The Questions of Conscience

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THE QUESTIONS OF CONSCIENCE

Acts 22:22-23:5

Bob Bonner

May 3, 2015

For the past two months, our local newspaper has been runningan ongoing story about a mother who killed her babies and another about aconvicted killer, Susan Monica, who killed two men in cold blood. One she shot seven times and another once in the head and then fed their bodies to her pigs! When we read or hear of such gruesome reports, they make us wonder. Do such persons have a conscience? Did they ever have a conscience? Does God’s Word have anything to say about human beings having a conscience?

In brief, God’s Word has a great deal to say about every human being having a conscience. One interesting observation about the conscience that one can derive from simply reading the last half of Romans 1 is that the more men and women as individuals suppress the truth about God, the greater the entire society loses itssensitivity to knowing the basic difference between right and wrong. The more people turn away from God, the more they become enslaved liars, murderers, and home wreckers.

In our text for this morning, among other things, Luke highlights a comment by the Apostle Paul that concerns Paul’s conscience and the role it played in his life. Paul mentions this as part of his defense against false accusations that have been made against him. In doing so,he presumed that all those who werelistening to his defense recognized and accepted that we humans come assembled with a conscience. When we come to Paul’s statement, we will take a moment to explore a few things that God’s Word has to say about the conscience.

Our text for this morning begins with Acts 22:22. While you are turning there, let me remind you of the backdrop to our passage. It is the spring of AD 57, during the celebration week of Passover. The Apostle Paul has returned to Jerusalem for several reasons, and one is to properly worship the Lord. To do so, several times he has entered the Temple Mount and then the Temple to worship the Lord. For the previous several days, the city has been abuzz with the knowledge that this former Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin has returned to Jerusalem after twenty-five years. With his return to Jerusalem came false accusations and rumors about his activities as a Jew among other Jews. As a result of some believing these accusations, irate Jews grabbed Paul while he was worshipping in the Temple, dragged him outside of the Temple and into the outer court, and proceeded to beat him with the intent to kill. The Roman Commander Lysias, stationed inside the Antonia Fortress, who was head over the one thousand soldiers in Jerusalem charged to keep order, got word that a riot was taking place on the Temple Mount. He called at least two hundred soldiers to go down the stairs from the fortress to the Temple Mount to quell the riot.

Because Lysias was not present when the disturbance broke out, he tried to find out what had happened and who was responsible. Upon his arrival, he recognized a man getting beat up. Figuring this man, the Apostle Paul, was the focus of the crowd’s ire, Lysias had him arrested. Buthe was completely foiled in his attempt to piece together what had happened. The Apostle Paul, in a unique display of fluent Greek, convinced Lysias that he was not a typical Jew. He was asophisticated, cultured man. Paul requested that he be given an opportunity to speak to the people. PerhapsLysias reasoned that if he allowed Paul to speak to the crowd,he would understand the problem and thus deal more effectively with the crowd and with Paul.

What a shock it must have been to this Roman commanderto grant Paul permission to speak in this very delicate and explosive situation, only to find Paul turn to his audience and speak in a language that Lysias could not understand, Hebrew! I can see him turning to one of his men and asking, “Do you know what he is saying?” How he must have watched Paul, his body language, and the response of the crowd, in an attempt to get a feel for what was going on. How shocked he must have been to see this crowd, initially silenced by Paul’s speaking, suddenly explode into an even more violent mood, just when he may have thought all was going to be well. The commander must have wondered, “What in the world did this man say?”

From this point in22:22 to the close of the scene in 23:11, Paul faced four challenges. This morning we will have only enough time to look at the first two. Paul’s first challenge is with the Roman commander, Lysias inverses 22-29. Let’s begin reading at verse 22.

They [the Jews on the Temple Mount]listened to him[Paul] up to this statement, and thenthey raised their voices and said, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live!” 23And as they were crying out and throwing off their cloaks and tossing dust into the air, 24the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks, stating that he should be examined by scourging so that he might find out the reason why they were shouting against him that way.

