(Sunday School) PFT: Week 3

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Let me remind you of what we're doing, where we've been, and what the context is for today's class. If you missed a couple of our classes, everything is being recorded and put up on our website. I have handouts from week one and week two.

Here's where we've been, what we're doing today, and where we're going. We're doing a lot of looking backward these first three weeks for historical perspective. The first week, we looked at the context of the first century and what it was like to live in the Roman Empire—all the various groups either for or against the Roman Empire, cooperation with the Romans, those who opposed the Romans, who Jesus ate with, who Jesus included in his group of disciples. We also looked at the names of the 12 disciples from Matthew's gospel—those that are more Hellenized or Greek, those that were more Aramaic or Hebrew, therefore from more progressive or more conservative backgrounds and homes. We looked at how Jesus included all those people in his tribe of disciples, and then talked about what it means for us to be people who think about building bridges rather than burning them in this season. This is why this is a prepping for Thanksgiving class. I'm assuming you're going to be around a Thanksgiving table, particularly with people with whom you disagree about politics.

The second class, we looked at the history of church and state—how people think about their political theology, the relationship between the church and the government. I went through seven examples of that through history. Those handouts are up here on the table. I walked through those with both historic examples and modern examples to say we're not as crazy in this moment as we think we are. We think we're in a moment that the church has never experienced before. Looking at both the first century and a span of church history, I want to give you some encouragement that this isn't as bad as it could be. This isn't as bad as it's been. We always hear the "houses on fire" type language. I think it's helpful to have some perspective.

The Church and Politics

Today, we're going to do one more exercise on perspective. We're going to talk really about the church and people in the church and how the church relates to its congregation members with regard to politics and many other areas of things that are not revealed in scripture specifically.

We're going to read this passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 8. I'm going to read it out loud, and then I'm going to give you some time in your small groups with a couple of questions. I've also given you a little hint on the paper.

Let me read this for you from 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verses 1 through 13:

Now about food sacrificed to idols, we know that, "we all have knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anybody thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know it as he ought to know it. But if anyone loves God, he is known by him.

About eating food sacrificed to idols, then we know that "an idol is nothing in the world," and that "there is no god but one." For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God the Father. All things are from him and we exist for him, and there is one Lord Jesus Christ. All things are through him and we exist through him.

However, not everyone has this knowledge. Some have been so used to idolatry up till now that when they eat food sacrificed to an idol, their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not bring us close to God. We're not worse off if we don't eat, and we're not better off if we do eat. But be careful that this right of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak.

For if someone sees you, the one who has knowledge, dining in an idol's temple, won't his weak conscience be encouraged to eat food offered to idols? So this weak person, the brother or sister for whom Christ died, is ruined by your knowledge. Now when you sin like this against your brothers and sisters and wound their weak conscience, you are sinning against Christ.

Therefore, if food causes my brother or sister to fall, I will never again eat meat so that I won't cause my brother or sister to fall. — 1 Corinthians 8:1-13

So the context in Corinth is that temples had food that's been sacrificed to the idol, which is now on sale afterward for purchase in the market. People could go purchase this and take it home and eat it.

And the controversy in the church was, is that right or is that wrong to do? So in your small groups, this is what I'm asking a lot of y'all this morning. This is the hardest class. Okay? So I'm gonna ask you to really think about this. What is the conscience in this passage? It's not Jiminy Cricket like you think of the conscience. This is a different way of using that term. So what is the conscience? That's what you're gonna ask first. What's the difference between the strong and the weak? Now the weak are mentioned, the strong are those who are kind of alluded to here. So we talk a lot about the weak here. So what is the conscience? What is the weak and what is the strong? And I've given you a little hint there if that helps you. So take ten minutes in your groups, and I want you to talk about this passage.

Alright. This is one of the more difficult passages in the New Testament. So if you struggle as a group, yes, you're in good company. This is more complicated than don't do anything that causes somebody to stumble. It's way more complicated than that. So I'm telling you, if you don't like this class, you're gonna talk to my boss, Jesus. But we're gonna look at this passage really briefly.

So what is the conscience? I said it's not exactly the same thing as Jiminy Cricket. What is the conscience? An internal sense of what? Right and wrong. Right and wrong. But is it infallible? No. Because there are two types of people described here. There are those who have a weak conscience and those who have a strong conscience. What's the difference between someone who has a weak conscience and someone who has a strong conscience? And don't just read what I wrote.

