Nonso was the resident engineer on a four-storey office building in Abuja, and on the Friday it happened, his principal was in Lagos. The older man had flown out on Monday for a fortnight of meetings, and before he left he had stood with Nonso at the site gate and said, “You are in charge. Use your judgement. Call me only if the building is falling down.”
By Friday afternoon the reinforcement for the third-floor slab was in place. The concrete trucks were booked for seven o’clock the next morning. At about four, the contractor’s site manager found Nonso on the deck and walked him over to a row of beams near the stairwell. The rods there were thinner than the drawings required. The supplier had sent the wrong size, he explained, and the right ones would take a week. A week’s delay meant idle labourers, a cancelled pour and an angry client. “The design is very conservative anyway,” he said. “Once it is cast, nobody will ever see it. Oga will not be back until the twentieth.” Then he pressed a brown envelope into Nonso’s hand. “For your fuel. You have been working hard.”
Nonso stood on that slab for a long time after the man had gone down the ladder. The sun was setting behind the cranes. The labourers were packing up. He told me later that the strangest thing about the moment was how quiet it was. Nobody was shouting at him. Nobody was going to check.
He had grown up in a strict home in Onitsha, where his father inspected homework every night and his mother knew which friends he had visited before he got home. At school there were prefects. At university there were lecturers and examinations. In his first job, every drawing he produced passed across the desk of a senior engineer before it went anywhere. For the whole of his life, someone else had been the final checker of his work.
Now, for the first time, the checker had flown to Lagos, and he realised that he did not know who was really in charge of him.
That question comes to every believer sooner or later. It may come on a building site, in a hotel room on a work trip, in the first year away from home, in a business where you are the owner and nobody audits you, or in a marriage where your spouse trusts you so completely that they never ask. Who governs your decisions when no supervisor is present?
Who is in charge when the supervisor leaves
Some believers have never had to answer that question, because their obedience has always been held in place by other people. A pastor who knows them. A parent who would be ashamed. A spouse who checks the bank statements. A boss who reviews the reports. There is nothing wrong with any of those people. God often uses them. But if they are the only reason we do right, then our goodness belongs to them more than it belongs to us, and it will last only as long as they are watching.
Scripture has a sobering example. Joash became king of Judah as a boy of seven, rescued from a massacre and hidden in the temple by his aunt and her husband, Jehoiada the priest. Jehoiada raised him, crowned him, and guided him through the early years of his reign. The Chronicler’s summary is careful: “And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the LORD all the days of Jehoiada the priest” (2 Chronicles 24:2). All the days of Jehoiada. The verse is a compliment with a warning hidden inside it.
Jehoiada lived to a great age and was buried among the kings. Then this happened:
Now after the death of Jehoiada came the princes of Judah, and made obeisance to the king. Then the king hearkened unto them. And they left the house of the LORD God of their fathers, and served groves and idols: and wrath came upon Judah and Jerusalem for this their trespass.
The princes of Judah came, made obeisance, and the king hearkened to them. It took one conversation. The man who had repaired the temple went back to the groves and the idols, and before the chapter is over he has ordered the death of Jehoiada’s own son, Zechariah, for speaking the word of the Lord to him. Joash had lived for decades with a borrowed conscience. When the man who carried it for him died, there was nothing of his own underneath.
Set beside him a young man who was taken far from home. Daniel was carried to Babylon as a teenager, given a new name, placed in a foreign school and fed from the king’s table. His parents were hundreds of miles away. No priest from Jerusalem was there to check on him. And yet “Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat” (Daniel 1:8). The decision was made in his own heart, before God, with no supervisor present. He was courteous about it. He asked permission and proposed a test. But the conviction itself did not depend on anyone else holding it for him.
That is the kind of conviction this article is about. It is learned, often slowly, by people who know they belong to God and who understand that their obedience is first of all a matter between themselves and Him.
Every one of us shall give account
The clearest teaching on personal conviction in the New Testament comes from a passage about food and holy days. The church in Rome contained Jewish and Gentile believers with very different backgrounds. Some kept the old festivals and avoided certain foods. Others felt free to eat anything and to treat every day alike. They were quarrelling, and each group was tempted to despise or judge the other. Paul writes:
One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike . Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it . He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living. But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
Paul does not settle the dispute by appointing a supervisor. He does something more demanding. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” He wants each believer to think the matter through before God and come to a settled conviction, rather than simply copying the strongest voice in the room. The phrase fully persuaded is the same idea Paul uses of Abraham, who was “fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform” (Romans 4:21). It describes a mind that has come to rest.