At this point, Lysias had his soldiers grab Paul and forcefully drag him into the barracks in the fortress to be examined by scourging. But why? Why scourge Paul?The reason for the scourging is that the commander did not understand Hebrew, and thus could not find out who Paul really was or why the Jews wanted him dead. The purpose of the scouring was not to punish but to extract information. This torture was the most effective way to get people to tell the truth or to extract a confession. The commander wanted to get to the bottom of this quickly.

Typically, when a man was scourged, he was firststripped of his clothing, and his hands were tied to an upright post, stretching him forward, forcing his back to be arched and better exposed to the scourges.The scourge was made of strips of leather or thongs in which were inserted rough pieces of bone, small balls and metal. The thongs were set in a stout wooden handle. With the back, buttocks, and legs of the victim before them, often two soldiers called lictors (Have you heard of someone getting a licking? That’s where this expression came from.)flogged the person from two sides, or simply one lector flogged the person, alternating positions. It was not uncommon for the victim to die as a result of the flogging.

25But when they stretched him out with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned?” 26When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and told him, saying, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman.” 27The commander came and said to him, “Tell me, are you a Roman?”

In the original Greek language this question is emphatic, which lets the reader know that Lysias was highly alarmedthat he had possibly wrongly arrested and was about to illegally scourge a Roman citizen--not a good move for one who would like to hold on to his prestigious position in the Roman military. “And he said, ‘Yes.’28The commander answered, ‘I acquired this citizenship with a large sum of money.’ And Paul said, ‘But I was actually born a citizen.’”

This news stunned Lysias.He had just learned that Paul was no Johnny-come-lately to the status of Roman citizenship, but one who was born a citizen.To be born a citizen hints that Paul had a greater Roman stature than Lysias who was about to illegally scourge him. Having learned about Paul’s Roman citizenship, Luke tells us, “Therefore those who were about to examine him immediately let go of him; and the commander also was afraid when he found out that he was a Roman, and because he had put him in chains.”

BecauseRoman law protected its citizens from being placed in chains without a preliminary hearing, Paul’s situation suddenly changed. From this point on, Paul went from being arrested to being placed under protective custody. Furthermore, Lysias now began to treat Paul with great respect.

However, Lysias still did not know the charges that his fellow Jews had against Paul. As a Roman commander, Lysias had no authority in a civil case such as this. It was therefore necessary for him to send Paul to the Roman procurator (governor) at the time, Felix. But before he could do so, Lysias had to send along with Paul a written statement giving the details of the case. At the moment, Lysias had nothing to write. So he summoned the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin, to come to Fortress Antonia to reveal why the Jews were so upset.

Let’s pause for a moment to consider the role of state or government, and how this Roman commander was attempting to fulfill his role as an enforcer of Roman law.

What is the role of the state? In the Western world, we have fanciful ideas of what we think the state should do for us today. We have entered into a time in American history when people want the state to provide them with security. They expect the state to care for them from the cradle to the grave. But according to the Word of God, the state was never set up by God to do that. Unfortunately in our country, because the government has been attempting to do things it was never meant to do, it has neglected the two things that history and the Bible have shown it to be chiefly responsible for.

According to the Bible, the role of the state is to maintain order. Our God is not a God of chaos but a God of order (1 Corinthians 14:33 NIV), and according to Romans 13:4, the state is a servant of God to maintain His order.

There are two kinds of disorder. There can be disorder without. That’s when foreign enemies are trying to destroy the country. When this takes place, the state must defend its citizens. That’s why we have an army.

The second kind of disorder is the disorder from within. That’s where justice comes in. As it concerns the role of justice, the state’s job is to establish and to uphold the lawsof the land. Typically, justice is upheldthrough a police forcefollowed by a court system.

And of course, this is exactly what this Roman commander, operating on behalf of the Roman government, had done or was in the process of doing. The commander had intervened rightly to save Paul and to stop the riot. Then, through the state’s due process according to law, the commander was examining the evidence. At this point, he was trying to make sure that no more injustices against Paul take place. Hence, he was operating under the strictconditions of the Roman law. He would then call in the Sanhedrin to find out if any of their accusations or complaints against Paul was legitimate according to Roman law. In other words, Lysias was trying to push his concern for justice even further.

