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
The explanation of Scripture forms the dominant feature and the organizing principle of the message. All preaching should be based on the apostolic kerygma and didache. Exegetical preaching is governed by the goal of expounding the meaning and significance of this “faith once-delivered” in terms of the actual way in which it has been delivered, namely the structure and content of the biblical revelation, in which truth is revealed not in the form of a series of theological or topical loci (God, sin, justification, sanctification; war, money, social ethics, etc.), but through history, parable, narrative, argumentation, poem, and so on. Exegetical preaching therefore sees as its fundamental task the explanation of the text in its context, the unfolding of its principles, and only then their application to the world of hearers.
Sinclair Ferguson