Part 3
other powers at whose mercy we are often held – entities that are
hostile to the Spirit. All this is in itself proof that only God and his
spirit can bring freedom.
Any other freedom is a lie. There is only one way for the indi
vidual consciousness to become free from human servitude, for the
nations and the masses to become free from enslavement – through
the community of human spirits with God's spirit! Without this
direct oneness with the whole, the individual soul remains enslaved,
impoverished, confined, and limited.
The same happens to the collective soul of a family, a nation, a
class, or any other social grouping. It leads deeper and deeper into
ruin through the constant escalation of mutual hostility.
Ultimately, complete and true liberation will be given to us only
when we allow God's unity to break in and take over.
The human soul is a subordinate unit of consciousness. In
spite of all ungodly association with kindred lives, it remains lonely
and thwarted until it is bound to the superordinate unity of God.
Fechner catches a glimpse of this highest unity of consciousness in
the way people seek the truly eternal and unchangeable – the
divine one who is always true to himself, who wants to be at work
in us with rich variety and infinite diversity.* Without God's spirit
we are changeable, inconsistent, and unstable – unbalanced and
out of proportion and torn and hostile within ourselves and among
*Gustav Theodor Fechner, –.
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ourselves. Therefore it must be an experience of absolute unity and,
at the same time, absolute disparity that unites the consciousness
of the soul with God.
With such an experience, eternity is born in us, and we have to
consecrate our life with complete dedication. This experience be
comes new every day – a continual process of renewal. As often as
we lay hold of life in God, our new beginnings, deeds, and actions
are stamped with the seal of eternity. Eternity penetrates time. The
spirit of creation seeks out the life of the earth. Being filled with
what God's eternal will decrees can never result in alienation from
life. On the contrary, the spirit of life can lead only to an unfolding
of powers in all the diversity of life's relationships. In our families
and in our professional lives, in our work and in our whole sphere
of activity, in society and in community, the creative spirit wants to
shape life into a productive unity.
As Jacobi put it:
The spirit that aspires to God
Must lift itself from dust.
But if on earth it does not truly live,
Neither will it live in heaven.*
Whoever is gripped by God's spirit turns to his creation with all the
interest that comes from God's love. Life has one goal: God's king
dom shall come to rule over all people on earth, and his will shall
be done in our world just as it is in the kingdom of heaven; his name
shall be honored in active recognition of his nature, and his holi
ness shall never be desecrated by any unholy action anywhere –
rather, faith shall bring forth a love that makes God's nature rec
ognizable through deeds.
*Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, –.
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It is through being ruled more and more by God's spirit, and in no
other way, that the spirit of humankind can draw nearer to this
high and final goal. Only the spirit that is ruled by God is able to
see into the depths of revelation. Revealed truth was given on the
basis of the prophetic word in Jesus Christ and in his apostolic
church. God's spirit wants to lead the human spirit into this truth in
such a way that lives become filled and determined by it.
The word of God pierces until it divides soul and spirit. Then
we recognize without a shadow of doubt the unspiritual sensuality
of the unredeemed life of the soul. The spirit, which thirsts for
freedom, comes face to face with God's spirit. If in our inmost be
ing, the spirit (as the breath of God) does not stand out quite
sharply and clearly in contrast to the soul (as the impure stream of
our blood), we remain in the torpor of spiritual death. Those emo
tional people who allow the unpurified life of the soul to rule them
are unable to receive the divine spirit. There is no sharper contrast
to the consistent wisdom that comes from God than the worldly
wisdom of the soul, which inevitably becomes entangled in un
truthfulness when it tries to bring some semblance of harmony to
its contradictory aims.
The way the world situation develops during war and the after
math of war should make it clear to the blindest of the blind that
the natural life of the soul is diametrically opposed to the life that
comes from God. People believe that they have all the life they
need in the evolution of humankind, in patriotic efforts, or in the
struggle of their class for justice, just as if they did not need God.
