From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Most of you will remember, I'm sure, that we are dealing with the words that are to be found in Paul's Epistle to the Romans in chapter 14, reading from verse 14 to verse 16. In the 14th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans: "I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of."

Now, we've dealt with most of this argument, this particular argument that the apostle develops in these verses that I've just read to you. His argument, for me to summarize it so that you may be able to follow the last bit which we are going to consider tonight, is really this: that the great rule for all of us in the Christian life is never merely to consider ourselves but to be always considering our brother also, our fellow Christian.

We must never do anything without bearing in mind the possible effect upon this other brother, and especially if he happens to be a weak brother—weak in the sense that the apostle has already defined it at the very beginning of the chapter in the first verse, where he makes it clear that it is a matter of being weak in the understanding of the Christian faith and the Christian teaching.

Then having said that, that's the overruling principle which must always be operating and always guiding us. Then he goes on to say to remind us, of course, that to this weaker brother, eating these various meats that had been offered to idols is something which is definitely wrong and sinful, and therefore to him it is harmful.

So he has told us that we mustn't do this for the sake of the weaker brother because if we don't heed this principle, well, then he says we are not walking in a charitable manner. We are not walking in love. "Now walkest thou not charitably." And we should always be walking, thinking, speaking, acting in a charitable and in a loving manner.

But more than that, he tells us that not to heed this principle is to do something that is very dangerous for the brother. "Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died." You remember we went into that, pointing out that "destroy" doesn't mean final destruction, but it does mean that you're putting him on the road to that and can really land him in grievous difficulties and do great harm to his spiritual life.

And then the final argument, you remember, was this: this brother whom you are handling in such a cavalier manner and ignoring him and deriding him and dismissing him and not allowing him to influence you at all in what you do with regard to these matters of indifference, let me remind you, says the apostle, that the Lord Jesus Christ died for him. He thought that much of him that he gave up his life for him, suffered death for him. So if he did that for him, surely you can afford to be loving and charitable with regard to these matters which are entirely indifferent.

Now, the whole discussion of the whole chapter, you remember, is about these indifferent matters—matters which are not vital and essential to salvation. Well, now, that's the argument as far as we've taken it. And we are left, therefore, with this final statement in the 16th verse: "Let not then your good be evil spoken of."

What he means, of course, by "good" is this: he means something which is right and good in and of itself, that which is good to the stronger brother. It's a quite a good thing for him, nothing wrong at all about it, to eat these meats that had been offered to idols and no longer to observe those particular days. That's what he means by the good.

But, of course, he doesn't confine it to that. He's making here a comprehensive statement with regard to anything in the Christian life and in connection with the Christian teaching which we have come to understand and about which we are enlightened, so that as far as we are concerned, the thing is good, nothing wrong at all about it.

Now, what he's saying is this: that we must never allow what we do in that respect to be spoken of in an evil manner. So this is the sort of conclusion to this bit of argumentation. It's a summing up of it all. Now, he is referring, therefore, to doing something which is good in and of itself, but which leads to harm in others and which leads them to say that we are guilty of sin and of wrongdoing.

Now, he says you should never act in such a way that the thing that you're doing, which is quite alright and good in itself and good for you, leads the weaker brother to speak in that way concerning it. Very well, what this exhortation therefore means is this: that a thing is not bad, or that a thing is harmless—indeed, we must go further—that a thing is good even in and of itself, does not mean, therefore, that it is always right for us to do it.

Now, this is a most important matter, this. You see, the danger is, the tendency is, and the devil always encourages it, to make the stronger brother say, "Well, this whole thing, of course, is quite ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with all this, and if there's nothing wrong, am I to be held back by these stupid people?"

And the danger, therefore, is that because he sees the thing clearly and knows that there's nothing wrong about it, that indeed it's quite alright, that it's even good perhaps, he feels this gives him a right to do it. Now, the apostle says you mustn't, you mustn't do that. You mustn't act simply for yourself and in this intensely personal manner. You've got to bring in these further considerations.

If you do that, says the apostle, well, you will cause talk and gossip and scandal, and these people in the church, your fellow members, will say, "Look at him. He's guilty of sin. He's not living the true Christian life. He's guilty of license." In other words, he will be speaking evil of this good thing, this right thing, as far as you are concerned, which you are doing.

