ROMANS, LESSON 75, When Government and Your Conscience Differ, Which One Should you Obey? 4-1-21

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Published Apr 4, 2021

IS GOVERNMENT OR CONSCIENCE SUPERIOR?

Christians determine what is right and wrong from their Bibles and their conscience, both of which come from God. Both are superior to any man-made law. To go against conscience in order to obey a law is just wrong. It is going against the very thing God has given us to govern and guide our actions.
"Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? " Henry David Thoreau
The English Puritan, William Perkins (1558-1602), wrote: “If it should fall out that men’s law is made of things evil, and forbidden by God, then there is no bond of conscience at all; but contrariwise, men are bound in conscience not to obey.”
Did he say if men’s laws are evil and go against our conscience, we are not bound to obey them? Yes, he did, so here is the question we need to ask ourselves once again: Why would we be allowed to act in accord with our conscience in matters of faith but not in matters of freedom and justice? Why would God give us a conscience to walk in the way of righteousness but at the same time, require us to submit to evil laws that go against our conscience?
“All obedience to civil authority is limited by the higher allegiance due to God, its author. To imagine otherwise is to annihilate, by the law of God, its own authority and sanctions. All right subjection to civil rule regards it as the creature of God, but no more. It surely does not give it God’s place. Indeed nothing can be more absurd than the notion that ‘conscience’, which also sees God as supreme in His claims and power, should for a moment substitute any ‘lower law’ for His. This would be to deny its own nature, to act in direct opposition to the very law of its being.” 71 James M. Wilson, The Establishment, and Limits of Civil Government (1883).