The strong would be this sort of fencing things, like how the Pharisees were like, well, that's the rule, but let's put all this other stuff around. Okay, good. In case. Right. We're gonna talk about that exact example. Thank you, Amy. That's really good. Yeah. What else you got? What's the difference between the strong and the weak?

It feels like there are a lot more things out there to convict those with the weak conscience. Good. But there are so many other things that could make them feel as though they said. Right. On top of the things that the Bible says explicitly. Right. So they are very sensitive people. Someone with, as I put there, somebody has strong scruples. I don't know if y'all use the word scruples, but it's sort of like, all these things I—that's wrong and that's wrong and that's wrong. And I have this real heightened sense of that.

Somebody, now let's just talk about the food sacrificed to idols. Was it wrong to eat the food sacrificed to idols biblically? No. It was not. And since it said that he's like, an idol is nothing in the world. It's not a real thing. Right? Eating this food is not gonna bring you closer to God. It's not gonna make you fall away. The strong knew that. The strong were like, I know that. And yet, what's at play here is he said there is a sin that you can commit against your brothers and sisters and against the Lord, which is doing what? What can the strong do that would harm their brothers and sisters? To stumble. Cause them to stumble by eating it. Eating it, but even more. We're gonna go one step further with that, and I want you all to see this in this passage and several others.

Christian Unity and Liberty of Conscience

So this passage is really, really important for talking about why Christian unity matters. I heard several whispers of Christian unity around your tables, also about what we say is biblical to do and why. So in the Presbyterian Church, this is going back to our documents, our constitutional documents. The Westminster Confession of Faith says this:

God alone is lord of the conscience. That is a foundational principle to how we work. God alone is the lord of the conscience and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of humanity, which are anything contrary to his word or beside it in matters of faith and worship. So that to believe such doctrines or to obey such commandments out of conscience is to betray liberty of conscience, and the requiring an implicit faith in the absolute and blind obedience is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.

I know that's crystal clear. So let me—there's a phrase here: binding a conscience via causing someone to violate their conscience. Jesus talked with the Pharisees about burdening the conscience. So remember Jesus says, "Woe to you Pharisees because you tie the mint and the cumin, but you neglect the weightier commands of the law, and you put heavy burdens on people by telling them that this is a biblical thing to do."

So this is what's at play here: binding the conscience. Now we're in a country where we talk about liberty all the time. Liberty is really, really important.

I wanna be free. And there's a sense in which we could think that Christian liberty and political liberty are the same thing. They could not be more different. It's easy to confuse them. So let me walk through this.

For some of us, we feel like our liberty is being infringed. Anybody tells us what to do—somebody tells me something I don't wanna do—I don't wanna do that. You're hampering my freedom. Right? But for the Bible, it's not about actions. It's not about the what. It's about the why. It's about the reasoning behind it. And this is what's really, really important, and this is where we're gonna get into politics in a minute.

So consider the matter here: eating meat sacrificed to idols. It wasn't the act of me eating the meat that was the problem. It was the meaning of the action that was threatening the salvation of the weak, or a matter of Christian freedom for the strong. So for Paul, for the Protestant reformers, Christian liberty is not being threatened by being told what to do, but being told why we need to do it because God said so, and that it's a matter of salvation. So the motive behind it is what's really important.

There are lots of authorities. People have to tell us what to do all the time. There are police officers. There are judges. We have a legal system. Nothing wrong with that. But somebody's saying, "You're not a Christian if you—" this is at stake in another New Testament book, the book of Galatians. There are these Judaizers who show up after Paul's been teaching about the gospel, and they come in and say, "You must be circumcised to be a Christian." And Peter goes along with this. So Paul gets all up in his face. Like, "What are you doing? You are threatening the gospel itself by doing this." But at issue was the why—the why behind this.

There are many things which God does say: "Do this, don't do this." Right? The problem is the Christian liberty issue is threatened when you presume to add or subtract from God's commands. This is again the Pharisees putting a burden on someone, or Paul facing the Galatians, continuing to insist there are commands which God has said you're free from. So there's an error here between principle and application, and Christians do this all the time.

The Gap Between Principle and Application

We Protestants, in particular, err by manufacturing extra rules for other people. There was a time in American history that said, "Don't dance, don't chew, don't go with girls who do." But we forget that there's a gap between principle and application of principle.

