Lesson 58c

We are in lesson 58. We rocketed through another half question last week. So we are, I think, question three. And I hope we got to the point of what we know on your conscience. We got through that about can we command it versus being persuaded. And so we got, hopefully, through that. Is everybody fairly confident in that? Yes. Okay. So, I think I'll start with what Newell had in here, but the conscience cannot be commanded. It must be persuaded by the blessed spirit in the Lord Jesus.

Remember, that was the criteria. When one is constantly set free, his walk is not forced, but happy and natural. So, now the question is, what does it mean to have our conscience be free, and what is it free from with respect to this and the following verses? So what does it mean that your conscience be free? Can I read something from the Hungry Heart this week? Sure. There were lots of good things in Hungry Heart. Yeah, there was stuff about the conscience this week. From, I think, back on the 10th.

We are naturally suspicious of any offer to make us happy in God because our moral sense, our natural conscience, tells us of our having lost all right, even to his ordinary blessings. But in the word of our father, faith reads our abundant title to be near to him and happy with him, though natural conscience and our sense of fitness of things would have it otherwise. Faith feeds where the moral sensibilities of the natural mind would count it, presuming even to tread That's Bellet. And I thought that was really good. And it goes to the question you're asking. Faith is the issue. God's word and faith in God's word is the issue that makes us free and gives us a sense of freedom rather than trying to rely solely on our conscience.

OK. So what does it mean to be free? I mean, what does that mean? your conscience is free. Free from condemnation? Okay. I like that. To be free means that you don't have any doubts. That you're convinced or persuaded because of the knowledge you have in the Lord through the scripture and direction of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, you're free from the earthly things that would enslave you, is the way put together. But the freedom comes from no doubting. And just thinking about it, too, one of the passages I always had memorized, one of the few that I memorized in the old days, was James 1.

When you doubt, it's like the surf of the sea driven back and forth is when you doubt. You're just back and forth. You have no stability. It's unstable. When you have doubts, that's how your conscience would be if you have doubts. Am I doing this? Is it right? Is it wrong? Oh, and you're back and forth.

To be free from that is to be set in your conscience. You have been persuaded. Following along with the verses that were going along, you're persuaded. There's no doubt. So you're free. Your conscience is free. There's no doubt. There's no questioning what goes on. And it says, so that's the freedom. So what are you free from? What does it say? What are you free from? In this verse, it's 14. It's specific. Yes? That's my grandson. Ingrid, you need to turn off the mic in there. He's unmuted thee.

Thank you. I just said legalism. It seems like the legal restrictions that these guys were dealing with were hindering them from being mature. There's that comparison between the freedom of the strong believer and the restriction or legalism of the weaker believer. Good. I like that.

From the verses, I know and I'm convinced or I'm persuaded in the Lord Jesus, all the things he has told us, the truth, the word, everything, that nothing is unclean in itself. So yeah, the legalism of, and so we're getting nothing is unclean in itself. So that one's kind of an interesting one in itself, but from Newell it says, it is only to those whose lack of knowledge or weakness of conscience accounts or holds a thing to be unclean, or as we say, wrong, that it is so. What a glorious deliverance, no place left for I love this, religious fussing. Christ and the freedom that is in him fills all heaven, our whole horizon at every moment. But to the conscience not yet delivered, and real freedom of conscience is more rare than we think, many things seem to be unclean in themselves.

That is, Christians feel it is wrong to do them. You and I have full light to the contrary, yea, these also may see in the written word that nothing is in clean in itself in this dispensation. So, I mean, this really, I think, happens a lot in the Christian body today is, and I love that phrase he puts in there, religious fussing.

You know, that's wrong. And we judge. And we say, you know, that's wrong. But there's no scriptural basis for it, you know. And what we're really dealing with here in this section of scripture is about meats, eating meats, the days in the festivals, these things that were superfluous to our Christian life. And so he's talking about these things specifically that it's wrong.

You shouldn't be eating that meat. Oh, man. I think, actually, you weren't supposed to eat shellfish and that. I just blew through that last night at the seafood station. Um, I, I realized it was not unclean to eat crab and shrimp and lobster and all that last night.

So it's, but a lot of people have these things and you, you know, believers that will have things that are just, Ooh, it's not right. And that are not your main to your Christian life or, um, growth, any of those things. So they, they, many believers think they're wrong. Um, so You know, actually I've just gone to Davis's church.

