ACTS 24:16

The Apostle Paul had been taken prisoner by the Roman authorities, and Paul was speaking to the Roman governor named Felix. Paul said in Acts 24:16, “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.” Relationships are important: good relationships. Your relationship with God is important and your relationship with all the human beings that cross your path is important. One of the goals of life is to have a right relationship with God and a right relationship with all of the people who are a part of your life or who come into your life. If you have been saved through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then at least for a while you have been rightly related to God.

How does a person lose that right relationship, whether to God or to man? You lose it by violating your conscience. Your conscience is the knowledge of yourself in relation to the standard of right and wrong that you know about. First of all you do not want there to be something wrong between you and God. In other words, you want to have a clear conscience. If you do not have a clear conscience, then you are not rightly related to God, and you are not living by faith, and you are not serving Him in your daily walk. To keep a clear conscience, do the right thing. Always do the right thing. God is before you. He sees and He knows. His holy nature is offended by the wrong thing. In Him dwelleth righteousness and light. He is the Light. He can have no fellowship with darkness. Do right until the stars fall. God is on the side of the right. Do right and you stay in fellowship with God. That is one of the problems with doing the wrong thing: it immediately puts you out of fellowship with God. That is why Paul did strive so earnestly to retain a conscience void of offense toward God. If you fail or if you slip up, the way to get that right conscience restored is by the confession of sin. That is why confession is so important. It is the only other way to stay right with God. If you do not fail, then you have a clear conscience because you have not failed and you know it and you know that God knows it. If you have failed, but have confessed your sin to Jesus, then you also have a restored clear conscience because you know that the slate has been wiped clean and you know that God knows it. It is better to have a clear conscience because you have done the right thing and because there will then be no interruption to the Spirit speaking through you. “Quench not the Spirit.” But your relationship with God will be just as close if you quickly confess your sins. Wise is the person who does the right thing, and wise is the person who quickly confesses his sins. “My little children, these things write I unto you that you sins not. But if any man sin, we have an advocate to the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” We owe everything to Jesus. It says in First John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Your human relationships will work in a way that is very similar to your relationship with God. Human beings should be treated a certain way because they have been created by God in His image. He loves His creation. You have a standard of right and wrong regarding how you should treat your fellow man. You know when you have violated that standard, and once you have, your relationship with the person involved will have been broken. Often those violations come by what you say. It is important that all of your human relationships be just what they ought to be, but they will not be if you do not have a clear conscience towards someone. How do you retain a clear conscience towards someone? There are two ways. Do the right thing and say the right thing concerning everyone that you see or know. But if you fail, make sure that you also apologize, confess, and ask them for forgiveness.

Many friendships have been ruined and many relationships have been strained just because someone could not go to another and say, “I am sorry about yesterday. I said what I should not have said. I apologize. I hope you will forgive me.” The normal Christian life would mean that you would apologize like this whenever necessary. If you are a true Christian, you have had to say such things to the Lord. Certainly you can say them to another human being. Jesus expected that we would make such apologies and confessions to one another. In the sermon on the Mount not only did Jesus make it clear that this confessing to one another and forgiving of one another was important, but also that it is somehow even connected to our confessions to the Lord and the forgiveness that we receive from Him.

Jesus was talking about the other side of the equation: the fact that you must be willing to forgive as well as being willing to confess. He said in Matthew 6:14-15, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” There may be some of you who are walking about with unforgiven sin in your conscience because of something that you should have confessed to man as well as God, or something or someone that you should have forgiven. The Bible says in James 1:16, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

Do not underestimate the importance of having a clear conscience both before God and before man. If you do not have a clear conscience, you are not living by faith; and I do not know what you are doing, but you are not serving the one great and holy God. If you want to serve the Lord in spirit and in truth in this world, then you must have this same determination that Paul had. Paul said in Acts 24:16, “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward man.”

In Acts 24:17-26 Paul finishes telling the truth about the circumstances of his arrest to the Roman governor Felix. It says, “Now after many years I came to bring alms to my nation, and offerings. Whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me purified in the temple, neither with multitude, nor with tumult. Who ought to have been here before thee, and object, if they had ought against me. Or else let these same here say, if they have found any evil doing in me, while I stood before the council. Except it be for this one voice, that I cried standing among them, Touching the resurrection of the dead I am called in question by you this day. And when Felix heard these things, having more perfect knowledge of that way, he deferred them, and said, When Lysias the chief captain shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter. And he commanded a centurion to keep Paul, and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintance to minister or come unto him. And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee. He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him: wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.”

