“As for me, it matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human authority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point. My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide.”
1 Corinthians 4:3-4 NLT
Did Paul really not care much for the opinions of others? Was he behaving with an inbuilt arrogance that clouded his judgment and the way he conducted himself in his life? Was he going to continue to teach the Corinthians in the way he thought best without any reference to what other people thought of either him or his teachings? If we try and step into Paul’s shoes, what would we think about ourselves? Paul stated quite clearly that those in the Corinthian church who chose to judge him were of little consequence to him. But that is a hard place to be in, because if we took that approach, it would tend to exclude people who otherwise would affirm us, something that all human beings need. It’s not easy to be the unpopular one in the office who is shunned by the other workers. Or the one who walks into a social gathering and finds that the conversations taking place go silent. And all because the opinions of others are against us. To Paul, such a reaction “matters very little” to him because he was focused on one thing and one thing only – the propagation of the Gospel. He then said he had a clear conscience, because to Paul, there was only one evaluation or judgment that mattered, and that was from the Lord Himself. Paul added a caveat that even though his conscience was clear, that didn’t mean that he was right. We know that humans have a tendency to view themselves incorrectly; Jeremiah wrote, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jeremiah 17:9). What was he getting at? It was because human beings can distort what they think about themselves, instead forming a subjective assessment ultimately driven by their sinful natures.
Paul knew that it was Jesus who would ultimately provide an assessment, and to him, this was the only one that mattered. He had trusted his life to serving God one hundred per cent, a trust that extended into how he delivered the message that God had given him. His trust in God extended into his behaviour, his personal safety, every facet of his life, and he had a total disregard for anything, even his own life, that would get in the way of his mission. The next verse in Jeremiah drove his opinion of himself, “But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve” (Jeremiah 17:10). Paul was never going to be diverted from his mission field because that was all that mattered to him.
Paul said he had a “clear conscience”, but what was that? One definition of a conscience is “an inner feeling that acts as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behaviour”. We know that we have done wrong because we have these nagging thoughts that won’t go away until we have put right the issue that caused them. A conscience is not just the domain of believers because unbelievers can also have a guilty conscience, perhaps caused when a misdemeanour violates one of our many laws, or their own inbuilt sense of human decency. Perhaps a parent is ashamed of an outburst against an unruly child, and then their conscience nags away at them. Perhaps a husband’s unfaithful behaviour towards his wife develops into a guilty conscience which won’t go away, and he tries all sorts of remedies to dull the pain, alcohol, drugs or even regular visits to a therapist. But it is only God who can take away the pain of a guilty conscience because ultimately, a violated conscience is caused by sin, rebellion against Him. In the Old Testament days, the sin which was the root behind a guilty conscience was redeemed by the shedding of blood through an animal sacrifice. But Jesus came to change all of that, because His blood sacrifice was once and for all, for all who put their trust and faith in Him. Hebrews 10:21-22, “And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water“. I love the verses in Psalm 103, “He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. … He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west” (Psalms 103:3, 12). We believers have a tendency to go back to the memories of sins that we have committed in the past, and we bring them once again before the Cross, asking for forgiveness. But Jesus asks, “What sin is that?” because when we repented of it the first time, the record was deleted. The sin data no longer exists, and no app in the world can ever recover the record from the sin archives. It’s gone for good.
It is a wonderful place to be, to have a “clear conscience”. Jesus said, “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free” (John 8:36). Paul may have had to face many difficulties – we can read all about them in 2 Corinthians 11 – but he did so with a “clear conscience”. We pilgrims too, can experience a “clear conscience” because we are followers of Christ, blood-bought, and forgiven. Nothing will get in the way of our acceptance into Heaven, and we read the confirmation in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord“. So, if we are feeling a bit wobbly about our faith, we must read over and over again Romans 8, and drum into our very souls. When we feel ostracised and shunned by those around us read Romans 8:31, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Psalm 118:6, “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” In the end I would much rather have God’s endorsement than one from people around me. There is an old Gladys Knight song (Midnight Train to Georgia) where the chorus includes the line, “I’d rather live in his world than live without him in mine”. And that is my place today – “I’d rather live in His world than live without Him in mine”. And I’m sure Paul is humming that tune today, because after his Damascus Road conversion, the rest of his life was spent in God’s world. I know that I am now a citizen of Heaven, temporarily assigned to living out my days in the kingdom of the world, and so is each one of us pilgrims, but one day we will all be in God’s world. Forever and ever. Amen?
Dear Father God, we thank You for Your presence in our lives, because without You and Your Kingdom, we would be lost and without hope. Thankfully, because of Jesus, we are assured of a future with You. We worship You today. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 