And the apostle says that we mustn't do that, that this is harmful to the church, not only to the weaker brother. It is harmful to the whole church that there is confusion introduced and something which is excellent and right in and of itself becomes a means of harm and does harm to the church and to the cause of our blessed Lord and Savior.

Now, perhaps I can best illustrate this by showing how this is a principle that is particularly important for anybody engaged in foreign mission work. The foreign missionary comes across this very point and principle quite frequently. Here they are in an alien culture, entirely different from everything that they've ever known, and they're there preaching the Gospel and people are converted under their ministrations and join the Christian church.

But as we've been seeing as happened in the early church, these people are not immediately free from their cultural background and from their viewing certain things in life in a particular way. And the danger, of course, for the missionary is to go there and to impose his Western ideas upon another culture, or indeed to impose upon people who are just entering the Christian life what is the custom and the habit amongst people who've been brought up in a country where the Gospel has been preached for years and where there is a general Christian tradition and they themselves have been Christians for many years.

Now, it's a very great temptation this, and a very great danger. There are certain things to this missionary, there's no harm in them at all. They're perfectly right, perfectly legitimate. But it is the business of this missionary to learn about the local conditions and the local culture.

Because there are many things—I'm speaking now in a non-Christian manner for a moment—there are things which we do here in this country and in Western nations which are simply terrible to people brought up in other traditions and culture. And likewise, some of the things that they regard as a value, we regard as being almost ridiculous.

Now, it's not for one to judge the other. What is important is that we should recognize that there is a difference. Now, you've often heard missionaries home on furlough telling stories about this: that if you start to speak before your host or hostess, or if you start drinking your tea before they do, and a thousand and one other things, they regard this as an insult and they lose face and it leads to trouble in their Christian life.

Now, that's the kind of thing which the apostle has got in his mind here. It is always the business of the Christian, and especially the stronger Christian, to discover the outlook and the mentality and the attitude of the others and never to do anything that puts them in difficulties. Otherwise, he is causing his good to be evil spoken of. It becomes a cause of scandal and of difficulty, and it leads to much talking and disputation and argumentation which is not only of no good but actually does positive harm.

Now, that is the first great principle, therefore. But, you see, we don't even leave it at that. That's, in a sense, negative. "Let not your good be evil spoken of." We've got to go beyond this. And the ultimate in all this matter is what we read together just now from that 10th chapter of Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. This is the final summing up of it all as the apostle puts it there.

He's dealing with exactly the same question, only goes into it there in yet greater thoroughness. He says, "Conscience," verse 29, "conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other also: for why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?" You know what he means by that is this: don't exercise your liberty in such a way that it comes under the condemnation of this other man's conscience. That's the meaning of that statement. You see, to the other man it's wrong, and he condemns it.

So he says, "Why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?" People have sometimes misunderstood that statement as a kind of protest that the strong brother is protesting and is saying, "But surely this man has no right to condemn my liberty? Am I to be held down?" It doesn't mean that at all.

He says, "Don't allow your liberty—it's alright for you and you're at liberty to do it—but don't do it if it does mean that this other weaker brother's conscience is going to condemn it." "For if I by grace be a partaker, why am I evil spoken of for that which for which I give thanks?" It's—that's just really a repetition of the same thing.

He says, "I take it by grace," which by which he means, "I give thanks for it," and he even says that at the end again, "for which I give thanks." He says, "Now the fact that I do it like that doesn't allow me to do it if it leads to my being evil spoken of." This is the whole thrust of his argument.

Now, there he's just really elaborating what we've got in this 16th verse in this 14th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. And then he sums it up: "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Now, that's the secret. That's the principle. Don't think so much in terms of right and wrong, even. Do all to the glory of God.

This is the thing that matters. Don't stand on your rights. These matters are all indifferent. You should never elevate them to that position or make them matters of contention and of striving. You mustn't do that. Do all things, whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

Then negatively, "giving none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God." The world outside is divided into Jew and Gentile. Don't offend any of them. Neither give offense to those who are in the church of God. And ends with his own personal example: "even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved."

This is one of these magnificent statements of the apostle. Of course, you've got a parallel to it, I think we read it last time, the last verse in the eighth chapter of 1 Corinthians: "Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."

But here it is in a much more glorious way: "Do all to the glory of God. Don't give anybody any offense. Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit." That's what's so wrong, this selfish, self-centeredness, self-interest. "But the profit of many, that they may be saved." Very well, now there we come to the end of this particular section of argumentation at the end of that 16th verse.

