To repeat, the Lord must first attract us by His love. He touches our heart with His love in order to open our heart. Immediately following the dealings with the heart, the conscience must be dealt with. The dealings in the presence of the Lord are first with the heart and then with the conscience. If we are pure and single in our heart, the function of our conscience will immediately be very keen and alert. At a certain time we may not have the sense that we are wrong and have made mistakes, but when we deal with our heart and make it pure and single, our conscience will function in a full way. Our conscience will begin to accuse us, causing us to confess and deal with our conscience. This will make our conscience without offense. Paul said that he exercised himself to always have “a conscience without offense toward God and men” (Acts 24:16). A conscience without offense is a conscience free from any kind of offense or accusation.
In order to know the difference between the soul and the spirit, we need a keen conscience. But it is difficult to have such a conscience when we reason in our mentality. A brother may say, “I am wrong ten percent, but that brother wronged me one hundred percent. So he owes me a balance of ninety percent.” This is nothing but mental consideration in the soul. While we are reasoning logically in our mentality, something deeper within us says, “Regardless of how much that brother owes you, you must deal with the ten percent.”
The spiritual account is not like a bank account. An account in a bank has credit, debit, and balance, but the account in the spirit has only one column—debit. Regardless of how much credit we may have, as long as we have a debit, we must deal with it. Suppose I stole a watch from someone, and he stole a car from me. We are very clear about what we stole from each other. But one day the conscience functions, saying, “You need to deal with that stolen article.” Of course, if I were simply balancing a bank account, I would reason, “The watch I stole costs one hundred dollars, and the car he stole costs two thousand dollars, so this man owes me nineteen hundred dollars. There is no need for me to deal with my conscience; rather, I should collect the balance.” But the spiritual account does not work that way. The spiritual account demands that I forget how much the other person owes me and deal with what I stole. I must even apologize to this man: “Sir, I am very sorry. It is sinful for me to steal. Here is the stolen watch, which I am returning to you.” I must not say a word about the car that he stole from me. I have no right to mention it. Only the Holy Spirit has the right to say something to him. In the heavenly account there is only one column, not two.
Do you see the point? If you are arguing and reasoning, you are simply in the mind, not in the spirit.
To further illustrate, suppose the Holy Spirit is working in your spirit, demanding that you answer the call of the Lord. But many reasons flood your mind: “How about my wife? How about my children? What about their education? I still have a mother who is eighty years old. It is better to wait a little longer. After she dies, it will be the right time for me to answer the Lord’s call.” This is nothing but the arguments and rationalizations in the mentality of the soul. You are quite logical, quite reasonable, quite right, but there is still the call of the Lord deep in your spirit.
It is easy to understand the difference between the soul and the spirit, but the problem is that our whole being may still be locked, for our heart may not yet be open. We must say this again and again: we need to open our heart. When we deal with our heart so that it is pure and single, our conscience will then be very keen to make known to us many accusations and offenses. Our conscience can be made right only by our confession and our applying the sprinkling, the cleansing, of the Lord’s blood (Heb. 9:14).
When our conscience is purified, we will serve the living God. God is a living God, but He is not a living God to us when our conscience is full of offenses. When this is the case, we have a God in name only; but when our conscience is purified by the blood, we sense that God is living. Sometimes it seems that God is not real and living; He is merely a title, GOD, and that is all. When our conscience is dull and full of offenses, it needs to be dealt with by our confession and the purifying of the blood. Then we will have a purified conscience. An accusation in our conscience makes it impure and opaque, hindering our fellowship with the Lord.
A purified conscience, a conscience without offense, is also a good conscience (1 Tim. 1:5, 19; 1 Pet. 3:16, 21). A good conscience is a conscience that is both cleansed and purified. It is right and transparent without any shadow. A conscience in such a good condition will bring us into the presence of the Lord. If our conscience is a good conscience, there is nothing as a barrier between us and Him, because our conscience has been cleansed and purified.