I was, you know, some of the guys, the guy who wanted playing music in his shorts, his shirt, his sandals off playing music and this, you know, thinking back to when I was an early believer, you know, it was coat and tie and, you know, pressed pants and, you know, everything.

So now the freedom we have to be able to worship without having to worry about these things that are unclean or wrong. So any thoughts? Courtney. Yeah, Jim. Oh, so when you asked that question, the first thing that popped into my mind was that union with Christ sets me free from my negative conscious.

And I I know that when I look away from Christ at times and I get I get absorbed on something else, my conscious just tears into me. So it's kind of the it's kind of not the what, but the how it's like being being there with Christ, union with Him, it's like I'm free from everything when I'm experiencing those moments. And I think it's getting back to also the beginning of the verse where it's in the Lord, always focusing, like you said, back on the Lord and the things that are germane to your life with Christ, the things that are not that drag you away from that.

And I think it's the flesh that tries to pull you away from that union. by dragging you into these non-relevant issues. And I think your conscience, if it is strong, it will bring you back that this is not wrong. Or when you're focusing on something that is not germane, your conscience is saying, why are you worried about that? And you know, if you're strong in the Lord and you realize it's not related to my relationship to the Lord, I think the conscience can bring you back, you know, through the convincing of the Holy Spirit and the word will bring you back. But it may be your conscience that guides you back. You know, we kind of look on the negative side of this, maybe of a negative conscience.

But I think also your conscience rooted in the word, as Paul is here, where he says, I have been persuaded and convinced. Then he knows he's set. So I think that that conscience can also be a good thing to bring you back to the focus, as you say, Jim, on focusing it on Christ and not the earthly things.

I have a question. How does conscience relate to the Holy Spirit? That is, well, I should let others answer. Or the Holy Spirit relate to the conscience? And the point is, maybe a better question is, which one of those two is reliable? the spirit. The spirit is but what we're dealing with here is the the result of the Holy Spirit convincing and convicting you of things. So, your conscience is persuaded. So, the process is the Holy Spirit convincing your conscience because that's what it said here in the scripture II have been persuaded in the lord.

Mm hmm. So, I have in and of itself. That's what I've been persuaded about. Right. But but who did that? That was the Holy Spirit convincing him. So, his conscience was rooted in the word or in this case, in the lord. Okay. So then, what what's the relationship between conscience and faith? Uh you know, faith is is I you know, in essence, things unseen thing, you know, the in the essence of Hebrews eleven one.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the definition of it by which is nothing of us, right? It's of the lord. So, and I know the word conscience is not involved in that definition. Exactly. But you know, this gets into some of our discussions last time of what is, you know, body, mind, and soul and where the where the conscience and and so the that's the my identity and that's where the the convincing is of that conscience is in my soul. Well, let me let me say this and and keep your thought Kathy. What I'm thinking is that what my thinking is is that as I as I read and and and study the word of god, I am persuaded to my conscience may follow or it may not. Right.

The point is, is that my focus shouldn't be on how healthy my conscience is. It should be focused on God's word and dependence on the spirit. And I don't think it's the, you're focusing on your conscience. That's more of how you respond in faith. Your faith, you know, if I believe it, my conscience has been persuaded. And so by faith I respond. Okay. I think it's the way it is. Go ahead, Sadie. No, I agree.

I was just going to add the idea that without the Holy Spirit, your conscience is susceptible to being suppressed, right? So that jack-in-the-box concept I mentioned a few weeks ago, you just learn how to And by not executing faith, you tuck it away, and you continue to do that, and your actions and your feelings are what leads.

When you have the Holy Spirit, that becomes a very difficult issue. It doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. As we all know, we can still execute the sin nature and behave that way. With the Holy Spirit, our conscience is heightened to God's word and his personality and who he is. And it grieves us to not be close to him. And that becomes a different operating factor altogether, I think.

I think it's the persuaded. Your conscience is persuaded. You have faith in what you've been driven to be persuaded about a truth. And then that exercises through your faith. And I think that it's the process of the Holy Spirit convincing and persuading us, just like here, persuading Paul, and we're convinced. And then by then, we exercise faith in that truth. And so it's kind of a, I don't know if we suppress it or whatever, but I think we react because we have been persuaded about a truth. by the Holy Spirit and his word. So it's kind of the conscious is where our will stems from.

