Assured in your own mind
Freedom of conscience
The Roman church was fracturing over matters of personal conviction — which days to keep holy, what foods to eat, the disputable practices where sincere believers landed differently. Paul's counsel cuts against our instinct to make everyone conform. One person esteems one day above another, he says; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully assured in his own mind.
Notice he does not resolve the dispute by declaring a winner. On these matters of conscience, he leaves room for difference — let each be convinced in their own mind — and then forbids the contempt that so easily follows. The one who keeps the day must not despise the one who doesn't; the one who doesn't must not judge the one who does. Both belong to the same Lord, and to their own Master they stand or fall.
This is a vital freedom as we close a stage on the varied ways souls love God. Your convictions about how to draw near — the practices that feed you, the forms you keep or release — are between you and your Master. And so are your neighbor's. The maturity Paul calls for is to hold your own way with full conviction while granting others the same freedom, refusing to make your conscience the measure of everyone else's.
“One man esteems one day above another. Another esteems every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.”
— Paul, to the church at Rome — Romans 14:5 (WEB)
Hold your own convictions about drawing near to God with full assurance, while leaving your neighbor free to love him along a different road.
“Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?”
It is a small tyranny we hardly notice — assuming the practices that feed our own soul must bind everyone, and quietly filing those who differ under lax or legalistic. The interior work is to grow into Paul's hard-won maturity: to be fully assured in your own mind while refusing to make your conscience the law for another, remembering that on disputable matters each of us stands or falls to God, who alone holds the throne we keep trying to climb.
This week, notice where you are tempted to impose your way of devotion on others or judge theirs. Hold your own convictions firmly, but deliberately grant another believer the freedom to love God differently, without contempt or judgment.
Pride loves to make a measuring rod of its own convictions, and the mutual contempt that follows splits the church neatly into the lax and the legalistic. But believers who hold their own way firmly and still leave others free to differ cannot be divided over the disputable things, for they have left the throne of judgment to the one Lawgiver it belongs to.
We have a strong instinct to universalize our own convictions — to assume that the practices that feed our soul must be binding on everyone, and to look down on those who draw near to God differently as either lax or legalistic. Paul names this as overreach. On the disputable matters of how we worship and what we observe, he leaves room for difference and forbids the mutual contempt that difference so often breeds.
This is the hard-won maturity that a stage on pathways must arrive at. To be fully assured in your own mind is good — hold your convictions with confidence. But to make your conscience the law for everyone else is to seize a throne that belongs to God alone. There is only one Lawgiver, and it is not you. Can you hold your own way with full conviction and still leave your neighbor free to love God along a different road?
- Do I universalize my own convictions onto everyone else?
- Whom do I judge or despise for drawing near to God differently?
- Can I be fully convinced myself and still leave others free?
Lord, I make my own convictions the law for everyone and judge those who differ. You alone are the Lawgiver. Let me hold my way with full assurance and still free my neighbor to love you along another road, without contempt or judgment. Amen.