They presume to lay claim to things that are God's alone. They even
want to decide over the life and death of people and nations. They
forget that it is the Lord who kills and makes alive. They scorn the
7 5 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L
fact that God is life. Yet he alone is Lord over life and death. Who
ever honors him in Christ cannot kill or judge any soul. People lose
all feeling for the fact that life lies in his hand – that his decree
alone has the right to determine the destiny of the soul. They lose
all fear of him who can destroy body and soul. They stand before
his judgment without awe. They lose all reverence for God.
We know that if the sun were extinguished it would mean instan
taneous death for all life on our planet. We admit that an old river
bed will not have running water anymore once the stream has been
diverted. It is clear to everyone that even the best water becomes a
miserable slough if it has lost connection with its source. Yet we try
to silence our conscience when it cries out that every instance of
irreverence deals our soul a mortal blow. We try to forget that ev
ery sin – every violation of life – brings death to the soul: it means
destruction.
Unspiritual desires and the lies that go with them, hostility and
the lust to kill, mammon and possessions – they all hamper life and
soul. For these are the forces that constitute the power inimical to
life – that power that has separated itself from God. The spirit is
bound up with the life of the soul: it cannot be pure if the soul does
not live in God's purity, and every time the soul touches the rotten
ness of impurity and allows itself to be contaminated, it is not liv
ing in God's purity. The spirit is then tainted along with the soul
and therefore is incapable of redeeming it. The spirit lives in the
soul. Everything that goes on in the soul influences the spirit and
all the movements of the spirit.
We should not imagine that the spiritual life can work indepen
dently of the world of body and soul as if it were in splendid isola
tion on an island, untouched by all that the soul experiences on the
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mainland. The entire atmosphere coming from us influences our
thinking. No vibration of the soul leaves our spirit unaffected.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the brain was
thought to rule from an autocratic throne over the life of the spirit.
Recent research has dethroned it. The brain does not determine the
soul's character or attitude as a whole with all its most important
impressions, feelings, and emotions. A sick soul can have a brain
that is completely intact. The soul can be healthy even when the
brain is diseased.
The Old Testament is right in implying that the heart, the organ
of circulation and all the structures belonging to it, and especially
the various strains of blood itself, determine the character of the
soul – the spiritual personality of a man (Deut. 30:14–20; Prov.
15:13). Blood and heart can disperse melancholy of soul and depres
sion of spirit and provide the necessary constitution and frame of
mind for the highest achievements – even abstract intellectual
ones. Granted, the brain is a vital organ for the cognitive work of
comprehending, thinking, and remembering, yet it is simply one of
many tools in the life of the soul and the spirit. It is only one of its
workshops or transmitting stations, which in a special way reflects
the life of the soul and the life of the spirit; it is their place of ac
tion.
We must not confuse the spirit with brainwork in general or with
its more specialized intellectual functions. The human spirit repre
sents much more the "practical reason" of the holy "thou shalt,"
which, according to Kant, makes its incontestable demands with
the firmness of "thou canst because thou shalt." The spirit is not to
be found in any specific place in the body. The bearer of the entire
soul is the whole body. The human spirit and the basic character of
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the spiritual attitude are breathed into the entire soul as its pro
foundest and most divine element. This spirit is able to prove itself
extremely independent of the body, and superior to it, as soon as it
has experienced a decisive liberation.
Such a liberation remains an impossibility, however, unless it em
braces all areas of the soul. The human spirit is inevitably affected
by any lack of freedom and any defilement of life. The soul em
braces all manifestations of life. It is the bearer of everything that
is alive in us. The soul is the total consciousness of the individual:
the combination of all the sensual perceptions as well as the con
centration of all the higher and spiritual relationships. There can be
no other life for the soul than in this consciousness with all it en
compasses. In this consciousness, all we experience with our feel
ings, thoughts, and will becomes reality and knowledge.
Our consciousness is that undefined place where all functions and
organs become a unity. Unity of consciousness is the secret of or
ganic life. Unity of spirit is the secret of our calling. As a living
whole, we can recognize the body by the finger of the body point
ing outward, the soul by the finger of the soul pointing inward, but
the spirit we recognize by the finger of God pointing to his king
dom.