If you're not convinced about something, you're not gonna do it. And so, but you know, if you are convinced, you will respond in trusting the Lord or the relationship with the Lord and those things. So again, I think, yeah, the faith is now expressed through our persuaded conscience. I don't trust my conscience. I think we're blending two things, my feelings versus conscience. My reaction is more of a conscious reaction based on truth and the Holy Spirit and my convinced, persuaded of a truth. It's not just my feeling about something. I think there's not equating those two. You can't equate those two.

You know, when we were studying in 1 Corinthians, and Mike has been teaching us about the guy that had a relationship with his mother-in-law, that seems like that many other types of sins don't seem to fall into, you know, nothing's wrong anymore, you know.

In other words, there's plenty that we shouldn't be doing, and we know it, right? Right. But there's specific scripture on that. The things we're talking about are more the religious traditions, the things that we're talking about here is like meals and foods and days and these kind of things. So it's a different thing than scriptural we know we shouldn't sleep with our step mom. You know, that's there's there's some things there that are very specific. So, it's not a a gray area on that one. So, these are more of the things that people, the religious fussing as I said, these are the things that are that are not germane to our our life in Christ. Right. And we we focus on Alright.

I think my thought, well, anyway, it says here that if you think it's sin, then it's sin. So would that mean that you have to refrain from whatever it is that you think is sin? or, yeah, refrain from whatever you think is sin until you're persuaded that nothing is unclean in itself. So, in other words, would a Christian be obligated to remain as they were, so to speak, until the conscience is cleansed? I think that is right. If you feel it's sin and you're doing it, your conscience hasn't been persuaded, it will be a negative on your growth. You have to be persuaded that that issue is not sin. And through the word and through the Holy Spirit, that eating meat of any kind is okay. You're convinced of that truth. But otherwise, it's a detriment to your growth.

And we'll get into a little bit about that, how a weaker brother is taken down by that, and we as a loving, stronger believer are to, in love, defer our freedoms, our Galatians 5-1, our liberty we have in Christ, in not exacerbating that younger brother or a weaker brother or sister by doing what freedom we have. So kind of get into that a little bit as we get into a little bit later on this. But yeah, I think it does. If you're not convinced, it will drag you down and away from that relationship with Christ. So that gives a little more You know, verse 13 says not to judge one another, so that would even strengthen that, because the person is kind of obligated, you know, because they're weaker. Yeah, and we'll get, like I said, as we go into these more, it's really giving up your freedom in love to support the weaker brother or sister who has not come to that realization of freedoms that we have in Christ. Well, thank you, Courtney. All right. Question four, I believe.

From verse 15, what does it mean by destroy and how do we do it? So verse 15 says, for if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him or who Christ died. So first of all, who is this talking about, believers or non-believers?

Believers. Everybody, believers? Believers. Believers, yes. Because it says, for whom Christ died. So we're talking about believers. And it's a very powerful word. I can't remember if I looked these up on the, and I should pull it up. Just real quick, Courtney. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt there. Um, well I do believe that this is talking about believers. Christ didn't just die for believers. I just want to make that. Yeah. He died for all, for any, any and all. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. So yeah. So yes. So that's, that's good point, JD. So does, does everybody, uh, Mike, I think you're a King Jameser. Is destroy in there? I think it is, right? Isn't it destroy, the word? Yeah. Hold on. I'll look it up. I can pull it up. I think I've got it. But I think I have all the versions up.

As we're going through this discussion, I keep thinking about, rather than food and drink, about wearing a mask or not wearing a mask. We'll get to that. We've already plunged into this anyway for the government in uh thirteen. Yeah, we've already covered that part and the and the other part of this is that my conscience may be totally free about not wearing a mask, right? But if I love my brother and his isn't, I'm going to wear it, right?

And that's that's what we'll get to. I mean, that's really, I mean, all these things, you know, the scripture we're going through right now is like perfect for So, everybody, I think it's destroyed. So, the Greek word for destroy is uh Apollo which means to destroy fully reflexively to perish or lose literally or figuratively. So, does this mean loss of salvation?