The Roman governor is a perfect example of what often happens to the people of the world. We see that even though he had a certain sense of fairness and he did not torture Paul; and he gave Paul a certain amount of freedom, even though not entirely loosing Paul. But when the chips were down, we see that the Roman governor was primarily motivated by materialism and self-interest. Even though he gave Paul more freedom, one of the reasons that he did not let Paul go was because the governor was hoping to get money out of Paul. Another reason that he did not allow Paul to go free was because the governor wanted to be politically correct. Acts 24:27 says, “But after two years Porcius Festus came into Felix’s room: and Felix, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound.” Even in the deceitfulness and the failure of man we see the hand of God. If you walk with the Lord, He will use everything, even the evil that people try to do against you, to accomplish His will and to guide you. God was going to make sure that Paul got to Rome, and God used the deceitfulness of these civil and religious leaders to make sure that it happened.

It appears as though during the time that Paul spoke to the Roman governor Felix that the governor was touched in his heart and in his conscience, but he still did not come to Christ. Acts 24:25 says, “And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled.” Notice the spiritual concepts that reached Felix and that touched him. Paul reasoned of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” In the context in which he spoke of these things to the Roman governor, when Paul spoke of righteousness and temperance, he spoke about doing the right thing. That is what righteousness is from a practical standpoint. It speaks of every person’s responsibility on the earth. Man’s responsibility is to do right.

What is right and wrong, and how do you recognize the difference? Of course, we know that one way is through the teachings of God’s Word. In addition to that is the word “temperance” that Paul used here. Temperance refers to a type of self-control: not going to extremes. Most sins are simply the taking of something that in the right context would be good and normal, but once you have gone to an extreme or once you no longer have temperance in regards to that thing, then you have sinned. A good example of that is sex. God designed sex. Sex is perfectly normal and good within the marriage relationship; but before marriage or outside of marriage sex is sinful and very harmful to the soul, the body, and the spirit. “The bed in marriage is undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” In almost anything where you have gone to an extreme, you have probably sinned. It is necessary to eat food in order to live, but eating too much is a sin. It is a good idea to save some of what you have earned, but if you always save too much or spend only on yourself and never give to anyone in need, then you will have become a selfish miser committing the sin of greed.

Paul spoke to the Roman governor about righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come. The reason that righteousness and temperance are so important is because we are going to be judged by God for the things that were done in our bodies. If there is no judgment, then maybe it is not a big issue regarding the righteousness or the temperance that has been a part of our lives. But because there is a judgment, righteousness and temperance are a very big deal. And also because we must give an account to God and none of us is innocent, we need a Savior, and the Savior is Jesus Christ the Lord.

Paul made his point to the Roman governor. The governor was touched. He trembled. Many people have come to Christ once they considered seriously the question of their own guilt and need of a Savior. That is the work of the Holy Spirit to awaken people to their own sinfulness and the judgment that they face. Jesus said about the Holy Spirit in John 16:8-10, “And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, because they believe not on me. Of righteousness, because I go to my father, and ye see me no more. Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” At some time in everyone’s life, they are touched by the Spirit. That is probably what John 1:9 is talking about when it says of Jesus, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

Once you are touched by the Spirit of the sinfulness of your own sin and your need of the Savior Jesus, then the question becomes: how do you respond. You must respond to Him in the right way. Let’s look at how the governor Felix responded. Felix said to Paul in Acts 24:25, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” He delayed. He put it off. And there is no indication in scripture that he ever turned to Christ later. If the Lord is working in your heart, there can be serious consequences to not responding to him. The opportunity to turn to Christ is a limited opportunity. It is limited because we are finite creatures and we do not know when we are going to die; and it is also limited because there is no guarantee that the Spirit will come to you again if you refuse Him. Concerning the spiritual birth Jesus said in John 3:8, “The wind bloweth where it will.” This same spiritual principle is given in Proverbs 1:4-29 that says, “Because I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord.”

If the Lord is working in your heart, do not make the mistake that the Roman governor made in Acts chapter 24. Turn from your sins today and turn to Jesus while you have the opportunity.

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