Then he gives the reason. “He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord.” Whatever choice the believer makes, he makes it to the Lord. Christ is the audience for the decision.
And then Paul widens the lens until it takes in the whole of life. “For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.” Notice where personal responsibility begins. It begins with belonging. We are the Lord’s. Christ died and rose again “that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.” Before you are ever asked to give an account, you are told whose you are.
Finally, the account itself. “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ... So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” Of himself. Not of his brother, not of his pastor, not of the culture he grew up in. Each believer will speak for his own life before the Lord who bought him.
For those who are in Christ, this is no trial in which salvation hangs in the balance. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Paul describes the same occasion elsewhere as an evaluation of what each believer has built and how (1 Corinthians 3:12-15), and as the moment when “every one may receive the things done in his body” (2 Corinthians 5:10). A son does not fear being thrown out of the house. But a son who loves his father cares a great deal about what his father will say when he looks over the work.
PunchlineNonso’s father would never see the reinforcement in that slab. His principal might never see it. But it would be part of the account Nonso gave of himself.
Before you are ever asked to give an account, you are told whose you are. Personal conviction grows out of belonging to Christ, and it answers first to Him.
When personal conviction is not the right category
There is a misunderstanding we need to clear away here, because Romans 14 is often misused. Some people quote “let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” as though it meant that every moral question is a matter of personal preference. It does not.
Paul is dealing with what older writers called “doubtful disputations” (Romans 14:1), matters on which Scripture has not given a single binding command and on which sincere believers may reach different conclusions. Whether to eat meat bought in the market. Whether to observe a particular day. In our own setting we might add questions about which festivals to celebrate, what a believer drinks at a wedding, what kind of music is used in worship, or how a family spends its Sunday afternoon. On such matters, Paul says, settle your own conscience before God and stop despising those who have settled theirs differently.
The same apostle is perfectly clear that some things are not matters of opinion at all. In the previous chapter he has listed the commandments against adultery, killing, stealing, false witness and covetousness. Nobody in Rome could have said, “I am fully persuaded in my own mind that stealing is acceptable for me.”
Nonso’s situation was not a doubtful disputation. Accepting money to certify work he knew to be below specification was dishonest, and it placed other people at risk. The question in front of him was not what he personally preferred. It was whether he would obey what he already knew when nobody else was there to insist on it.
A great deal of moral failure dresses itself up as liberty, and a great deal of harshness dresses itself up as conviction. Romans 14 rebukes both. Where Scripture speaks plainly, obey. Where Scripture leaves room, be fully persuaded before the Lord and give your brother the same freedom.
A conscience you have to exercise
Paul once stood trial before the Roman governor Felix in Caesarea. The high priest had brought a professional orator named Tertullus, who called Paul “a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition” (Acts 24:5) and accused him of profaning the temple. When Paul was allowed to answer, he did not hide behind flattery or political connections. He described his faith plainly, and then he said this:
But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets: And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust. And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.
Look at the order of Paul’s thought. First he speaks of hope: “there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.” He knows that history is heading toward a day when every life will be seen as it truly is. Then comes the response: “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.”
NuggetHerein, because of that hope. Paul’s conscience is shaped by the future. He lives today in the light of the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ (Romans 2:16).
The word translated exercise is a Greek word that means to practise, to train, to work at something with discipline. It is related to the word from which we get ascetic. Paul is describing a habit he cultivates, the way an athlete trains or a craftsman develops skill. A clear conscience does not maintain itself. It is something he works at, daily.
And the phrase void of offence describes a conscience that has nothing to stumble over, nothing left lying across the path. Paul wants to be able to walk into God’s presence and into any human relationship without tripping over something he has left unresolved.
Notice the two directions: “toward God, and toward men.” Peace with God cannot coexist with people left cheated, and a good reputation with people cannot cover what is hidden from God. A conscience void of offence has dealt with both.
How does a person exercise his conscience? He pays attention to it. When the Spirit brings a small unease about a conversation, a receipt or a habit, the trained believer stops and asks what it means. And he acts quickly, because a small thing put right today does not grow into a large thing that needs a long confession next year. Conscience is like a muscle: ignore it, and it weakens; respond to it, and it grows more sensitive and more reliable.
The goal is love
When Paul wrote to Timothy, his young colleague was in Ephesus trying to deal with teachers who were stirring up controversy. They were obsessed with “fables and endless genealogies” (1 Timothy 1:4), and they wanted to be teachers of the law without understanding what they were saying. Against all that noise, Paul states the aim of everything Christian instruction is for:
Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.
