Today something that the apostle Paul wrote stood out to me. He wrote, “In view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men.” (Acts 24:16; NASB95). That’s commendable! Think what our world would be like if everyone strived to live so that they had a blameless conscience! It makes sense for Paul to say this because he’s beginning to make his defense to the Roman governor against a false accusation. Is Paul making this up, or grossly exaggerating? A few days before this he said essentially the same thing to the Jewish leaders who were making the accusations, “Paul, looking intently at the Council, said, “Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.” (Acts 23:1).
“A perfectly good conscience before God”? In the first place, no one can be completely sinless before God, it isn’t humanly possible, and in the second place, how could anyone maintain that desire and focus every day, all day, for their whole life? I’m far from it. Consider the principles at play that work against us. Satan, a very real creature alive and active in the spiritual realm, is constantly orchestrating a barrage of temptations designed to draw us into sin and away from God. The world system, in which God allows Satan to have a measure of influence, displays a wide array of appeals that also pull us away from God. And there’s the sin nature, that disposition to shun God and His will, and replace it with our own.
Our conscience is the moral barometer inside us that informs us about right and wrong. The universal existence of the same understanding of right and wrong (conscience), which is part of the image of God we’ve been created with, is evidence of the work of a Creator God. Granted, there are people who think killing, lying, cheating, etc. are fine, but that is not universal across the globe, and only demonstrates that a person’s conscience can be “seared” (1 Timothy 4:2), by repeated rejection of God.
Back to Paul, was this an exaggeration to help him defend himself? Well, he also wrote to the Corinthian church, “For I am conscious of nothing against myself,” (1Corinthians 4:4), and to Timothy, “I thank God, whom I serve with a clear conscience” (2 Timothy 1:3). Furthermore, there are exhortations to live in such a way as to have a blameless conscience (2 Corinthians 4:2; Hebrews 10:22; 1 Pet 3:16).
As I pondered this, I wondered how Paul, or any of us could make a lifelong effort to maintain a blameless conscience. The only answer I could come up with is to get the motivation and the means right. The motivation would come from an accurate understanding of the character of God — like the love of God, and the holiness of God, and the power of God. The means, since we do not have it in us to live sinless, is to have received God’s gift of forgiveness of sin through faith in Christ Jesus (Romans 5:1), which opens the door for daily confessing and forgiveness of sin to clear the conscience (1 John 1:9).
Seems to me that a person’s inner peace and joy are related to whether they have a guilty, a seared, or a blameless conscience.
— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. Dan Krahenbuhl is pastor of Monroe Bible Church.
