Which gives more liberty? Bible or Conscience?

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. What gives you more freedom, the Bible or your own conscience? That's the subject of today as we turn our attention to Romans chapter 14.

Weak and Strong Consciences in Romans 14

So if you open your Bibles with me, we're going to look at the the book of Romans. We're going to go to Romans chapter 14. And in Romans chapter 14, Paul is dealing with the question of weaker brothers and the subject of quarreling over opinions.

This is what it says in Romans 14 verse 1, reading from the English Standard Version. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables.

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?

It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.

Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or you? Why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. As it is written, as I live says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God.

So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. And Paul goes on from there to talk about causing a brother to stumble. And at the very end of the chapter, verse 23, he says, whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

Moral Relativism and Absolute Truth

So there's a lot to deal with here in this chapter. And again, I've kind of jumped over a portion of it. I encourage you as I do every day, read these chapters, read them multiple times. But ultimately what Paul is dealing with here is the subject of matters of the conscience.

There are going to be things that affect my conscience that don't affect the consciences of others. And these are matters that we would call secondary issues. These would not be primary things. These would be things of secondary importance.

And when it comes to things that would bother my conscience, I should not do them. But that doesn't mean that it's forbidden for other people to do them. And somebody might immediately come and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, this sounds a lot like moral relativism.

And in a sense, I understand that objection. Moral relativism says that everything ultimately is left up to the relative conscience of individuals. And therefore, if someone says, well, I believe murder is wrong, someone else can come back and say, well, I don't believe murder is wrong.

So murder is wrong for you. Murder is not wrong for me. And we would say, no, that's not right, because murder is always wrong. Because murder is an absolute truth. To murder is wrong. And therefore, it's absolutely wrong, no matter the situation.

And so when you start dealing with relativism, you can go down a very slippery slope and become very dangerous. If you follow the argument of relativism to its natural conclusion, ultimately, everything becomes relativistic.

I'm reminded of the debate between Gordon Stein and Greg Bonson that happened in the 80s, when Bonson was the Christian, Stein was the unbeliever, the atheist. And at one point, Bonson asked him, and I'm sort of paraphrasing now, because I'm talking about this from memory.

But basically, Bonson asked him, you know, why what Hitler did was wrong. And Gordon Stein really didn't have an answer, because he doesn't have an ultimate authority. He doesn't have God. And so he talked about how well what Hitler did when it went against the morals of the day, it went against the society, it went against what society said was right and wrong.

And, and Bonson nailed it, because he said, so what you're saying is, it wasn't inherently wrong. There is no transcendent law that he was violating. He was simply violating the mores of the society in which he lived, he was going against the rules of the world that were essentially founded and created by man.

And Stein really didn't have an answer for that. Because when you go down the, when you go down the line of moral relativism, and that's really the only way that an atheist can find true satisfaction in right and wrong is to say, well, it has to be right and wrong to me, because they don't have a God.

And as the saying goes, and I believe it is true, if God does not exist, all things are permissible. And so when we talk about the fact that God exists, we know that there is ultimate standards of truth.

There are ultimately things that are always wrong, and they are wrong, because God has said that they are wrong. And there are things that are right, because God says that they're right. And so there are standards for right and wrong.

Meat Offered to Idols and the Weak Brother

But then there are other things that are not as clear, and sometimes there are things that are simply not wrong, but people feel like they should not do them, and therefore they should not do them. Paul addresses this in 1st Corinthians when dealing with the subject of eating meat offered to idols.

He talks about the fact that idols aren't really anything, and that the meat itself is not really harmed, but ultimately someone who's coming out of idolatry should not eat meat that's offered to idols, because it's going to affect their conscience.

It's going to take them back to a place where they were before coming to Christ. It's dangerous for them, and therefore they shouldn't do it. And ultimately the believer who loves that person should not do that, should not encourage them to do that.

And by doing it in front of them, they're offering an opportunity for their brother to stumble. And so that becomes an issue, basically the issue that Paul is dealing with in Romans 14. The issue of whether or not what I do is going to affect my brother, and how is it going to affect my brother.

But he also deals with the issue of conscience. Should I do something that my heart says is wrong? And ultimately what he says in Romans 14 is that we shouldn't do it. Even if the Bible allows something, if we can't do it in good faith, and that's what the last verse basically says, that which is not of faith is sin.

So if I can't do something in good faith, if I can't do something and feel good about it, I ought not to do it. For instance, I'll use probably one of the most common arguments that is used among believers, and hopefully this doesn't create a backlash for me, but I do not believe the Bible forbids the drinking of alcohol.

And so that, I know that there are people who believe that they should never drink alcohol, but I don't believe the Bible says that. I believe that that is something that people have in their conscience.

Maybe they've had issues with alcohol in the past. Maybe they have come from a family where they had an alcoholic parent, or maybe they had someone who was injured by a drunk driver. Anything that could cause a person to say, you know, alcohol is always bad, no matter what.

And so if that person believes that in their heart, then number one, I should not be encouraging that person to drink alcohol. I shouldn't be offering that person alcohol if they come to my home, especially if I know that that's where their heart is.

But moreover, that person should not drink alcohol because that person would be sinning if they did. You say, but wait a minute, it's not a sin to drink alcohol. No, but it is a sin to violate your conscience.

