Page 80 To the Strong in Conscience. Exercise your freedom, but do not flaunt it. Neither evangelize or parade it in front of others. Do not criticize or act condescending toward the weak in conscience. Do not call them ,legalistic or look down on them as being less spiritual or inferior in light than you. Enjoy your freedom. Don’t be paranoid about phantom weak-conscience believers who may be lurking around you without your knowledge. If a weaker believer identifies himself or you are aware that such a person is present, then exercise restraint on your freedom lest you make him stumble. Do not try to persuade him to have a stronger conscience either. Love thinks no evil. Believe that the weak in conscience is abstaining ,unto the Lord. The responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the relationship between weak and strong falls on you who are strong. ,We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves (Rom. 15:1). For this is the way of Jesus Christ. As Martin Luther once put it, ,A Christian man is a most free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian man is a most dutiful servant of all, subject to all. To the Legalist. Follow your own standards of conduct. Take heed to your own conscience. But do not force your standards onto others. Do not lobby or politic for them. Do not judge your weaker brethren. Do not criticize them. Do not try to persuade them to your view. Guard against a Pharisaical spirit which puts undue pressure on
Important lessons are given by this alternation of the two ideas of faith and unbelief, obedience and disobedience. Disobedience is the root of unbelief. Unbelief is the mother of further disobedience. Faith is voluntary submission within a person's own power. If faith is not exercised, the true cause lies deeper than all intellectual reasons. It lies in the moral aversion of human will and in the pride of independence, which says, 'who is Lord over us? Why should we have to depend on Jesus Christ?' As faith is obedience and submission, so faith breeds obedience, but unbelief leads on to higher-handed rebellion. With dreadful reciprocity of influence, the less one trusts, the more he disobeys; the more he disobeys, the less he trusts.
Alexander MacLaren