Now, before we go on to the 17th, there are certain very important matters raised here in these verses 14 to 16, to which we've got to turn because they really are very vital. This is most important teaching, as you can see. The Roman church was in trouble, as other churches were, because of the failure of Christian people and at this point, the strong particularly, to understand the meaning of the teaching.

Now, therefore, the first thing we've got to notice is this: the importance that the apostle attaches to the conscience. It's here and it's still clearer, as I say, in 1 Corinthians 10. You see, his whole case, in a sense, is rested on this: "to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean." That's basic. In other words, this man's conscience tells him that the thing is unclean, and if his conscience tells him that it is unclean, to him it is unclean, and he must always listen to his conscience.

Very well, so here he puts before us again the most important place that must be given in the Christian life to the conscience. Now, I want to show you something of this because very often this comes as a great surprise to people. They can understand the non-Christian man as being governed by his conscience, but they're often surprised that the same thing is said about the Christian.

But it's very important. Let me show you how important it is. What is the conscience? Well, the very word conscience really tells us what it means. It means "knowing"—that's the "science" part of it—"together with," "con." That's the meaning of conscience in all languages, doesn't matter which language, Greek, Latin, any language you may choose, conscience always has this same basic idea. It means a knowing together or along with, understanding, knowing together with something else.

What is this something else? Well, there's been great discussion about this, of course. It all depends ultimately whether you believe the Scriptures and their teaching or not and whether you believe in God or not. Because it's quite clear in the Scriptures themselves that conscience means knowing together with God, or knowing together with the teaching given to us by God.

Now, we've already come across this in the second chapter where the apostle really has put this fairly clearly for us. He says in the 14th verse, "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another."

Now, there it is. God has put His law into the hearts of all men, whether they recognize it, whether they know it or not doesn't matter, it is there. So that you really can describe and define the conscience as man going along with what God has implanted inside him. It is this in man which attests and agrees unto this fundamental law.

What Paul is saying there, of course, in the second chapter is this: that in the case of the Jews, God gave this same law in an explicit manner in the Ten Commandments—a law written on tables. Now, He didn't do that for the Gentiles, but the Gentiles have got it in their hearts as the Jews have got it in their hearts. The extra thing that the Jew has got is that God has stated it in print, as it were, on top of the man having it inside him.

Very well, now that's the essential meaning of conscience. And as I say, the apostle shows us very plainly that he regards listening to the conscience as being most vital in the Christian life. He's got a number of terms, of adjectives that he uses with regard to the conscience, and every one of them is very important for us to observe.

The first which we notice is he talks about a "good conscience." He does that—you'll find it in Acts 23 where Paul is defending himself before a court. "Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day." And you'll find many other references to a good conscience.

But then another one that he uses is this: he talks about a conscience "void of offense." This is an important—in Acts 24:16, "Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men." Now, what he means by that is a good conscience is a condition in which a man is not upbraided by his conscience, he's not condemned by his conscience, he is acting according to his conscience.

And Paul claims that even before his conversion, he always lived like that in all good conscience. He wasn't unhappy, his conscience was not troubling him. It was a good conscience. It was a conscience void of offense. Then, you see, we've already come across another reference to it, another use with respect to it in the ninth chapter of this Epistle to the Romans: "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost."

The conscience bears witness. You think and your conscience says "yes." You think and your conscience may say "no." But here he's saying that his conscience bears him witness. It agrees with what he's saying and with what he's doing. But then we've got a number of very interesting statements about the conscience in the First Epistle to the Corinthians where he keeps on talking about a "weak conscience."

Now, you'll find this first of all in chapter eight of 1 Corinthians. Here it is in verse seven. You see, he says to us in verse six, "there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled."

But you've got the same thing again in the 10th verse: "For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol's temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols?" It's another reference to the weak conscience. And again in verse 12, "But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ."

And you noticed we had the same expression in the 10th chapter of that First Epistle to the Corinthians. But still we've got to go on. There are further references to the conscience in the writings of this great man. I believe that last time I reminded you of how he deals with this in his First Epistle to Timothy, twice over in the first chapter, where he talks in the fifth verse: "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."

19th verse: "holding faith, and a good conscience"—now, we've already explained that—"which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck." But here's another interesting one in the third chapter of 1 Timothy and in verse nine: "holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience."