The apostle Paul told Timothy that he served God with a pure conscience (2 Tim. 1:3). A pure conscience is a conscience purified from any mixture. It is not only a purified conscience but a conscience without any mixture and shadow.
Following the dealing with the conscience, the faculty of fellowship in our spirit is dealt with, as seen in 1 John 1:1-7. Fellowship between us and God is maintained by a good conscience. When the conscience is offended, it becomes a barrier and damages our fellowship with the Lord; therefore, according to 1 John 1:9, we must confess our faults, our failures, and our sins so that the blood of the Lord Jesus might cleanse our conscience. Then there will be no condemnation in our conscience to hinder our fellowship with the Lord. Strictly speaking, our fellowship with the Lord depends on our dealing with our conscience. It is maintained through a purified conscience. Therefore, these two dealings are actually one, since to deal with our conscience is to deal with our fellowship. Fellowship will be maintained if there is nothing wrong in our conscience. If there is a break in our fellowship with the Lord, it means that our conscience is wrong. When our conscience is not purified and transparent, the fellowship is gone and can be regained only when our conscience is recovered.
Now we will consider the intuition. Just as the fellowship follows the conscience, so the intuition follows the fellowship. If we are wrong in our conscience, our fellowship with the Lord is broken, and when the fellowship is broken, the intuition does not function. The dealing with the conscience is therefore very basic. A transparent conscience will bring us into the presence of the Lord, resulting in a living fellowship with Him. Through this living fellowship, it is easy for our spirit to sense the will of God directly—this is the function of the intuition. This function depends entirely on a perfect fellowship. When our fellowship is perfect, the intuition functions properly. When our fellowship with the Lord is broken, automatically the intuition ceases to work and can be recovered only through the restoration of the fellowship.
First John 2:27 is a very important word, which most of us neglect. It says that the anointing abides in us. The anointing is the working of the Holy Spirit within our spirit, giving us a direct sense from God. That direct sense is the intuition. First John chapter 1 indicates that the fellowship is kept, or maintained, by the blood. Chapter 2 indicates that the intuition works by the inner anointing of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit anoints us by moving in our spirit, we receive a direct sense in the intuition.
Through the intuition within our spirit we have an inner knowledge that is not a mental understanding. The inner knowledge is in our spirit, whereas the understanding is in our mind. The inner knowledge in our spirit always precedes the understanding in our mind. In other words, when the Holy Spirit anoints our spirit, we receive a direct sense in our intuition. Through the intuition in our spirit we have an inner knowledge by sensing something of God. But we still need our mind to understand what we sense in our spirit. Sometimes we can know something in our spirit, but we are unable to understand it in our mind. This may seem like a heavenly language, and the world does not know what we are talking about. The understanding in our mind functions only to interpret what our spirit senses as the inner knowledge. Our enlightened and renewed mind will interpret what we sense in the intuition of our spirit.
Let us put it in this way. Sometimes in the morning while reading the Word and praying, we spontaneously sense a burden deep in our spirit, a burden so heavy and deep that we cannot understand what it is. We need to look to the Lord for the understanding of this burden. Gradually, during the day we will begin to understand with our mind what is in our spirit. In the morning we sense the burden, or the inner knowledge, by the intuition in our spirit, but during the day we gradually receive the interpretation of this burden in our mind.
To summarize, 1 John 1 reveals that the fellowship must be maintained, and 1 John 2, especially verse 27, shows that the intuition must be stirred up, or anointed, by the Holy Spirit. But both the fellowship and the intuition depend entirely on our dealing with the conscience. Through such dealing we can obtain a transparent and purified conscience, which will give us a perfect fellowship with the Lord. This will result in the function of the intuition, because the Holy Spirit will then have the ground to move in and anoint our spirit. Again we say that all these things must be put into daily practice. Day by day we must deal with our heart, our conscience, our fellowship, and our intuition.