Acts 24:10-21 Paul's defense of a clear conscience

The Holy Spirit had Paul make a direct response to the first charge. The first riot had not been caused by anything Paul did or said, but was solely because Jews from Asia thought Paul had brought a Gentile into the temple. The claim that he was evangelizing there was not the reason for the riot, and was not even true. No Gentle was present. No one came forward to say that Paul had tried to evangelize them in the temple. res ipsa loquitur.

          Paul then went on to present a case for the gospel. As a Pharisee he had believed in the resurrection of the dead, and that since he feared the judgment of God in that resurrection, he had tried to live with a clean conscience. The same statement he had made in Acts 23:1, although this time the High Priest could not command to have Paul struck for saying it. Since the Holy Spirit had Paul repeat this statement in both instances, it must have some significance. Paul stated that he served God according to the Way (hodon - a road or a manner of conduct) which was the then current reference to the church, which they called hairesin, which could be either a choice or a dissension, usually rendered as a sect. Paul emphasized that he did so in full faith in everything that was written in the Law and the Prophets. It is interesting that the Holy Spirit did not have Paul name Jesus as the fulfillment of all the things prophesied in the Old Testament, but implicitly presented the gospel to that point. Instead, he closed by repeating the statement that incited the riot at the second hearing in Jerusalem, which had set the Pharisees and the Sadducees into a heated dissension. (Acts 23:6-10)

          What was the significance of Paul's repeated statement that he had a clean conscience? Paul made numerous references to conscience in his epistles, including his own conscience (Romans 9:1, 2 Tim 1:3), the conscience of a believer (I Tim 1:5, 1:19, 3:9) the conscience of a sinner (I Tim 4:2, Titus 1:15), and the conscience of a Gentile (Romans 2:15, I Cor 8:10-12). This suggests that the Holy Spirit was attempting to communicate to the hearers (who were hopefully also listeners) that the human conscience is one of the primary means by which God communicates to all people. The Jews were privileged to have the Law of Moses and the writings of the Jewish prophets, but God practices equal opportunity. Every person alive has a conscience. A brazen sinner may have seared his conscience, but it was there. In fact, the wound of a seared conscience may cause more pain that a conscience that is sensitive to God, because God forgives and can comfort, but the scar over the wound of the seared conscience will block that healing flow of the Holy Spirit.

          Conscience is one means by which people can hear from God. The on-line dictionary defines conscience as the awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong. But God has other means by which to speak to use. He can speak to us about things that we can or should do that may not have a moral dimension, but are simply pragmatic. That would be felt as an inner voice where we just have a feeling we should do something, which we might call intuition. Another means of communication may be a sense of God's presence in our life that is not connected directly to our actions past, present, or future. Rather this sense often takes the form of a feeling of God's love surrounding us, encouraging us, comforting us, which we might label communion. Not the communion that is symbolically enacted with the elements of unleavened bread and wine, but a relational connection and experience. Of course there are also means by which God can communicate to us externally, such as circumstances (although they can have many different interpretations), through the reading of His written word, or through the words of other people.