Now, that's a most fascinating expression. It is as if he were referring to the conscience as a sort of chalice, and this precious, wonderful thing, the mystery of the faith, is something that you hold and protect and carry in what he calls a pure conscience, which means again, of course, a conscience that has not in any way been tampered with.

But let me go on and give you the references further first and then I'll show you the meaning attached to these particular statements. Take again that same First Epistle to Timothy in chapter four. You've got it in the second verse. He's dealing with these people: "the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron."

Now, I'll give you the explanation of that in a moment. In Titus, the Epistle to Titus chapter 1, verse 15, he talks about people having their consciences "defiled." And then you get in Hebrews 10:22, reference to an "evil conscience." Our hearts sprinkled and cleansed from an evil conscience.

Now, I've simply tried to give you some impression of the significance and the importance that is attached in the New Testament to the conscience in the life of the Christian. What do these various references tell us? Well, here is a kind of summary of the teaching: every man has a conscience. Everybody born into this world has a conscience.

It is something which in a sense is independent of us, and it acts independently of us. That is why a man's conscience can be a great nuisance to him and a great annoyance to him. We would all have been much happier if we hadn't got consciences, but we've got a conscience, and the conscience speaks, and it speaks independently of us.

We decide something, conscience says "no." We do it, conscience condemns, and the terrible problem is how to silence conscience. So these things are obvious about conscience, placed there by God and acting independently of us. But at the same time, it is quite clear that we can act against the conscience.

The conscience can't force us to listen to it. It gives its verdict, but it can't compel us, it can't coerce us. So we can act against our conscience, and then we have what he calls a bad conscience. That is what is meant by a bad conscience or an evil conscience. There's a fight going on between the man and his conscience, and he's got a bad conscience because the conscience, whether we like it or not, will condemn us.

But—and this is where the serious aspect of this whole matter comes in—it is possible for you and for me to defile the conscience. Now, what does that mean? Well, what that means, of course, is that by maltreating it, we can lessen its acuteness or its sensitiveness, or its sensitivity if you like.

This is a most terrible thing, but it's true. As I say, it's there in spite of us, but if we persist in disobeying it and if we persist in filling our minds and our thoughts with that which is condemned by the conscience, we do have an influence upon the conscience and we can cause it to become defiled.

Now, this is unfortunately something that one can see illustrated very clearly in the lives of men and women. You see it in the biographies. You see a man who started out with a sensitive conscience, high moral concept of life and of living, but you see how such a man, perhaps as the result of drink or of drugs or of something else, gradually can defile his conscience.

There is no doubt about this at all. People who become slaves to drink and to drugs always defile their consciences. They're not aware that they're doing this, but their moral judgments change, and they haven't got the sensitive conscience which they had at the beginning. Now, that is what is meant by that expression of having the conscience defiled.

It's there, as I pointed out to you, particularly in the Epistle to Titus, first chapter and verse 15: "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." This is a very mysterious thing, but it is true. This most wonderful thing that is in the natural man is something that he can defile in that way.

But you noticed that he can even take it further than that. Take that extraordinary expression in the fourth chapter of 1 Timothy in the second verse: "speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron." Now, what does this mean? Well, this is, of course, a very pictorial way of expressing thought.

You know what a hot iron does. This kind of thing doesn't happen perhaps as often now as it used to at one time, but we've got asepsis now and we've got various disinfectants and so on. But in times past when people would perform an operation on an animal and indeed on a man, they would often avoid infection and seal up open blood vessels, arteries, and veins and so on by taking a hot iron and putting it into a fire and then just putting it on and it seals everything up and it sears it.

But, of course, this hot iron, it does another thing in addition to that: it kills the nerves and renders the part insensitive. And it is that idea in particular that the apostle here has got in mind. Imagine a sensitive surface with nerves and nerve endings, sensitive to the slightest touch and feeling a sensation of pain. Now, you bring this hot iron and you place it on it and you seal off all these nerve roots so that it becomes hard and calloused.

So that you can even pinch it and you feel nothing, stick a pin into it and you feel nothing. You've just caused a kind of hardness and a callosity. And says the apostle, there are people who've done that with their consciences, and they no longer feel anything. They can do anything, they can do the most terrible things and they're not aware that they're doing any wrong at all.

They've sealed their consciences with a hot iron. Now, this is the result, of course, of a deliberate effort. And there are such people, alas, who deliberately defy God and man. They say, "evil, be thou my good." They recognize no moral standards whatsoever. That is how the modern man seals his conscience with a hot iron.

