The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Brenda Rivera of Orlando, Florida from the tape, GC 1301-S, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 21."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1982. All Rights Reserved.

Question

I have a question on Romans 14, is it possible for a Christian to experience a guilty conscience apart from conviction of the Holy Spirit? Not in matters of sin but over gray areas and if so should it be ignored and if so how?

Answer

It is possible for a Christian to be struck in conscience apart from the Holy Spirit, sure. For example you may have been raised to think that beans were evil and if you’ve been taught that all your life beans are going to bother your conscience, right? Sure they are, well look at the Jews, you see the problem he’s dealing with in Romans 14, is the church was starting, it was the Jews and Gentiles and the Gentiles would invite the Jews over to dinner and have ham sandwiches. There was no problem for them and it’s no problem biblically, right? Don’t call unclean what God has cleansed, there’s no more dietary laws but a Jew would gag on the thing, he couldn’t handle it. Now it wasn’t biblical and it wasn’t the Holy Spirit it was just a hangover from his conscience.

So Romans 14 says look when you find somebody that’s got that kind of a thing in his conscience don’t push things off on him, don’t use your liberty to make him stumble. For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, set that stuff aside, it’s righteousness, peace and joy and the Holy Spirit. So there is no question about that.

But the other side of the question is, if your conscience does that to you, don’t ignore your conscience, because what you’re doing when you ignore your conscience is training yourself to ignore your conscience. And then when God’s Holy Spirit does want to use it, it isn’t going to be a good instrument. And I’ll tell you another thing if you ignore your conscience and violate it, it will heap all kinds of guilt on you. That’s what the church has to do, you see? You say, “Well so and so doesn’t believe in this and they don’t believe in that, what a narrowminded person. They don’t even watch TV, they don’t even listen to the radio.” And there are people like that, right? Sure I’ve meet a whole bunch of the in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the Amish community thinks it’s a sin to listen to the radio. Some of them have radios hidden in the barn and they listen to our radio program, but they can’t let the community know. And they say, “what shall we do?” and I say, “Well don’t offend people by that and don’t violate conscience by that, because you’re training your conscience to do a bad thing, but at the same time little by little you can teach them, you can begin to free the conscience.” But if you just start right away to violate that conscience you’re going to train yourself not to listen to what’s said and it’s better that you should be sensitive.

Question (continued)

Like in the writing ministry, how would you sort of like deal with that with someone on a personal level and not really have a long relationship with that person?

Answer (continued)

I think just sit down and take them through Romans 14 and help them to see what it is they’re doing. In other words, we all have gray areas of our lives. For example in my case, I can’t play cards, you know you give me a deck of regular cards and I can’t handle that. Now you might say, “Well they’re certainly not sinful I’ve seen guys preach the Gospel using cards.” Yes, I don’t think cards are sinful anyway, right? "To the pure all things are pure to those who are impure everything’s impure," but it’s hard for me to handle cards because all my life I was told that cards were a sin. Any of you in that same deal? Yes, many of you, some of you still believe it’s biblical you just haven’t found the verse. So the best thing you can do with someone like that is just to try to work with them, let them understand their liberty and so forth. But even though I understand my liberty I still choose not to do that because it bothers me. So you don’t want to mess with your conscience, why would you want to bring guilt upon yourself? Don’t fight it, and the thing you don’t want to do if you’re married to somebody or you’re close to somebody who has those kind of things, don’t push your liberty off on them because all you’re going to do is make them miserable in the violation of that thing in which they don’t want to do. And that’s what Christian love is all about.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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