Page 45 Finally, we have a passage in the book of Acts that opens up another vista altogether. In Acts 24:16, Paul declares: This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men. (NKJV) Each one of us has a conscience. Your conscience is an inward monitor that goes off when you step out of God’s moral will. It’s like an alarm. If you violate it, it brings you under conviction. It is not condemnation, which comes from God’s enemy or from a preacher who tells you how terrible a Christian you are. It comes from your human spirit, the place where God dwells. Both the Holy Spirit and your conscience bear witness to the truth (Romans 9:1). It is by your conscience that you can discern the moral will of God. Anything that offends your conscience is something to stay clear of. Anything that your conscience allows is permissible for you. There is another aspect of the conscience that we will handle in the last chapter. It has to do with the way the conscience is shaped. (The Bible also speaks about a ,seared conscience. But this is in reference to people who continue to reject the dictates of their conscience to the point that it doesn’t operate any longer–1 Tim. 4:2.) To sum up, we have been given five lighthouses that guide us into the moral will of God: The inward promptings and instincts of the Holy Spirit written on our minds and hearts (Heb. 8; Rom. 8; Gal. 5),
This is a very difficult issue. The Bible teaches that we are never to get into a situation in which our innocent behavior is “spoken of as evil” (Rom. 14:16). For example, if what we are doing, though not sinful, could misrepresent the Lord, His church, His people, or His truth, to the world, we should avoid it. Not only are we to build up less mature believers in the body, but we are also to have character that is above legitimate question in the eyes of unbelievers (1 Peter 2:12-24; 3:13-17; 4:15). Some things are not evil but can easily be associated with questionable elements of society or even worldliness. Remember, if Christian freedoms are truly “freedoms,” then we should be as ready and willing to give them up as enjoy them.
Jerry Wragg