For example, Scripture says don't be a glutton, but it doesn't give us a diet to follow. Scripture says dress modestly, but it doesn't tell us about wearing skinny jeans or not. The Bible doesn't define all the application as clearly as we would like it to be. We have to figure that out. The Bible is timeless, and it's time-bound. It was for a particular time and place. It's filled with principles—like "greet each other with a holy kiss." We're like, "Okay, that's a principle. We're not gonna do that all the time." But we have to figure out how to apply that in our context in a way that's socially appropriate.

I don't mean that you should never give applications. If you're a parent, you have to give lots of applications. You have to say, "This is what is right and wrong, and here's why." You can't just say, "Here's what the fruit of the Spirit are." Does that work with your children? No. We have to help cultivate those things. But we're tempted a lot of times as Christians to fill in gray areas, to leap across between principle and application in ways that pretend like the gap doesn't exist—like everything is crystal clear, and everybody should think about it all the same way.

What's dangerous is to take an application and say the Bible says to do this, rather than the Bible says this principle; here's a possible application. There may be many ways to obey this.

Five Dangers of Wrongly Binding Conscience

You wrongly bind somebody's conscience by naming something a sin that's not really a sin in God's law and that God has left free for us to determine. It can cause five things.

Those who are tender of conscience—the weak, those with lots of scruples—may fall into needless fear that they have lost their salvation. Those who tend toward complacency may feel a false sense of assurance because they're actually spiritually alright because they're doing all the things.

The Pharisee types may tend to look down at other people who are not doing those things. Those other believers from those other churches, those bad Christians out there. Right? Those who are rebellious, maybe tempted to just disobey because they're like, if that's what God is like, I don't want anything to do with that God. Those who are wavering on their faith may conclude God's a tyrant. God has commanded all these things that he hasn't commanded. In all these ways, attempts to bind the conscience outside of scripture tend to obscure the gospel. It scares us. It draws our focus away from Jesus and onto us and our works.

Examples of Binding Conscience

So let's stop and ask for some examples. Do you think of any examples in modern day where someone is binding the conscience of another person by saying this is the right way to blank, this is Jesus' way? I'm giving you so many hints right now. We'll come back to that. That's exactly right. That's where we're going with this class. It's how you vote. But what else? Homeschooling. Schooling. We're gonna make you do a little study in just a moment around your tables about homeschooling, Christian schooling, public school, and how that's held up in churches.

What about anybody ever heard of the Ezzos? Oh yeah. Raising kids God's way. Because that's God's way—to let them cry in their crib, right? Is that God's way?

Chapter eight verse 13

Right? But do you hear what's being implied there? This is the right way. That's the wrong way. Christians are so good at this, and it's set up as wisdom or Christian principles when in fact those are applications. Those are things that other people have said, "This is a way to do this," and it's not exactly biblically revealed like that. Do you get why? Y'all following me on this so far? Are there questions so far?

The Other Extreme

I find that all the people I meet with and talk to, there are also people who I feel are sort of radically unbound by conscience in this day who are saying like, "The licentious." Yeah. Who are just saying, "I even have salvation. Right. What do the 10 Commandments matter at all anymore?" The things that are very clearly spelled out in the Bible are also kind of thrown into the mix, and it's like, question mark. Thank you.

Because things that are clear in the Bible are not conscience issues, and you can't make them such. We're in a day where people are doing that. "Oh, well, it's my Christian freedom. I don't have to marry a believer." Well, that isn't scripture. Right? There are things that are very clear in scripture that people do want to fudge on. And we want to say, "Oh, that's time bound." Well, all of scripture is written by a particular people in a language in a particular place and culture, and it's timeless. When you start coming up with applications—for example, here's the way to be a godly man. Well, a lot of the beat your chest machismo stuff that came out of John Eldridge. A lot of his stuff was like, this is what this looks like. Well, that's what it looks like for a twenty-first century man living in Wyoming who likes to chop wood. That doesn't work in an Asian culture in Tokyo today. So that is overly applying a particular application, which is culturally bound, and saying that's biblical. Does that make sense?

So who can bind a conscience? Particularly pastors can do this. And sometimes it's not really obvious, and I'm sure I've done this in my sermons. So just go back through and listen to all of them and send me angry emails. Because it's really hard when you give an application to something to make sure people know this is an application, this is one possible way that you live this out, instead of this is the only way that you live this out. I tend to say things very strongly as you all know. So it's easy for pastor and congregation to say the word explicitly commands this. But it's not just pastors.