The word end means the goal, the purpose toward which something moves. The commandment, all of God’s instruction, is aiming at love. And the love Paul has in mind flows from three sources: a pure heart, a good conscience and faith unfeigned.
This keeps personal conviction from becoming a private moral hobby. A good conscience is not an end in itself. It serves love. Its purpose is that God is honoured and people are protected and blessed. When Nonso stood on that slab, the people his conscience was protecting were not abstractions. They were the cleaners who would arrive at six every morning, the accountants and receptionists who would spend their working lives on the third floor, the children who would one day visit their parents’ offices. Love for them was at stake in a few metres of steel that nobody would ever see.
The phrase faith unfeigned is also worth noticing. Unfeigned means without a mask, without acting. A good conscience and a performed faith cannot live together for long. Faith that is only worn in public eventually separates itself from conscience, because conscience keeps telling the truth about what happens in private.
A few verses later Paul gives Timothy a warning:
This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare; Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.
“Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.” The picture is vivid. A good conscience is part of the ship’s equipment. Some people, Paul says, pushed it away, deliberately set it aside, and their faith ran aground. Shipwrecks rarely happen in a single moment. Usually there is a long drift first, a slow movement off course that nobody corrects. Then one night the rocks are there.
Paul speaks later in the letter of consciences “seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2), so that they no longer feel anything. That is where a long habit of ignoring conscience ends. The believer who wants to finish well guards it, because it is one of the ways God keeps him off the rocks.
Conscience is a witness, not the judge
Having said all this about the importance of conscience, we must also say what conscience cannot do. Conscience is a gift, but it is not God. Paul makes this point to the Corinthians, who were busy comparing their favourite teachers and passing verdicts on him:
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. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.
“For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.” The older English phrase I know nothing by myself means “I am not aware of anything against myself.” Paul’s conscience is clear. But he refuses to treat a clear conscience as the final verdict. It is possible to be sincerely wrong. It is possible to have blind spots that only the Lord can see. So Paul leaves the final judgement where it belongs. “Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts.”
This guards us in two directions.
It guards us against arrogance. Some people say, “My conscience is clear,” as though that settled every argument. But a conscience can be formed by culture more than by Scripture. It can be weak and troubled about things that are not sin (1 Corinthians 8:7), or hardened and untroubled by things that clearly are. A conscience that is never instructed by the Word of God will simply reflect the values of whoever you spend most time with.
It also guards us against despair. Some sincere believers have an overactive conscience. They feel guilty about everything, confess the same forgiven sins again and again, and cannot rest. To them John offers great comfort: “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things” (1 John 3:20). The blood of Christ has been given precisely to purge the conscience (Hebrews 9:14). A troubled conscience should be brought to Him and to His Word, not obeyed like a tyrant. Where anxious scrupulosity has become crippling, a wise pastor and, where needed, a qualified professional can help, and seeking that help is not a failure of faith.
What does all this mean in practice? Never act against your conscience, because “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). But never assume your conscience is beyond correction either. Obey it, inform it from Scripture, and leave the final verdict to the Lord.
Welcoming accountability before anyone imposes it
Personal conviction does not mean going it alone. In fact, one of the clearest signs of a mature conscience is that it welcomes accountability rather than resenting it. Paul writes to the Galatians:
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden.
At first sight the passage seems to contradict itself. Verse 2 says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” Verse 5 says, “For every man shall bear his own burden.” The two words are different in Greek. The first is a heavy weight, the kind of load that is too much for one person. The second is more like a soldier’s pack, the ordinary load each person is responsible to carry. Paul is saying that believers help one another with crushing weights, and each believer still carries his own responsibilities before God.
Both halves matter here. “Let every man prove his own work.” Each believer is to examine his own conduct honestly, without measuring himself by someone else. That is personal responsibility. But the passage begins with brothers who notice when someone has been “overtaken in a fault” and who come to restore him “in the spirit of meekness.” That is mutual accountability. The New Testament has no category for a Christian who is answerable to nobody.
There is a difference between waiting for accountability and welcoming it. The person who waits for it behaves well when he knows he will be checked, and hides what he can. The person who welcomes it goes looking for it. He invites a trusted friend to ask him hard questions. He tells his spouse the truth before being asked. He puts a second signature on the ministry account, not because anyone accused him, but because he knows that his own heart is fallible and that money handled in the dark is a temptation to anyone. He brings his work to the light before someone else has to drag it there.
“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend” (Proverbs 27:17). The writer of Hebrews tells us to “exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). Sin is deceitful. It persuades us in private that what we are doing is reasonable. One honest friend can break that spell.