This meeting with the Sanhedrin was held on the lower floor of the Fortress Antonia, probably on the steps just outside the fortress, because the Jews would not go inside the Gentile establishment in order to not defile themselves before the Feast of Pentecost.

As we read these verses, keep in mind that twenty-five years earlier, Paul was a member of this very prestigious group, the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was made up of seventy Jewish leaders from several groups of leading nationalistic Jews: Pharisees, Sadducees, present and former high priests, and elders. The two groups that dominated the council were the Pharisees and Sadducees. We will explain more about the Pharisees and Sadducees in messages to come.

Having appeased the Roman commander for the moment, Paul now faced his second challenge, the High Priest Ananias. Let’s continue reading at verse 30.

But on the next day, wishing to know for certain why he had been accused by the Jews, he[Lysias] released him[Paul] and ordered the chief priests and all the Council to assemble, and brought Paul down and set him before them.

1Paul, looking intently at the Council, said, “Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.” 2The high priest Ananias commanded those standing besidehim [Paul] to strikehim on the mouth.

Luke, who may have been a bystander at the session, records that Paul took his time and “looked intently” at each of the members of the Sanhedrin. The membership of the Sanhedrin had changed considerably since the time Paul had been commissioned to persecute the Christians in Jerusalem and Damascus. But Paul no doubt wanted to see whether he could recognize anyone.

Having done so, Paul made what is taken by some at the meeting to be an outrageous statement--that he had lived his entire life up to that moment with a “perfectly good conscience.” How could Paul say that when he had been guilty of murdering Christians? And what is the conscience? How does it work?

Before we go any further in our study of Acts, I’d like us to take a side road, a slight detour from the heart of our passage for the rest of this morning, to look more closely about this important subject of the conscience and what the Scriptures have to say about it.

To begin with, the concept or the word “conscience” is spoken of several times in the Scriptures. So let’s answer the questions according to Scripture,“What is the conscience and what does it do?” The Apostle Paul alone referred to the conscience about twenty-three times in his epistles. In Romans 2:14-15, we read these words:

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.

From Paul’s words we see that everyone, both Jew and Gentile, has a conscience. You don’t have to be a Jew or have a Bible to have a conscience. God has placed in the hearts of human beings a certain sense of right and wrong. So for starters, I would define the conscience this way: The conscience is the inner judge or witness that approves when we do right and disapproveswhen we do wrong.

For example,most of us think that a thief or a gang member has no conscience. That is not necessarily true. The conscience of a thief would bother him if he told the truth about his fellow crooks--“ratted” on his friends. To betray his gang would be to violate a standard of his conscience. This gang member’s conscience functions similarly to a Christian’s. If a Christian told a lie about his friends, his conscience would convict him. Even thieves have their conscience and code of ethics by which they live.

Before this gets cloudy or confusing, let’s further clarify the role of the conscience, grasping what a conscience does and does not do. The conscience does notset the standard; it only applies it, whether the standard is good or bad, right or wrong, correct or false. That’s why a thief’s conscience can apply his wrong standards to a situation.

To further clarify, a conscience may be compared to a skylight, and God’s Word is the cleaner of the glass in the skylight. The more the cleaner is applied to the cleaning of the window, the more the light shines into the dark room or world in which we live. The lighter it is, the more there is safely and productively. We can maneuver through the traps, obstacles, holes, and land mines of this dark world without personal injury. According to 2 Timothy 3:16, God’s Word, His absolute truth, is the cleaner which, when we apply it to our dirty windows, allows the light to shine through.

However, the window does not stay perpetually clean. Without constant attention or cleaning from the Word of God, the room can grow slowly, dangerously darker as the soot and dirt of this world falls upon it. A conscience is not static but is constantly in process,moving toward good or evil. One’s conscience is either becoming sharper or duller.

A good conscience, or pure conscience (1 Timothy 3:9), is one that does what it can to keep God’s light flowing in so that we are properly convicted if we do wrong and encouraged if we do right. On the other hand, a continually defiled conscience will eventually become no longer reliable. In the end, when a person’s conscience is seared, he becomes so confused that even if he feels convicted,he won’t know if he did what was right rather than what was wrong!