The Confidence of a Good Conscience – Acts 23:1

I have in my hand here a $10 bill.

If I gave this $10 dollars to a 6-month-old child, what do you think that he’d do with it? He’d probably try to eat it, wouldn’t he?

If I gave this money to a 3-year-old, he might treasure & save it place because it was a gift from his pastor.

If I gave it to a 6-year-old, he might think that he could buy the whole world with it.

If I gave it to a 10-year-old, he might realize that it could buy some particular toy that he was admiring.

If I gave it to an 18-year-old, he might turn up his nose at it, knowing that it couldn’t buy him anything that he really wanted.

And if I gave it to my wife, she would thankfully take it in a heart-beat.

Each one of these six people might respond differently to my $10 gift.

And each one of them might have reacted according to the instinct, knowledge and experience that they had with $10 bills.

And if 20 years later that 6-month-old and that 3-year-old were told about what they did with my money,

they might laugh at themselves,

but they would have no reason to be ashamed.

They were only doing what their young lives had taught them to do.

And they might even testify that their consciences were totally clean in regard to what they did.

With this verse, Paul begins another “apologia” – another explanation about the great change which had taken place in his life.

This time it appears to be in the solemn and dignified setting of the Sanhedrin’s counsel chambers.

But we can’t be sure if that was really the meeting place.

All that we are told is that Claudius Lysias, the Chief Captain, “commanded the chief priests and all their council to appear, and brought Paul DOWN, and set him before them.”

When Paul stood to speak, he addressed, not Claudius, but the “counsel” or as it is in Greek – the “sunedrion” – soon-ed’-ree-on.

This would be Ananias, the High Priest, and most of the leaders of the nation.

The Sanhedrin was like the Senate, but with a very definite religious overtone.

Paul had never had the opportunity to speak to such an assemblage of people before.

He was ready to give the gospel of the Lord JESUS Christ to the creme-de-la-creme of Israel.

And basically he intended to show that he had, and still was, doing his best to serve God as he understood his responsibility.

As he said in I Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

No one can become an adult without first being a child, and children do really childish things.

But now, he had become one of the Lord’s mature sons, and he understood the grace and responsibilities which the Lord had given him.

This evening, let’s use three words in our examination of this verse: Confidence, Consonance and Conscience.

Confidence.

“And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.”

There are hints throughout the New Testament which suggest that Paul had serious eye-problems.

There is no proof – only circumstantial evidence – but it seems to pop up from time to time.

Maybe the recovery from his blindness on the road to Damascus was only partial.

Perhaps he was blinded during his visit to the third heaven – if it was on a different occasion.

Perhaps he was suffering from a somewhat more common eye-disease.

I have a friend who has macular degeneration.

He has fair peripheral vision, but nearly everything that he looks directly toward is a blurry haze.

Perhaps that was the sort of thing that Paul suffered.

He earnestly beheld the counsel, but apparently failed to see the most central figure, the high priest.

It looked to the Sanhedrin that he was scrutinizing them, but it may have been simply a futile attempt to find a friendly face.

So whether anyone knew how well, or how poorly Paul could see, they saw him looking earnestly at them.

This tells us something about the intensity and posture with which Paul was looking at them.

“Earnestly beholding” is a fairly common in the New Testament.

For example have it in Acts 1: “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they LOOKED STEDFASTLY toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel.”

Acts 3:12 – “And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why LOOK YE SO EARNESTLY on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?”

Acts 7:54 – “When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, LOOKED UP STEDFASTLY into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”

And for those of you who like this sort of thing, the Greek word is “atenizo” – at-en-id’-zo.

One of the definitions of “attend” is to pay close attention to something – really close attention.

So Paul was diligently looking toward his accusers.

And I would guess that look exuded confidence and fearlessness.

If any of 95% of the people of Israel had been in Paul’s sandals that day standing before this august assembly, they would have cowering in fear.

Their knees would have been smiting together, and their palms would have been sweaty.;

Their heads would have been swimming, and their eyes would have been cast to the floor.

But Paul, as best he could, looked them in the eye, each and everyone of them.

It wasn’t in anger or arrogance; it wasn’t with defiance or depreciation.

It was with a confidence and composure that these people were not used to seeing in the common people.

Just as Paul said, he was there in his integrity, with nothing to be ashamed before them.

Would to God, you and I could do the same before our peers and our superiors.

To look everyone in the eye, knowing that we’d never sinned against any of them.

