Paul's Trials: Faith, Conscience, and the Resurrection

And Paul, looking earnestly at the council said, “Men and Brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.” And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. And Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall, for you to sit, to judge me according to the law and do you command me to be struck contrary to the law?” [00:02:31]

When the centurion heard that he went right away, told the commander saying, “Wait a minute. Be careful. Take care what you do. This fella’s a Roman. The commander’s thinking Oh no. I’ve got trouble. So he comes to Paul himself and he says, “Tell me. Are you a Roman?” And Paul said, “Yes.” And now the commander said “With a large sum I obtained this citizenship.” Paul said, “But I was born a citizen.” [00:09:25]

Now there are two things at stake here. On the one hand, if you punish a Roman citizen without due process according to Roman juris prudence, those who mete out such punishment expose themselves to the death penalty. So had Claudius scourged Paul without a trial he could have himself been executed. Secondly, if a prisoner at his trial claims to be a Roman citizen and is not a Roman citizen and shown to be not a Roman citizen, then that person can be put to death. [00:13:09]

I don’t know about you, but when I read that I do a double take. I said, woo, wait a minute. Paul, aren’t you the fella who called yourself the chief of sinners? Aren’t you the man who stood there holding the clothes of the people that killed Stephen? Aren’t you the one who went from house to house dragging men and women from their homes and putting them in prison and having them executed? [00:14:52]

Remember when Paul stood by at the execution of Stephen and when Paul carried on his crusade to stamp out the Christians, his conscience was convinced that he was doing the right thing. Doesn’t that remind us of Luther at the Diet of Worms when he was commanded to say, Revoke. I can’t? And he address the Emperor Charles and the delegation from Rome. [00:16:17]

Unless I’m convinced by sacred Scripture or by evident reason I cannot recant. Then what did he say? “For my conscience is held captive by the Word of God. And to act against conscience,” Luther said, “is neither right nor safe.” I don’t know whether you agree with the Reformer at that point, but I agree on all the things he said. [00:16:43]

If you think it’s a sin, if your conscience is persuaded that it’s evil and you go ahead and do it, then you’ve sinned by doing something you were convinced was evil. That’s a sin. On the other hand, we might say, well, I did a sin but I was convinced it was right. Doesn’t that excuse me? If I am totally convinced that a certain kind of activity is appropriate and just and virtuous even though in God’s sight it’s a sin, my conscience has convinced me that it’s not a sin, doesn’t the fact that I act according to conscience exonerate me? [00:18:06]

Not if your conscience has been dulled and distorted and calloused by repeating and repetitive sin and by a slothful neglect of the Word of God, which is what is supposed to capture our consciences. I don’t know everybody in this room, but I know this, that everybody in this room has had their conscience influenced by things apart from God, for better or for worse. [00:19:01]

We have a tendency in our culture to live not by the mandates of Scripture but by the theology of what I call Jiminy Cricket theology that says let your conscience be your guide. Well, if you commit sin in good conscience it’s still sin. When I started taking violin lessons from the master or mistress of the violin, Olga, and I would come to my lesson and she’d say, “Did you practice this week?” [00:19:44]

First time we commit a sin we may abhor ourselves. We may be stricken with a guilty conscience. We do it again and the conscience is less strident. We do it again and again and again and again until we can do it with feeling no remorse at all. And we live in a culture that has lost its conscience. We are like the people that Jeremiah who described who had the forehead of the harlot, who had lost her capacity to blush. [00:20:43]

Paul was nobody’s fool. He knew the most ancient strategum there was in warfare. You divide and conquer. He said you maybe started this meeting because you thought I took somebody into the temple or the other charges, he said, but really what’s behind all of this is that I am a witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul understood that. That the foundation of everything he taught was based on the resurrection. [00:26:23]

The whole truth claim of Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection. And really what’s got me in trouble with you folks is that I’m preaching the resurrection of Christ, because I’m a Pharisee and son of a Pharisee. I believe in life after death. All of a sudden the Pharisees and the Sadducees… Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection, didn’t believe in life after death; the Pharisees did. [00:27:02]