There are few Christians who pay attention to the matter of following the spirit’s feeling. There is a lot of Christian literature, but it is difficult to find one book that talks about the feeling of the spirit. Though the term the feeling of the spirit is not found in the New Testament, there is such a thing according to its revelation. The word “feeling” is used in Ephesians 4:19 regarding the hardening of the feeling of the Gentiles. The Chinese Union Version of the Bible renders this word “feeling” as “conscience.” This is because prior to our salvation, the feeling of our spirit is the feeling of the conscience. The hardening of the feeling of the conscience is the loss of all the conscience’s feeling. The conscience has become numb. It has become what is mentioned in 1 Timothy 4:2: “Seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.” In other words, the conscience has lost its sensation.
In Romans 8 the word “feeling” does not appear. However, the fact is there. The last part of verse 6 says, “But the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.” Life and peace are feelings of the spirit. We know that there is life and peace within us because we feel them. The first part of verse 6 says, “For the mind set on the flesh is death.” Death includes uneasiness. When death comes, it causes people to feel uneasy. Within each Christian there are these two phenomena—life and peace, and death and uneasiness. What makes a man what he is are the thoughts in his mind. If our mind is set on the spirit, we will surely have life within. When we have life, we feel at ease. To feel at ease is peace. If our thoughts are always on the flesh, we will surely feel uneasy. That is a sign and registration of death. I believe that all of you have had this kind of experience. Before we were saved, when we thought about going to the movies, we were elated. But now, after being saved, when we think of going to the movies, we feel uneasy within. This is a phenomenon of death; it indicates that our spirit is deadened. As a result, we lost the proper feeling. If, at this time, we would turn to the Lord and say, “Lord, forgive me; I want to quiet down before You,” we would then settle down within. This is peace. Peace is a phenomenon of life.
There are various phenomena of death. Once we are deadened within, we will immediately feel uneasiness and emptiness. Once we feel empty, we will be afraid and withdrawn; we will be weak. The sum total of these is death. Death is the totality of the above. There are also various phenomena of life. If we have peace within, that is life. In this life, there is joy, satisfaction, fullness, and boldness. These are all phenomena of life. Death is the culmination and totality of weakness; life is the totality of strength. We Christians are just “thermometers” of life and death. When we are weak within, death has come in. When there is peace within, life has begun. This is so not only with the newly saved ones, but also with the ones who have been saved for decades.
Our mind represents our being because the mind is the main part of our soul and our soul is our self. When our being, which is our soul, makes plans for the flesh, and considers going to the movies or traveling for sightseeing, we begin to have death within. But if we turn our mind from the flesh to the spirit to pray, read the Bible, or contact the Lord, and if we do everything by the spirit, we have life within and begin to live.
If we do not feel peaceful, we know that within we are deadened. On the contrary, if we have peace, we know that we have life within. Whether or not we are peaceful is totally a matter of feeling. It is quite difficult to explain feeling, but as long as a person is alive, he will have feeling. For example, if you touch your arm with your hand, your arm will have feeling. But if you touch a corpse, it is cold and will not have any feeling. If I touch your hand, I know that it is a living hand because my fingers activate your feeling, and the feeling in your hand and that in my fingers respond to each other. In this way, I know that your hand is living. If there is no feeling, the hand is dead.