Conscious—Unconscious

Conscious—Unconscious

If one understood to discern between what people are conscious of and what they are not conscious of, one would have the key to understanding unspeakably much in this life.

Because a person does not have clarity in this matter, he does not understand the Scriptures; neither does he understand how he ought to conduct himself in the house of God—the church.

He hasn’t received clarity about the essential points of doctrine and life, and therefore he cannot find the connection in the words of Scripture concerning temptation, sin, victory, weakness and wretchedness, cross and death, constantly being delivered into death, complete salvation, sanctification and growth, as well as brotherhood (our physical and spiritual union) with Jesus Christ.

The person who doesn’t understand or reckon with the definitive difference between what he is conscious of and what he is not conscious of can at any time get hung up in some specific questions concerning Christianity and thus become deserving of the testimony that he doesn’t even know the elementary principles of God’s Word.

In Acts 15:9 it is written that God purified “their hearts by faith.” From Romans 10:17 we see that the faith that God gives comes by hearing God’s Word. Their hearts were purified by faith in the word of Christ—to the extent that His words had testified to them of their impurity or in other words, to the extent that they realized their own impurity or were conscious of their evil. This is the mystery.

If someone thinks that there is no more evil to be found in him than what he was conscious of from the beginning, he must be extremely foolish. And if someone thinks that God purifies the heart in one moment from all indwelling folly, even what we do not know about or acknowledge, his knowledge of God is limited; he is blind and deceived.

Such action would directly contradict the spirit in the simplest word about salvation: “If we confess . . . .”

The point is that we cannot at any given moment give account of anything except for what we are conscious of. God is not an unreasonable lord who will require or expect something like that. Therefore a pure conscience (Heb. 9:9) is the highest perfection that any one of us can possess at any given moment. However, unspeakably much more cleansing may have happened in one person’s heart than in another’s when he has heard, believed, and loved more than the other.

When I, by faith, have been cleansed so that I have a pure conscience and therefore walk in the light and perform works done in God, then these words of Scripture apply: “Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

This takes place by God increasing His light for us so that we can see what we did not see before, and thus discover folly in us of which we had no previous knowledge. When we agree with the light and judge ourselves in the case at hand, we will be cleansed from this folly that was unknown to us until now, just as we were cleansed by faith at the beginning.

Now the new light constitutes a tiny twig that can also bear fruit, so that now the branch can bear more fruit than before. This is sanctification, the increase of life, being conformed into the image of Christ, the growth of the body, partaking of divine nature, transformation into the same image from glory to glory—it is edification.

The person, who commits an evil deed that he knows he should not commit, is a sinner, a transgressor.

The person who commits an evil deed but does not know that he ought not to commit it—what shall we say about his deed? What are the similarity and the difference between this act and the previous one? The likeness or similarity is that the fruit in both cases tastes the same—it is bad. The difference is that in the first case the person who performs the act is also evil, whereas in the second case he does not know that he is doing anything evil. He is not an accomplice of evil. On the contrary, he may be strongly engaged as a fellow worker of Christ at the very moment the evil manifests itself!

Paul teaches about these things in Romans 7, but they are usually not understood because people do not pay attention to them. They don’t even know what exactly is written there, and even less what it means. On the other hand, we can’t expect it either because people don’t want to be instructed to learn to discern between what is just and unjust. On the contrary, they are interested in completely different things. Nevertheless, this is what is on God’s heart. See Amos 5:21, 23-24; 1 Cor. 5:8; Heb. 1:9.

The instruction in Romans 7 concerns making a difference between what I know (what my mind, my person agrees to, what I know about) and what I am not conscious of: what my person does not agree to, what I am not aware of and what I do not know (things I do not even suspect but which, nevertheless, have undeniably manifested themselves in my person) from my flesh!

When I commit a sin, I serve the law of sin with my mind; for sin is the result of my mind agreeing with the temptation, resulting in a conception. Jas. 1:15. However, in Romans 7:25 the exact opposite is written; namely, that I serve the law of God with my mind! Therefore this word, “the law of sin with my flesh,” cannot be an expression for sinning! On the contrary, it points to the deeds with which my new “I” or mind is not in agreement (verse 17), deeds I am not even aware of (verse 15) until God, in His time, lets me see them.

How does all this unfold in reality, in daily life?

Once God has cleansed our hearts, anointed us, and given us grace to walk according to His pleasure, is there something left that is not according to His heart, something that is bad and wretched, something that I am not in control of, which is to be judged once I see it? Yes, a fair amount of it! Natural people ought not to be able to find anything bad about us; but born-again people who have judged themselves more than we have are sure to find some folly in our life, for God has told us only a little bit of the folly that He sees in us. He tells us only a little bit at a time, as we are able to bear and to hear it, as we are faithful, and as we long to hear His chastening.

This is how God treats us, and this is how He teaches us to treat others. This is precisely the relevance of righteousness, goodness, and wisdom in life. The person who senses this understands the works of God in this life.

Someone will say, “I don’t understand all this about judging what I am not conscious of. What is all this about?”

It is our “I” that is all-pervasive! This “I” must be delivered into death—united with Christ in death—as it comes into view. This is how the unconscious life in darkness becomes a conscious life in the light.

Most people don’t like to discover their own “I.” They don’t see it themselves, and if others show it to them, they either close their eyes to it, or they think it is fine the way it is because they love their own life.

Such people are not disciples of Christ irrespective of how much they mention His name; for His disciples hate their own life!