1 Corinthians 4:3-5 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yes, I judge not my own self.… 1. Man is God's masterpiece, but conscience is the masterpiece of man. It is clear, both from Scripture and from the experience of our own hearts, that every man is a partaker of this wonderful faculty. But this natural conscience is in every unconverted man an accusing conscience. It witnesses against him; it condemns him. The sense of sin on the natural conscience is one of Satan's strongest chains. While a man is under it he will only run further into sin. We may see how it worked in Adam, the first sinner, directly he had broken God's commandment, and his conscience accused him as guilty. It drove him to fly from God, and when called out to appear before his Judge, drove him to excuse himself. And so in every man a guilty conscience leads into more sin; and the more surely he believes God to be a holy God, that hates sin, and a just God, that will surely punish it, like the devils, he believes and trembles. And he never can get peace by any effort of his own. The criminal who knows that he has broken the laws of his country, and that his life is forfeited to the justice of his country, can have no peace while he knows that. The gospel discovers to us the only way by which sin can be pardoned. Thus the tidings which the gospel brings can alone give peace to the conscience of any man. 2. Now St. Paul had found the blessing of this way of peace in the gospel. And from the hour that Christ manifested Himself to him, to his soul, it was his continual endeavour to "keep a conscience void of offence both towards God and man." And that, by the grace of God, which was given him, he had not endeavoured after this in vain, our text shows. Observe — I. THAT ST. PAUL HAD KEPT A "CONSCIENCE VOID OF OFFENCE, BOTH TOWARDS GOD AND MAN." "I know nothing against myself." There was no permitted sin allowed in his mind. He had known the deep corruption of his own heart (Romans 7:18). He found that without Christ he could do nothing; that he had no power of himself to think anything of himself"; therefore by the Spirit he sought strength out of himself, and by that Spirit was enabled to do what his conscience, cleansed by Christ's blood and enlightened by Christ's Spirit, bade him do, and to avoid what it taught him to avoid (2 Corinthians 1:12). "His heart did not condemn him." He knew that he had endeavoured as in the sight of God to speak and to live in Christ; and thus at the very close of his life he wrote 2 Timothy 4:7. II. THAT NOTWITHSTANDING THIS, HE WAS NOT HEREBY JUSTIFIED. Now this is the very opposite of what the worldly moral man and nominal Christian say. Their ground of confidence is just that which St. Paul declares was no ground of confidence in him. "I have done my duty; thank God I have nothing to fear." Done their duty! St. Paul had done more than them, and yet he did not say what these say. This was not that on which he rested his hope of acceptance before God, though it was a proof that God had accepted him, and, as such, a subject of rejoicing and a ground of thankfulness. He felt, that after all he had done, he was an unprofitable servant, and that he had done nothing by himself, but only the grace of God that was with him. His only ground of hope and confidence was Christ (Philippians 3:8). (W. W. Champneys, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. |
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