Clear Conscience

 DEVOTION

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

CLEAR CONSCIENCE

Acts 24:10-16

10 When the governor motioned for him to speak, Paul replied: "I know that for a number of years you have been a judge over this nation; so I gladly make my defense. 11 You can easily verify that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship. 12 My accusers did not find me arguing with anyone at the temple, or stirring up a crowd in the synagogues or anywhere else in the city. 13 And they cannot prove to you the charges they are now making against me. 14 However, I admit that I worship the God of our fathers as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that agrees with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, 15 and I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. 16 So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.

NIV

Paul begins to make his defense against these false accusations by the high priest and the rest of the Jews made through their lawyer. Of course, they all chime in as well. Now it is Paul's turn and we do notice that he does not use words of flattery, calling the Governor, the most excellent Felix. Paul does acknowledge that Felix has been in office for a long time, which would make Felix somewhat familiar with the Jewish way of life. Paul is going to say more, but we were intrigued by something he said, and we must take time to consider how that looks in our lives. Paul said that he had the same hope as the Jews did. This is a true statement about having hope in God. What hope could anyone have if their hope was not in God? However, there still remains one more step and that is to worship God as a follower of the Way. Of course, the people of the Way are yet to be called Christians, however, that is the Way. But when Paul says he agrees with the Law and that which is written in the Prophets what does he mean? We think that was to imply that he agrees with the main doctrine of the Jews, the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. Of course, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, which Paul is pointing out once more. However, it is these next words of Paul which are what we have to deal with. Do we strive always to keep our conscience clear before God and man? First, this word translated as strive in Greek can also mean to exercise, to train oneself, to take pains or labor. It is also noted that the Greek word translated as always is made up of two Greek words, one meaning all, every, the other a continuous time. This would imply to us that we must always, all the time, continuously without ever stopping, not for even a brief moment, train ourselves to have a clear conscience before God and man. We cannot ever relent from our efforts, our training, and our labor of keeping our conscience clear before God. The question is how do we do that? Is there something we need to be doing? Does it require us to watch so ever closely that we never sin? How is that possible that we could be sin free? The only way we know of being free of sin is to be in Christ. Simply because we live in these corruptible bodies, we are never going to attain perfection, Paul makes that point in the rest of his defense that we will get next. No one has attained it, but we do press on, we do make every effort to train ourselves to have a clear conscience before God, and that is always being in Christ. Because we are in Christ, God sees us as holy and blameless. This does not mean that we should go about finding ways to sin or look for the opportunity to sin, but if we do sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. This is the one and only way to train ourselves, to constantly be in Jesus, to always be in His Word and to take it to heart, to apply the truths to our lives. Of course, we cannot make the word become law for us, or establish our own set of rules and regulations, then we would be in trouble because we could not even keep that law, or rules to perfection and if that were to happen, then guilt comes into play and guilt is the opposite of hope, and always keeping our conscience clear before God and man.