We live in a day of podcasting, and people are listening to all kinds of leaders and people who have no degrees who are throwing out stuff as if Jesus said it.

That's a population now that wasn't there twenty years ago who is free to bind people's consciences and burden people and to say, thus saith the word when it's not thus saith the word. A lot of Christian radio is full of it. And this can happen even among Christians. We're Martin Luther called us the priesthood of all believers. We all have this ability to be and need to be really careful about how we speak.

Okay, let's just go there on the election year. Right? This is a time where people quickly go from "this is the principle. I want God's kingdom on earth" to an application: "This must be God's candidate. Right? Or this must be God's policy." We gotta be, obviously, from this context, really careful about that because we're saying something with biblical authority that's not biblical. We're saying something that's an application rather than saying there's gray, and we could disagree about this. This is how I see it.

At any time of great conflict and fear, which is what we're in right now, people are looking for shortcuts. We're looking for shortcuts to simplify the moral landscape because we're afraid, because we're worried, because we're angry. It's right for us to want to really know this book and understand it. It's wrong for us to simplify it.

So real quick, in your groups, I want you to talk about education, educational choices for families. Have you been in contexts where there has been a right and a wrong, and how has that bound or burdened people?

Did anybody have any experience with Christian education, theories of education around binding of conscience? The binding of conscience around a particular educational choice in a body of believers—it's very easy for us to do that, and this is a wisdom issue for parents that we have to be really careful of. Our church has tried to do that very carefully, but there are same churches where it's like, "This is the homeschool church. And if you deviate from that, something's really wrong with you." We're very careful about how we talk about that in our context.

The Challenge of Leadership

I will tell you the challenge of this whole topic is in leadership. This has been a nightmare for me, and it's a nightmare for several reasons. One is that there are various schools of the way people look at the Bible. So to say what is the essence of the gospel? Like, you got Paul opposing Peter to his face and saying, "You're denying the essence of the gospel." Well, what is the essence of the gospel? And how people define that can be really broad and very narrow.

I had a member of our congregation, a former member during COVID, and I started talking about acting justly and using the word biblical justice. He came to me and said, "The gospel, the gospel, the gospel—you're leaving the gospel." And I'm like, well, this is Micah 6:8.

What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. — Micah 6:8

The word justice is all over the Bible, and you don't like this because this is being conflagrated by a particular political group, but it is a biblical word. And I'm not gonna not use the biblical word just because you don't like it.

There are a lot of areas where good Christian people can look at the same thing and disagree.

Masking and COVID

Let's make it really hard. Okay? Let's talk about masking and COVID. One of the real low points of my pastoral ministry. In July 2020, John MacArthur at Grace Community Church made a big stir, not by merely declaring their intention to defy California's COVID-19 restrictions, but by appearing to justify those actions in terms of fundamental claims about the relationship of church and state. In doing so, they didn't just make a bad call. They essentially said every other church that is conforming themselves to a particular guideline of your local governance is throwing away the gospel. You're not obeying Christ by saying compliance would be disobedience to God's clear commands. They're therefore baptizing a particular justification.

You hear what I'm doing with that? You hear what happened with that? By saying, "This is not only what we're doing, but why everybody should be doing it," they're saying, "You are conscience-bound Christians to do this."

There is, in that, very quickly, a lot of people stood up and said, "Wait. Wait. Wait. You are binding consciences. You're doing exactly this." Binding consciences is an act of authority, whether explicit or implicit. It's an abuse of formal authority to say, "Thus saith the Lord," around something like that. When a group can say, "We've gotta choose."

So I wanna make a distinction between binding consciences and binding actions. A writer named Brad Littlejohn who talks about this—I think it's really helpful. What about churches during COVID, like CTK, who asked parishioners to wear masks, binding a conscience?

Does every act of human leadership or authority bind the conscience? The magisterial reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries looked at this and said, no. And here's why: Every Christian, of course, is under a general obligation to obey the governing authorities. That's part of what's in scripture—to honor and submit to lawful authority. This means every command of a lawful authority that doesn't contradict scripture is binding, but it doesn't have to be conscience binding. It's a binding action. So they're not asking us to agree with the theory behind it. They're saying this is how we're governing, and we're asking you to submit to it.