No. No. Any others? Any dissenting voices? Well, I think it has. I the confidence the weaker brother may have in the grace of God or in what he knows, you know, or the fact that he's fairly new to the concept and the principle of grace. But this is not destroying in that we destroy him and his salvation is gone. That is not what this is saying. No. So, you know, because, you know, basically what I said, if you take that position that we destroy him, that he loses his salvation, That goes against so many other scriptures that we have that show that we're eternally secure in our salvation.

2 Corinthians 5, 17, that we're new creatures in Christ. Galatians 2, 20, it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life I live. I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God. 1 Corinthians 1, 8, who will confirm you to the end. So there are all these other scriptures that say we can't lose our salvation. how we, quote, destroy them, which we'll get into the next question is, how do we destroy them?

It's not about salvation. But the word here is pretty harsh. It doesn't mean loss of salvation, but it means a significant effect on another one. That word destroy, when I looked it up, it's pretty significant. It is to destroy somebody. So Paul is taking a pretty strong position here. The Weymouth translation uses the word ruin. I like that. It says, take care lest by any food you eat you lead to ruin a man for whom Christ died. I like the word ruin. Yeah, ruin. But again, even the destroy, that's even harder than ruin.

Yeah. Go ahead, Jay. Well, I was just saying ruin is maybe a little lesser. And there's another translation of that term, to go astray, to take to. Yeah, so that's kind of a stumble aspect, I think. Yeah. Where this one, this one is literally destroy. And I said the Greek on it, I'm reading, it's like, oof, oof, that's like, you know, not just a little pat on the wrist. You know, this is This is significant damage to a lesser believer. So, you know, I was kind of surprised. You know, destroy, it's like, wow. You know, I thought maybe that was kind of the new American standard, kind of, you know, make it sound bad or something. I don't know. But the actual Greek word is very, very harsh. So now the question is, how do we destroy them? Courtney. Yeah. Yes, John. my behavior about non-essential things is creating spiritual problems for another Christian, and that would probably include problems with his conscience, then my conduct is not loving.

And the word for loving in verse 15 is agape. And their welfare, however they may be weak, but their welfare should take precedence over my liberty. That's what agape love is, our consideration of the weaker brother. And you could say that about mask wearing, because there are those out there who are totally convinced that it's a necessary thing. But if you blow it off, then what are you doing to their way of thinking? I think you have to take into consideration agape love for your fellow Christians.

I know my kids get mad at me about this, but yes, that's getting ahead. Oh, that's really good, Joanne. It's very good. Yeah, that was really good. That's really what we find. And we'll get towards the latter part of these verses that will emphasize exactly what you're saying. And how important it is today. That's exactly right. And we'll get into the kind of the positive aspects of it. in later verses here. And yeah, walking according to love, we'll get that reinforced as we go down through this also.

But what is it saying here that destroys him? I mean, do we beat him up? Do we do something horrible to them? Do we use harsh words to them? What is it saying here? Hey, Courtney, my thought is that From a practical standpoint, if you have a young believer, he looks up to more seasoned believers. and he's offended by their liberty, that he may turn away from the fellowship of that group, and he's not gonna lose his life in Christ, but he may go on a journey, who knows, for how long, where he's not really getting fellowship, because those guys were crazy, they weren't, maybe he didn't have trust in their leadership, and so maybe you destroyed his growth that way. And that's right, that's what these verses are all talking about. is that very thing.

It's the Galatians 5.1, which is our liberty, which we have. And what he said here is that nothing's unclean. But what's he saying? For if because of what your brother is hurt, you're no longer walking according to love, as Joanne says, the agape love, do not destroy him with what? What the verses say.

Food. Food. So this isn't like, you know, he's talking about now this. And Jim, I appreciate that. It's like he's not talking about, you know, abusive behavior or anything like that. He's saying the simple things of what you're eating, if it's drawing your brother away. You know, it's not a big thing to give that up your liberty and according to love, which, like I said, we'll get to it in the in the coming verses. Again, it's strange. It's like buy your food or meat. I think the King James has meat.

This is how you destroy them. And when you think about that, it's like as simple as that, but it's the principle. The principle is just what you said, Jim, that if you're doing something that drags a believer away and you have the freedom, the full freedom to do it in Christ, but that weaker brother or sister doesn't understand that, and you rub it in their face, what are you doing? You're destroying them. You're ruining them. You're making them think, man, if this is Christ's life, do I want it? Do I want to pursue it? All those different things. Even though you have the full liberty to do it, you don't do it in love. You're destroying them. Go ahead. Because of peer pressure, he does what his conscience condemns him in these non-essential things. He goes ahead and does it.