To stand up straight with the confidence that no one could accuse us of any wrong doing.

And to know within ourselves that we had truly behaved as the children of God before them.

If we can’t do that today, then we need to fall on our faces before God, confess our sins, and begin tomorrow to so live our lives that the world has no alternative but to respect us as consistent Christians.

Confidence is the first word epitomizing this verse,

And the second is CONSONANCE.

Consonance is a word that I first learned in music class and band.

It speaks about an agreement of sounds: harmony, accord and a close correspondence of sound.

“And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I HAVE LIVED in all good conscience before God until this day.”

That little comment “I have lived” is a little more complex that what we might first imagine.

They come from another interesting Greek word – “politeuomai” – pol-it-yoo’-om-ahee.

From this word comes our English word “politics.”

And politics, of course, is the art or science of governing.

Isn’t that what Paul was saying in this statement?

“Men and brethren, I have governed my life, from my youth until today, in such a way that my conscience is clean before God.”

This Greek word is found only twice in the Bible, here and in Philippians 1:27 –

“Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ.”

This word “politeuomai” is found only twice, but there is a related word in Philippians 3:20 –

“Brethren, be followers together of me, & mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.

For our citizenship is in heaven (our “politeuma” – pol-it’-yoo-mah is in heaven); from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”

So Paul was saying that his life was in harmony with his Heavenly citizenship.

He had lived his life, particularly since the time of his conversion, just as Jehovah intended for him to live it.

He was no traitor, despite what some people might have been saying.

And once again, we need to ask ourselves:

Is my life being spent in harmony with the Lord?

Am I doing His will? Am I breaking any of His commandments? Am I bringing glory to His name?

Our Christian lives contain a Heavenly citizenship, and not to live in that light is treason.

The third word of this verse is CONSCIENCE.

This is one of the somewhat confusing words in the scripture.

The other day I said that pride can be a good thing, and I got a couple of frowns.

If I said that conscience can be a good thing, I might get frowns from the same couple of people.

According to my Bible dictionary the conscience is that faculty of the mind, or that inborn sense, of right and wrong, by which we judge of the moral character of human conduct.

Everyone has a conscience; it is common to all men.

But like all our other natural faculties, it has been perverted by the Fall.

Generally speaking the human conscience has been “defiled.”

Titus 1:15 – “Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.”

And it can be “seared” – burned and made hard, tough and unresponsive.

I Timothy 4:1-2 – “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.”

It appears to me that everyone has a conscience,

but the sin in us works very hard to poison, calcify and ruin what that conscience has to say.

So the world is flooded with alcohol, partly to keep people’s consciences inebriated.

One purpose, or one of the effects of the entertainment world is to keep people from thinking about who and what they really are.

Paul knew that his part in the murder of Stephen was morally reprehensible,

and earlier he had used all kinds of excuses to silence what his conscience was telling him,

but then one day the Lord broke through the darkness and his conscience instantly responded.

It is not that way with the conscience of everyone, but it was with him.

It is sometimes foolishly said, “Just let your conscience be your guide.”

That can be as bad as letting the Devil be your guide, and it’s basically the same thing.

There are many ways to see and study the effects of fall of man into sin, but one of the logical places to start is with the conscience.

It is as corrupted by sin as any other part of our human being.

An obviously related word to “conscience” is “conscious.”

And you’ll notice that it is made up of a prefix and the word “science.”

It refers to knowledge.

Sometimes the Bible uses the word simply to refer to an awareness of our own thoughts.

Hebrews 10:1-2 – “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more CONSCIENCE of sins.”

Romans 2:14-15 – “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their CONSCIENCE also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.”

What Paul was saying here was that he persecuted the Christians as a conscientious (though mistaken) Jew.

And now he was following his God-empowered conscience in turning from Judaism to Christian Jesus.

He was accused of being a renegade, an opponent of the law, the people, the temple, but his only desire was to have a clear conscience toward the Lord.

Paul addressed the Sanhedrin as an equal and had no “apologies” to make.

The golden thread of consistency ran through his life as a good citizen in God’s kingdom.

He had the consolation of a good conscience.

That didn’t nullify or justify his earlier sins, but at least before these counselors, his conscience was clean.

And how is your conscience these days?

Do you need to spend time on your face before God?

Do you have things that you need to confess and correct before your neighbors and kin?

I wish that we all could have the same testimony as Paul.