The life of our physical frame – that which makes it into a living
body – is its soul. Being life, the soul encompasses our spiritual ex
istence just as much as our physical existence from birth to death.
Just as our physical frame without blood has no life, the body with
out the soul is dead.
The physical body that has lost its blood has given up its soul.
Mephistopheles makes Faust sell his life with a drop of blood be
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cause blood is streaming and flowing life. The evil spirit wants to
have the whole of a person – the life, the soul. For this reason he
has to get hold of blood. "Blood is a sap of quite peculiar kind."*
Therefore, according to an old version of Faust, just as Faust is
about to use his blood-filled quill to sign the contract with the
Devil, the blood congeals on his scratched hand to give a warning.
It congeals in the form of the words, "Flee, O man!" This cry to
take flight is forced from the blood by the imminent danger of be
ing gripped by evil. The divine life demands more. The spirit de
mands that the soul resist to the utmost: "Resist to the point of
shedding blood in the struggle against sin."
Resistance unto death is exceedingly rare because the blood is
bound up through the soul not only with the higher, spiritual life
but just as closely or even more closely with confused feelings and
the basest impulses. There is something in the blood that weakens.
Emotional people in whom the blood is not ruled by the spirit are
easily led in their sympathies, becoming weak and unobjective. Be
cause of their lack of strength for vigorous action and their limp,
unsteady compliance, they are easily led astray. Once on the wrong
path, each successive emotional weakness causes the soul to wither
away.
Whenever the individual or the nation is roused inwardly by an
appeal to the blood or by an insistence on blood ties, the enfeebled
soul is swept along. That is why mass suggestion is so successful.
Whether it turns the sexual life into degenerate licentiousness, in
cites the masses to war or civil war, or shatters business habits of
trustworthiness and entices people to luxury and extravagant liv
ing – whatever it does, the surprising result is explained by the
weakness of the emotionally impressionable masses. Each time that
such weakness of life stirs the blood, it reveals the tyrannization of
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the emotional life over the nobler life of the spirit – thus revealing
the ignoble servitude of our highest possession to our lower nature.
An effective renewal of life can come about only when soul and
blood are gripped and penetrated by the highest life, coming from
the spirit. This new life must come from the spirit because only in
the spirit can freedom and clarity begin. It has to penetrate into
the blood-life of the soul if it is to be a reality in life. For blood
builds up the human body. Without the soul or life in the blood
there is no organic connection between the spiritual life and the
physical existence of the body (Rom. 8:11).
For this reason, according to ancient mysticism, everything that
has gained power over my blood has gained power over me. Here is
the link between the inner world and the outer world. If we want
to master things we need to muster courage and take heart – to
quote Faust again, "Blood is the sap above all saps. It can nourish
dauntless courage in the heart." The soul reveals the fact that the
blood is the natural element of all our urges and feelings, includ
ing – not least among them – the sensual ones. Because the blood
communicates with every center of power in the body, a state of
excitement in the blood is often an indication of an unspiritual life
guided by natural instincts and impulses. The blood stream is the
nitric acid that tests whether the spirit or the body rules. Which
ever of the two comes through this test has won the battle.
However precious our blood is to us and however sacred our
blood ties must be, we need a life that is guided and determined
not by our senses and our blood but by the spirit. The life of the
blood can be as thoroughly decadent as it can be noble. It bears
within it the seeds of corruption. Everyone who builds on the blood
is building on shifting sand. Blood is unstable and perishable. Only
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the spirit remains alive. The storm of the spirit is stronger than any
other wind. The life of the spirit alone stands firm when all other
life is doomed to destruction.