And then, what does that do to the weaker brother's conscience? Does that destroy him in some way? Right. Yeah, I mean, if they're not, and that's the whole point of it, Joanne, is that if they're weak, and they had to do, and you're, whatever, eating meat, you know, In the old days, if it was pork and you ate it in front of somebody, or meat that was not legally under the Jewish system, able to eat and you're flaunting it in front of them, does that destroy them?

That's really what he's talking about here. Or if they had festivals and things like that, you're impacting their, or forcing them to to violate their conscience and drag them down. They have not been persuaded at this point. The thing of the stronger believer is to ultimately persuade them about the freedom that you have in Christ. And that's what you're doing by love. You're not doing what the brother is, and I hate to use the offense word, but doesn't understand. And I think the stronger believer's position here is to convince him of the freedom that they have in Christ, but in lovingly respecting not doing whatever is going to drag him down. Courtney? Yeah.

Another way that he could be destroyed is through confusion, because he's confused. When I do this thing, I feel like it's wrong, but they're telling me it's not wrong. So, I mean, it just really messes with your head. Yeah, I think your dog agrees. Convincing you that that was the right point, yeah. No, it's all the confusion. Again, we're talking about the conscience and the persuasion here. So if the younger believer, the weaker believer, It will. It will create confusion. How can you do that? Why are you doing that? Why?

But I think it's incumbent upon the stronger believer to walk them to the point where they have this freedom in Christ and all the things of Galatians 5, 1, where we do have this liberty. But you don't in malice or I'm going to shove this down your throat.

You do it in love, convincing them through the word, through your life, through your example. that you know yes I have the freedom to do this and let's talk about this that you don't it's okay but let's let's work this thing through so I think it's you know it's it's that's what this is all trying to do that through love you were to help your weaker brother or sister so you know it's weird like I said this destroyed so weird that you know this harsh word is met by by meat or food but it's really just saying all these extraneous things can cause division or cause a brother to, and I forget who was saying, Jim or JD, about having a brother grow stunted or not brought because of something that's not germane to your life in Christ. So it's incumbent upon us who are the stronger, who have our freedom in Christ to be able to withstand from that or abstain from that and then work through with that younger weaker brother or sister, to bring them to the point that we're at. So, I think in, Uist has it this way, in the sense of this, and at the same time aware that the weak in these circumstances may easily be persuaded or over-born into doing what his conscience disapproves, the apostle exclaims abruptly, to tamper with conscience, it is here implied, is ruin. And the selfish man who so uses his Christian liberty as to lead a weak brother to tamper with his conscience is art and part in the ruin.

And I think that's maybe, Joanne, what you were kind of saying. Right. That you cause them to violate their conscience. Yes. And that becomes a destroying or a weakening of that brother or sister. Right.

Another thing, I think, is as believers, In my life, I sense like majority of my friends think I'm an idiot for believing in Jesus. He's a crutch, all those things. And so we've got all these influences out there of folks who do not believe at all in Jesus. So one of the helps is to have strong brothers and sisters that nurture us, because there's so much coming against our belief system.

It's good to have strong brothers in Christ and sisters, too. Yeah. To get us into what the freedoms we have in Christ and what a joy that is to have the freedom in Christ. Gardner, we've got to go. Yeah, no, I've got one more thing on this one, but we'll touch that next week. So, all right, let's close and we will pick it up the last little part of this next week. So let's close. Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you again, just for your word. And again, the Holy Spirit, we thank you again, just the ability of the Holy Spirit to convince us of these truths.

Again, as we've gone through the Book of Romans, how important it is for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives and to persuade us, to convince us of the truths out of which we then can act in faith and trust in your word and the truths that are true about each and every believer. So we thank you for that process of being persuaded by the Holy Spirit in your word. And again, just the most important thing, as I read through the scripture more and more about the importance of faith, but also of love. And the greatest of these is love and how much that means that even giving up our liberties that we have in Christ to love a weaker brother or sister and to come beside them and to bring them up in their knowledge of the freedom that we have in Christ. So we just pray that each and every one of us will have that love that Christ had for us just demonstrated in our love for our brothers and sisters. So we thank you again just for this time. And again, we pray that as we go through this day, that all that we say and do will honor and glorify you. And it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.