[Special feature] Man’s mind consists of three parts: truthful attributes, conscience, and untruthful attributes
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July 23, 2023 |
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Romans 7: 21~23 says “I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts.”
Man’s mind is largely divided into three parts.
The first one is obviously truthful attributes in which our inner person takes delight in ‘the law of God’. The next one is evidently untruthful attributes that have been planted by the enemy devil and makes us a prisoner of ‘the law of sin.’ The last and third one is our conscience, a mixture of truths and untruths, which is called the ‘law of my mind’ and each one has different conscience. Our inner person wants to keep the law of God in the truthful part of our mind, but the evidently untruthful prat of our mind subdues our conscience that is the law of our mind, and succumbs to the law of sin, and thereby making us commit sins.
We can easily discover evil through actions of untruth such as hatred, envy, jealousy, passing judgment, condemnation, etc. However, to achieve the heart of spirit that God wants us to have, we must even discover untruth hidden in the nature and evil of conscience and throw them away.
Untruth in nature
When God created the first man Adam and he became a living being, his mind was filled only with the knowledge of truth by God.
After a long period of time, however, Adan disobeyed God’s command and committed the sin of eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. His spirit died as God had said to him, “in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” and sin came into his mind. And he began to change through untruths in his mind because he was formed of dust from the ground and the earth has changing attributes (Gensis 2:7).
As a living being, Adam had a heart filled only with spiritual knowledge and his heart was as tender and gentle as good soil. But after he sinned, his mind became mixed with poisonous and evil nature and then gradually deteriorated.
Through life force, Adam’s deteriorated nature has been descended to his children and their children. The life force includes each one’s appearance, constitution, intelligence, personality, and even habits. In this sense, the heart-field inherited from parents plays an important role, but each one’s heart-field will be able to change depending on what they take in growth.
Each one’s nature is like the quality of soil. It is inherited through their parents’ life force and while growing, they harden and form their own nature deep in their heart without knowing it. So, they cannot discover untruths in their nature by themselves and God refines them through various trials so that they can find and throw away untruths.
Evil of conscience
What then is conscience? It is a criterion of judgment to discern whether this is good or evil. However, conscience cannot be an absolute standard of goodness because we base the criterion of judgment on the nature we inherit from parents and then form with whatever we take in growth.
For example, people say that stealing is evil. However, depending on each one’s conscience, some feel guilty for even stealing a needle while others do not feel guilty saying it is not stealing compared to stealing a cow
Thus, each one has a different criterion for judgment according to their own conscience. Their standard of conscience varies depending on generation, culture, and region. For example, everyone thinks that they should honor their parents, but there are different ways to honor their parents since each one has a different conscience.
Hebrews 10:22 says “let’s approach God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water”. Water here symbolizes the Word of God that cleanses us from our sins and only the Word of God is the truth and the absolute standard of goodness.
Our conscience becomes more and more evil to the extent that we see and hear evil and accept such evil. On the contrary, when we believe in Jesus Christ and plant the Word of God into our heart, we will be able to discover evil of conscience and transform it into good conscience and then achieve a heart of spirit.
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