And in the end, he reaches a stage in which he really can't help it. At first, of course, the conscience went on speaking and he had a fight and a struggle. But if you persist with this application of the hot iron, the conscience will become so calloused that in the end the man literally really feels nothing at all, and he's become amoral.

Now, you can see the application of all this to much that is happening at the present time. There is a sense in which it behooves us all to know something about this in all this talk about these drug addicts and so on. We must realize that some of these people get into a condition in which they really are not responsible for what they're doing. And if you treat them as people whom you hold responsible, you can be cruel to them.

But if you understand the condition, well, then you'll be able to treat them in the appropriate manner. And you have to realize that these various drugs and other things can do this to the human conscience, and so these people arrive in this terrible and tragic state in which they really have lost all ideas of morality. They can't think morally. They're utterly debased, and they're virtually without a conscience at all.

Now, these are terrible things, but I'm putting it all before you in order that we may realize what significance this apostle in particular attaches to the conscience in the life of the Christian person. So let me put it like this to you: the conscience serves two exceptionally vital functions in the Christian.

Here is the first: it is the greatest safeguard possible against mere theoretical opinions about truth or a mere intellectual interest in truth. Here is something about which we always have to be on our guard. The danger of being a theoretical Christian, of being an intellectual Christian. Of course, such persons are really not Christians at all, but they think they are. And it is a danger that besets true Christians of veering onto this purely intellectual side and forgetting the wholeness of the Christian life.

Now, it's a terrible danger this. How does it manifest itself? Well, here is one way in which it does it: a man can make the wrong use of the doctrine of justification by faith only in this way. Here is a man, a Christian, he does something that he shouldn't do, and his conscience speaks to him.

But immediately he replies to his conscience by saying, "Yes, yes, that's alright, but my sins are covered. I am justified by faith. You know, you're trying to make me think that I'm going to justify myself by works again." So he takes the doctrine of justification by faith to give himself peace and ease, almost to justify what he's done or at any rate to say that it doesn't matter very much, that he being in this position of standing in grace and by faith, that everything is alright. He abuses the doctrine of justification.

But, you know, your conscience won't let you do that. And the thing we've got to avoid is this, is the danger of arguing with the conscience. You should never argue with your conscience in terms of justification by faith only. Now, let's be clear about this. You should never allow yourself to get into condemnation.

That means that you doubt whether you're a Christian at all, that you doubt whether you're saved because you've sinned. Now, that's always wrong. That isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the man who heals himself a little bit too easily and quickly when he falls into sin by bringing in immediately the doctrine of justification by faith and not allowing conscience to do its real work in him. Now, that's one of the dangers.

And conscience will always act, and that is why we should always pay such heed to it and such attention to it. It will safeguard you against this theoretical position and this invoking of justification as if it were a legal matter pure and simple to put yourself right and at ease. Don't do that, listen to the conscience.

And another way I could illustrate it is this: conscience is one of the greatest safeguards against indolence and laziness in the Christian life. You see the theoretical attitude again always tries to get us to be satisfied with understanding of the truth and enjoyment of it, enjoying reading books about it, enjoying listening to expositions of the Scripture and so on. We take this great intellectual interest in it, but we are not applying the truth.

Now, conscience will come in at that point, and conscience will upbraid you. Conscience will attack you at this point, and it'll say you mustn't satisfy yourself so easily on the theoretical side only. There is another side. What are you doing in practice? What are you doing as a Christian living a life in this world? Your conscience will upbraid you.

So it is of inestimable value in that way. It'll keep us right on the doctrines of justification and sanctification, and it will see to it that we always have the whole man engaged—not only the mind, but also the heart and the will in operation. Now, conscience is here in the Christian. That's what the apostle means by using these different terms with respect to it.

All these people who've been abusing conscience or who've got an evil and a bad conscience are in that position because they've not been listening to their consciences in some way or another. They haven't been holding the mystery of the faith in this pure conscience. Or as he puts it in the first chapter of 1 Timothy, "holding faith, and a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck." And that is how they made shipwreck, as we saw last time.

Well, now, there is the first great thing that the conscience does in the Christian. And the second is this: conscience is the greatest safeguard of all against a false spirituality. What do I mean by that? Well, this is really what Paul is saying in 1 Timothy 4:1 and 2 or and following. "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron."