Healthy accountability has boundaries, and it is worth naming them. It is chosen and mutual, not imposed by someone who wants to control you. It respects the conscience on matters Scripture leaves open. It never demands that you hide wrongdoing for the sake of a leader’s reputation. And it applies to leaders as much as to anyone else. A pastor, a bishop or a ministry founder who answers to nobody is in a dangerous place, however gifted he is. If accountability in a church has become a tool for intimidation, domination or abuse, it has stopped being what Scripture describes, and those affected should seek help outside that structure.
Building conviction for the moments nobody sees
PunchlineHow does a believer grow the kind of conviction that holds when the supervisor has gone to Lagos? Let me suggest some ordinary practices.
Decide before the moment comes. Daniel purposed in his heart before the food arrived. Many of our worst decisions are made under pressure, at four o’clock on a Friday with a concrete truck booked for the morning. If you have already settled what you will and will not do with money, with your body, with your words, with your work, then the moment of pressure becomes a moment of keeping a decision you have already made.
Ask who else is affected. A decision feels private only because we have not thought about the people on the other side of it. The rods in a slab, the numbers in a report, the medication in a pharmacy, the grade on a script, the weight on a scale in the market: there are always people downstream. Love for them is one of the strongest supports conscience has.
Keep short accounts. Return the extra change. Correct the misleading email. Apologise before the day ends.
Remember whose you are. All of these practices can become joyless self-improvement if they are cut off from the gospel. The root of Christian conviction is not fear of being caught. It is the knowledge that “whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.” You are not trying to earn a place in His family by keeping your conscience clean. You keep your conscience clean because you already belong to Him, and because His Spirit within you wants your private life and your public life to tell the same story.
Nonso did not sleep much that Friday night. He told me he sat in his car outside the site for nearly an hour with the envelope on the passenger seat. Then he did three things.
He phoned his principal in Lagos, even though it was nearly ten o’clock. “I said I would call only if the building was falling down,” he told him. “I am calling so that it does not.” He explained what he had found and what he had been offered. His principal was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Cancel the pour. I will handle the client.”
He wrote the whole matter in the site diary, including the envelope, so that the record would show what had happened whether or not anyone ever read it.
And on Saturday morning, when the site manager arrived, Nonso handed back the envelope unopened and told him the trucks had been cancelled. The man was furious. The client was furious too, for about a week. The correct steel arrived on the following Thursday, and the slab was poured eight days late.
The building is finished now. People work in it every day, and none of them know anything about that Friday. Nonso still drives past it sometimes. He told me that the experience changed something in him. “I always thought I was an honest person,” he said, “but I had never really been tested without someone standing behind me. That night I found out that God was standing behind me the whole time. I just had not needed to notice before.”
Afterwards he asked an older engineer in his church to meet him once a month. Nobody required it. He wanted someone to ask him the questions that a quiet site never asks.
You may be standing on your own slab today, with nobody checking and something in your hand that you should not keep. The supervisor may be gone. Your parents may be far away. Nobody may ever find out. But you are not alone up there. You belong to the Lord, and you will give account of yourself to Him, and He has given you His Spirit and a conscience to help you choose well. Make the call. Hand back the envelope. Then go and find someone who will help you keep making that choice.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Where in your life does your good behaviour depend mainly on someone else watching? What would change if that person were removed?
- What is the difference between a “doubtful disputation” and a plain command of Scripture? Have you ever used the language of personal conviction to excuse something Scripture clearly forbids?
- Paul says he exercised himself to keep a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men. Is there anything lying across the path of your conscience at the moment, in either direction?
- How do you respond to a troubled conscience: do you ignore it, obey it without question, or bring it to God’s Word?
- Who in your life has permission to ask you hard questions? If no one does, who could you invite?
This Week
Choose one area of your life where nobody currently checks on you: money, your phone, your working hours, your private thoughts, or the way you speak about others. Read Romans 14:7-12 and Acts 24:16 at the start of the week. Then write down, in one or two sentences, what you have purposed in your heart to do in that area, as Daniel did. Before the week ends, share that sentence with one mature believer you trust, and ask them to check in with you about it in a month.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, I belong to You. Whether I live or die, I am Yours, and one day I will give account of myself to You. Thank You that I come to that day with no condemnation, because You have died and risen for me. Teach me to live now as someone who answers to You, not only to the people who are watching. Train my conscience by Your Word, keep it tender, and help me to put things right quickly toward You and toward others. Where my conscience is confused, correct it. Where it accuses me falsely, remind me that You are greater than my heart. Give me friends who will sharpen me, and give me the humility to welcome them. Let my private life and my public life tell the same story. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.