There's a confusion in modern churches between those two things. But our reformational forebearers were crystal clear to draw a distinction between binding actions and binding consciences.

Binding Actions vs. Binding Consciences

Let's take the Catholic church's practice of eating meat during Lent. Years ago, the Catholic church used to say, "You are bound—this is obeying God—to not eat meat on Fridays during Lent, and you are conscience bound to do that. This is what is right according to God." You had to submit not just to the practice, but to the reasoning behind the practice. Remember, Paul is all about the why, not just the what. That was binding the conscience.

Other points in human history, the church has said to a group of people in its community, "Would you guys refrain from eating meat for the sake of a fishing industry?" Now, is that binding the conscience? No. That's a binding action. They're asking if people would submit themselves to the practice. There's nothing wrong with eating meat as such. Don't get your conscience hung up on meat versus non-meat. You don't have to agree with our rationale. You could think this is a dumb policy, but this is what we're asking of those who are in our area.

COVID and Mask-Wearing

Let me go back and talk about binding conscience and go back to COVID. The Christian who says, "In absence of any command from civil authority, every Christian everywhere who loves their neighbor needs to be wearing a mask in church"—that's binding or burdening a conscience. God hasn't said it like that. That's a principle, and you're defining the application as if that rationale is from God.

The church says, "We want everybody attending our services to wear masks because your leaders think that's the right thing to do. That's what we did. It's binding actions. It's not binding consciences. We're not saying you have to agree with it. You're open to disagree with the reasoning. You can go unmasked everywhere else guilt free, but when we come together, this is what we're asking you to do." That's binding an action.

Likewise, a state that says everybody in North Carolina needs to wear a mask while attending church services is binding actions, not consciences. They're saying this is what you have to obey—your God-given governing authorities. Whether or not you share their beliefs, you can wear a mask because you cheerfully agree. You can wear a mask and be cursing all through the service, and that's not very nice, but the state is not demanding you agree.

If a church says Christians everywhere should refuse to obey state ordinances on mask wearing because these are an affront to God, they are calling you not only to act in a certain way, but to agree with the basis of belief. Again, that's binding a conscience.

Testing This Principle

This principle can apply to all kinds of things. Parents doing chores, right? Your kids have to do their chores. Why? Because I said so. That's it.

Now, this is where this gets really hard—back to politics. Can I, as a pastor, say the way that Donald Trump talks about women is wrong? Yes. I'm not binding your conscience or telling you an application of a principle. Can I tell you how to vote? No, of course not. Can we stand up and say this particular party is Jesus' party? No, and we shouldn't talk with each other like that.

But when we get into conversations around politics, we can say, "This is why I'm voting the way I am, and I think this is a biblical application of what it means to care for, to be responsible as a citizen, to seek God's kingdom, to participate in the political process." When everybody is holding their nose and voting and trying to do the best they can—that's different.

I know I've left you with tons of gray, but I'm trying to help articulate why our church does things the way we do. This is why we do what we do and how we get there. It's super complicated, and it makes my life a nightmare. It's probably why I don't have some hair.

It's like trying to figure out how do you communicate and lead a group of people in a way that makes sure the gospel and all of what's in scripture is held up before you without saying "thus saith the Lord" to everything.

And it's why also living as a group of people—one of the things that we say regularly in our churches: you are free to disagree. I've always found it to be a healthy thing, and nobody else is doing this, right? We talked in the first week about the great sort. You just want to go to church with people like you who think exactly like you about application. That is really unhelpful.

There is a principle in scripture about iron sharpening iron—the kind of honest conversations where we're getting into or saying, "Hey, what is biblical teaching? How do I think about this?" That sharpens one another when people who are of different backgrounds and orientations toward lots of things come together in the church and talk about these things together.

So that's it for today on binding consciences. I know that's probably clear as mud. You probably have lots of questions. I can point you to smarter people than me. Particularly, there's a writer named Brad Littlejohn who I would point you to. I found him really, really helpful. I got that distinction about binding consciences versus binding actions from him. It was really helpful to me during the pandemic when another pastor in our denomination gave that to me.

I know we're about time for church, so I'm going to let you go. If you want to stick around and ask any questions, I may or may not be able to answer them. But thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to our CTK Raleigh sermons podcast. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel. We're proud to be a part of our mission. If you want to know more about our church in general, please visit our website at ctkraleigh.org.