What do they do? "Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth," etc. What's he dealing with? Well, he was dealing with something that began creeping into the early church, which I'm describing in terms of a false spirituality.

It was known as Gnosticism, and it really meant this: these people claimed that they were unusually spiritual, and they said that to the truly spiritual man, the body is evil. So you mustn't use your body. That's why you mustn't get married. Sex is evil. Indeed, they said that the bodies of animals were evil, so you don't eat meat. You've got to be a vegetarian and so on.

Now, all this was done in terms of a very high and exalted pure spirituality, and it played great havoc in the early church. These people behaved in two ways. These people who held the view that the body itself was essentially evil and therefore most of the things connected with it are evil. They reacted or they carried out this teaching in two main ways.

The first was to say that you must have nothing at all to do with it. Those are the people who prohibited to get married. A Christian should never get married because the flesh was coming in, sex was coming in, that's evil. So you don't get married, and again, as I say, you don't eat meat at all. You're pure vegetarian. You don't touch it as far as you can. Everything that belongs to the flesh, to the body, is evil. Avoid it as the plague.

But, you know, there were others who really belonged to exactly the same company, who carried it out in a very different manner. What was their manner? Well, their manner was that which is described by Peter in his second epistle and in the second chapter. They argued like this: "Now," they said, "the body is evil. Well, very well, then the thing to do is to insult it, and you insult it and you despise it by using it as much as you can."

So they were guilty of all sorts of excesses. He says, "these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish; and shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the daytime. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you; having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls," etc., etc. They've followed the way of Balaam, the way of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.

You see what they were saying. They said, "It doesn't matter what a man does in the body. It's only the body. It doesn't matter at all. It doesn't affect my spirit. All this is irrelevant." You had those two extreme ways of working out this which claimed to be an unusually spiritual attitude. Now, this is a danger that has persisted.

You will find Jude in his epistle deals with exactly the same thing. You will find that in the second chapter of the Book of Revelation, there is a reference to people called Nicolaitans. That's exactly what they were guilty of. They said because the body doesn't matter, doesn't matter what you do with your body, and they were guilty of all kinds of foulness and of excesses.

Now, then, the point I'm making is this: the greatest safeguard against this terrible danger is the conscience. You see, you can listen to people and they'll speak in a highly spiritual and devotional manner, and they'll give you the impression that it's wrong to get married, but your conscience will say at once, "That's not so. God made woman for man. He said the twain shall be one flesh. This must be wrong." Your conscience will tell you that.

Now, if you listen to your conscience, you'll never be carried away by this specious teaching. Exactly the same as Paul says with regard to eating meat. It's God who's provided it all for us. So this must be wrong. It appears to be so wonderful, so correct, so ultra-spiritual. But your conscience will always tell you.

Or take this other extreme manifestation where these people say theoretically the body doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what you do with your body. So you listen to them, but the moment you decide to do so, your conscience will condemn you, and if you do what they tell you, it'll condemn you still more.

And you'll only be able to go on with it as long as you defile your conscience and begin to seal it, to sear it with a hot iron. So you see what a wonderful thing conscience is. The devil is so subtle. He comes as an angel of light, and he brings this exalted, ultra-pure, spiritual kind of teaching that seems to make us feel, "Ah, here are the topmost heights of Christianity."

You listen to your conscience whenever you hear such teaching, and you'll soon find the specious character of this false teaching which afflicted the early church and which tends to afflict the church especially in various other parts of the world, in the East in particular, at the present time.

Well, now then, it seemed to me that it was essential that at this point we should be perfectly clear about this great and vital teaching with regard to the place and the importance of the conscience in the life of the Christian person. Now, there are other problems we've got to consider in the light of what we are told in these verses 14 to 16 here in the 10th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and God willing, we'll go on to deal with them next Friday night. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, we again thank thee that thou hast provided this rich teaching for us. We do feel condemned, Oh Lord, for all our failures and the errors into which we have ever fallen. We see that we are without any excuse at all, for thou hast given us this teaching before we were ever born. Oh God, open our eyes to it, we pray thee, and give us that wisdom which will ever cause us to see what the conscience is and what it is meant to do.

And especially, Oh Lord, the folly and the terrible danger of arguing or tampering or interfering with and opposing this blessed monitor that thou hast set within us. Oh God, bless us in our consideration of these matters together tonight, to that great and glorious end.

And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now, this night, throughout the remainder of this our short, uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage, and until we shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether good or bad. Amen.