleanses and renews your conscience. And then as you walk with Him, day by day, your consciousness of right and wrong grows and matures and deepens as you conscience becomes increasingly

Captive to God’s WORD

Fifteen hundred years after the Apostle Paul stood before the religious authorities of his day to answer for his teachings, another man stood before the religious rulers of his day to give an account of what he had written and taught. A young German theology professor named Martin Luther had been summoned before the representatives of Pope Leo X and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. He was charged with heresy for teaching and writing that we are justified by grace through faith alone, contrary to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

All of the books and pamphlets he had written were piled up on a table in front of him, and he was given the opportunity to recant—to change his position and reject what he had formerly written. He asked for time to consider his answer, and was given until 4pm the next day. He spent an agonizing night in prayer, knowing that if he refused to recant he would most likely be executed as a heretic.

The next afternoon he was summoned again to the trial, and the question was put to him again: Will you revoke the heresies you have written, will you recant your writings and reject them?” Luther’s answer—one of the most famous quotations in not only church history but in the history of Western Civilization—is worth quoting in full:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. [Here I stand, I can do no other.] May God help me. Amen. (Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther. tr. James L. Schaaf, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985–93, 1:460.)

He stood before his accusers with a clear conscience—a conscience that had been cleansed by the blood of Christ and was bound by the Scriptures. For years he had been tormented by an evil conscience that constantly accused him of being a sinful, unworthy soul that God would never forgive—but when he came to understand the wonderful gift of God’s righteousness given to him by faith, that evil conscience was silenced and replaced with a conscience that stood firm and fast on the Word of God, a conscience that was clear before God and man.

Let me ask you the same question I started with this morning: How soft was the pillow of your conscience last night? Do you have an evil conscience that torments you about your past, that constantly accuses you and weighs you down with guilt and shame? Or do you have a conscience that is weak, a conscience that is full of fretting and worry over whether what you do and say is acceptable to God? Or have you ignored and suppressed and silenced your conscience for so long that it is “burnt out”, and you rarely ever hear its voice calling to you—if you want to have a clear conscience before God and men today, then here is the hope you have, the great promise from God this morning:

Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners—He came to shed His blood on the Cross so that you could be sprinkled by His blood and cleansed from that evil conscience. He has come to purify your conscience from those dead works that weigh you down, He has come to gather you to Himself and walk with you and renew and strengthen your weak conscience and deliver you from fear and anxiety over your deeds. If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have in Him everything you need for a clear conscience! You have His blood to cleanse you, His Word to captivate you, His Spirit to guide you, His people to encourage you!

And if you came here this morning with a guilty conscience, a seared conscience, an evil conscience, and you do not know Jesus Christ as your Savior, I declare to you that this is the only way to find a good conscience before God and man—not by trying to answer your conscience by piling up “good works”, not by endless therapy sessions that try to convince you that your conscience is wrong and that you are a good person, not by deadening your conscience by plunging headlong into more sin and rebellion. The only way to a good conscience is through the blood of Jesus Christ shed for your forgiveness. This is a trustworthy saying, and worthy of full acceptance: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And that means that He came to this world to save someone exactly like you.

You’re not here today by accident; you are here today by God’s arrangement, so that you can hear this invitation—come and be set free from that evil conscience, come and be set free from the guilt and shame of who you are and what you have done, come and be set free from the punishment for your sin against God that your conscience (rightly) says you deserve! Come and talk to me after the service and let me show you how you can find that good conscience, that clear conscience that you have been searching for when you repent of your sin and call out to God for forgiveness. Come and lay it all down at the foot of the Cross—your guilty conscience, your weak conscience, your seared conscience—and leave it there to be washed by the blood of the one Who came to this earth to rescue you—your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Numbers 6:24–26 (ESV)

24 The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace, through the blood of Jesus Christ your Savior, both now and forevermore. Amen

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

Read over Paul’s statement to the Sanhedrin and Ananias’ reaction in Acts 23:1-2. Why do you suppose Ananias thought Paul should be punished for his statement that he lived before God with a “good conscience”? What might Ananias’ reaction tell you about the state of his conscience before God?

What is the difference between a “weak” conscience (1 Corinthians 8:7, 10, 12) and an “evil” conscience (Hebrews 10:22)? How does the Gospel strengthen a weak conscience and free one from an evil or guilty conscience? How is your consciousness of right and wrong influenced by your Christian life? And how does that conscience then influence your life?

What did Martin Luther mean when he said that his conscience was “captive to the Word of God”? If the Bible is the way that your conscience is informed about God’s standards of right and wrong, then how important is it to read the Bible every day? Take some time this week to examine your daily routine to find the best time to devote to reading God’s Word!