Issues of conscience
December 11th, 2006 at 1:59 am (Church)
We had a wonderful time with the church again today. It is such a blessing to have sweet fellowship with believers who love the Lord with all their hearts and seek to do what is pleasing to Him. We are currently in Romans 14 and we had a great teaching time from Pastor Holt. Afterwards we discussed the issues more in depth for a few hours and had a great time wrestling with the application of Scripture.
There were a number of helpful thoughts. One was that we need to be careful about going beyond the Scripture. In other words, calling something a sin that the Bible does not or not calling sin what the Bible declares is sin. I think the main admonition of our text is that we accept one another because God has accepted each of us. We are not to judge/condemn one another because God is the judge, not us.
In our fellowship time we talked a lot about smoking, drinking and different foods. I do not believe that it is inherently sin to smoke a cigarette or drink alcohol. In light of the message and passage we looked at, my main thought is that those who do consider those things to be sinful are still my brethren and I fully accept them and not for the purpose of passing judgment on their opinions. Those who drink and smoke in their liberty as Christians I also do not judge (i.e. regard with contempt). Personally I do not smoke nor drink, but again do not believe it to be inherently evil. There may come a certain time or situation where I would do one or the other for the glory of God (i.e. to not be a stumbling block to a brother).
For example if I were a missionary to a remote tribal village in a third world country and they had many customs of which I was willing to be a part of (because they were not sinful, they were simply tribal traditions) in order to reach the people for Christ. Suppose one of those was that as the leaders of the tribe sat around the fire discussing the direction for the tribe, they passed a pipe around of tobacco. If I were to deny the request to take a puff, it could totally turn them off to me or my message. Since I believe that the Bible does not make smoking an inherently sinful action, I could with a clean conscience take a puff.
To be clear if the same tribe swapped wives, I could not take part in that no matter how much it would offend them because I believe the Scripture makes it clear that is inherently sinful. Anyways, just some thoughts. Hope it helps. Feel free to leave comments. May the Lord be glorified in our thoughts and lives as we seek to please Him in all things.
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