Let me again, I'll point you back, because we sort of jumped over this passage, but it basically tells us, it says, let me see here, beginning at verse 20, it says, do not for the sake of food destroy the work of God.

Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble in what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God.

Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves, but whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

So if, again, that goes back to the last verse, as I was saying, when you look at this verse and it tells you what you cannot do in faith, you are sinning, it's not sin because it's violating the law of God, it's sin because you're violating your conscience, and you say, well, does that make sin relative?

Well, in this sense, whether you want to use the word relative or not, it is saying that there are things that can be a sin for one person and not be a sin for another person. This brings me back to my original question.

The Bible Gives More Liberty Than the Heart

My original question was, what gives you more liberty, the Word of God or your conscience? So if I were to ask the average person on the street, if I say, hey, what gives you more freedom, your heart or the Bible?

They would probably say, well, my heart, because the Bible tells me I'm not supposed to lust and my heart wants to lust. The Bible tells me I'm not supposed to covet and I want to covet, and so they would say, you know, their heart gives them more freedom.

But I'm not talking about that person. I'm talking about the believer. For the believer, what gives us more freedom, our heart or the Bible? And my contention has always been that the Bible actually gives me more freedom than my heart does, because I'm never allowed to violate the Bible.

If the Bible says not to do something and it's a specific command of God, then I'm not allowed to violate that command, even if my heart says it's okay, because in that sense, my heart's wrong. The Bible says the heart is desperately wicked.

Who can know it? So I know that if the Bible says don't do this and my heart says it's okay, then there's something wrong with my heart. So in that sense, the Bible is telling me not to do something because it's absolutely wrong.

However, there are times when I could do something, but my heart won't allow me to do it, because I can't do it in faith. And as this verse tells me, if I can't do it in faith, it's a sin. So even though the Bible might allow me to do something, I might not feel like I can.

And therefore, the thing that's actually giving me less liberty is not the Bible, but is my own heart. My heart can bind me to things that the Scripture does not bind me to. And so is that bad? No, it's not.

It's not bad if we are convicted about certain things, even if they're not necessarily biblical, because that just simply means that that's an area of our life in which God is working on us and He's sanctifying us.

It doesn't mean that if a person tells me, well, Pastor Keith, I just I cannot drink alcohol because I believe that it's a sin for me, then I would say then you should never touch a drop. Because if it's a sin, if you believe in your heart that it's sinful for you, then you shouldn't do it.

And that goes for anything. If some people say, well, you know, I know it's not necessarily a sin to watch television, but it's a sin for me because I don't believe I should watch television. I say then, brother, don't own a TV.

If you say, well, you know, I don't necessarily believe it's a sin to go to the movies. But if somebody said, well, I do, I can't go to the movies, then I'm not inviting that person to the theater. So this all comes down to two things.

It comes down to first, my own heart, my own conscience before God, which I do want to bring in line with the Scriptures. If I have things in my heart that are wrong, if I have things that are limiting me and the Bible gives me freedom in those areas, then I should be understanding the Scripture more to understand my freedom more.

But at the end of the day, I shouldn't be violating my conscience. I shouldn't be going against what my conscience says because that's just not a good habit to get into. And I hope this has been understandable.

Loving the Weaker Brother by Limiting Liberty

I hope this makes sense because it really does come down to the more important issue of not so much myself and my conscience, but the more important issue of how I treat other people. What do I do with people who do not have the same freedoms that I do because their conscience has bound them?

Do I try to encourage them to violate their conscience, or do I come alongside that weaker brother? And that's the term the Scripture is using, the weaker brother. Do I come alongside that weaker brother and show him love by giving him deference and limiting maybe a freedom that I have for his sake?

Paul explains this very well again back in 1st Corinthians. He talks a lot about how he limited his own freedoms for the sake of those who he was ministering to. He had the freedom to take money for his ministry to survive, but he said, I didn't do that.

Instead, I worked so that no one could say that I was doing this for the money. And I think that's 1st Corinthians 9 is when he talks about that. But the point of all this is to simply say Paul was willing to limit his own liberty for the sake of the conscience of other people.

And I think that we ought to use that as a model and say, you know what? My brother is more important than myself. And my brother's heart and his conscience matter to me. Now, I can't always satisfy everyone.

I can't always make everyone happy. That's not what I'm telling you to do. I'm not saying go out and live your life in fear that you might offend someone. But we ought not to be overtly and purposely out to offend one another.

But we should be seeking to encourage one another, especially those who may not be as far along in their Christian walk, who may not be as mature in their Christian walk. And so we want to be able to love them.

We want to be able to encourage them. And we want to be able to help them to understand the freedom that we have in Christ, but not by encouraging them to violate their conscience. Because if they did that, and they were doing something that they believe was a sin, well, then to them, it would be a sin.

So I hope this has been helpful. I hope this has been an encouragement to you. And if it is, I want to remind you to please like, comment and subscribe on this video. If you're watching Facebook, please share it.

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It is in the information linked below. I thank you for watching today. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of Coffee with a Calvinist. And again, I remind you that my name is Keith, and I have been your Calvinist.

God bless you.