In these critical times we need more than ever a testimony to
the truth that God has given an eternal life – one that cannot ebb
away with the blood because it is God's life and therefore indepen
dent of the blood and the senses. According to the true testimony
of the spirit, this life is in the Son. It comes to us through the Holy
Spirit. It gives our spirit testimony of another homeland, different
from the land of our blood. It makes us sons and daughters of God
so truly that we can represent no other interests save those of his
heart and his kingdom. The spirit leads us to a people quite differ
ent from the people of our blood. God's eternal life unites us with
the people of God whose bond is not one of blood but of the Holy
Spirit.
Only those who are prepared to risk life and blood can find this
kingdom of the spirit, for others can and will not tolerate the at
tempts of this people to conquer the land. The path this people
treads is strewn with the dead. By what he does to God's people,
the god of this world reveals himself as the murderer from the be
ginning. The spirit of Jesus Christ has never allowed his church to
kill even one single person. His people, however, have continually
been murdered just as Jesus himself was brought to execution by
the best state (from the military and judicial point of view) and by
the most outstanding nation (from a religious and institutional
point of view), yes, even by the majority vote of those of his own
blood.
Today also, people and nations, the state, and the institutional
church will not tolerate witnesses to divine truth. It is not only
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Israel that cries out, "Away with him!" Voltaire's Écrasez l'infâme
is the cry of the West. Whoever wants to represent the witness of
Jesus in word and deed must be ready for death anywhere. The rea
son is clear: any witness to the truth must tear down the disguises
that have been put in place to conceal the workings of the prevail
ing powers.
Jesus brought a revelation that destroys all delusions. It exposes
the true state of the world and its kingdoms, its principalities, its
god and spirit, as well as the true state of every single human be
ing. It is only under his influence that we become free of the false
idea that life consists in politics and economics, in power and prop
erty, in violence and the struggle for existence, in eating and drink
ing, in clothing and shelter, in pleasure and variety, in honor and
reputation. The body is more than clothing. The soul is life and
therefore more than food. The kingdom of God is more than all the
kingdoms of this world. The spirit is more than the soul. What does
it profit us to gain the whole world if we forfeit our life?
Life during the last war [World War I] and its aftermath of esca
lating need and distress freed many from a narrow-minded, bour
geois misconception: that the creature comforts of a pampered
mode of life (faster transport and communication and better in
comes) are necessities of life. Moreover, many consciences have
been awakened from their torpid sleep and kept awake as if by a
constant thunderstorm, realizing that in the face of the increasing
distress everywhere they had no right to hold on to a privileged
way of life. They have realized that they must come out of their
castles and villas in order to search out and bring in those who have
become destitute in the storm, without work or home.
Yet a life of true community with God encompasses the inmost
fortification of our stronghold as well as the outer fortifications.
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When a soul has been fully awakened to the kingdom of God, the
spirit who rules from that kingdom will not only tackle its current
mode of existence, but shape it according to his will, down to the
details. His goal is brotherly and sisterly love. This transformation
will be so thorough that very few people can even imagine it.
However, before we can think of a new form for our outward
existence, body and soul must be taken possession of by God. They
must be changed to accord with his image. We have experienced in
the history of our times how impossible it is to reconstruct an outer
existence and build it up when inner strength has gone into a de
cline. It is not only in the Russia and in the Austria of pre-World
War times that we can see how little even such great empires sig
nify when their inner character begins to break up. What is a king
dom that is divided in itself? "What does it profit a man to gain the
whole world and yet suffer harm to his soul?"
Nothing is more necessary than an inmost renewal of life. In
this renewal our destiny, independent of all alien influences, shall
unfold like a seed growing into a strong, firm tree, allowing our
soul and its whole sphere of activity to become as it is intended. It
is not in ourselves that we find the strength, inner peace, and free
dom for the growth of this true and genuine life. Still less do these
prevail in the world around us. Only the truly living one can give
them to us. Only he brings life, its fulfillment, and with it the ac
tive inner peace of his works. Only when he has become the loving,
caring overseer of our soul can it find the strength it needs for a
new, free, and active life. Only he leads to a life in which the soul,
freed from turning around itself and circling around false planets,
can live and work from the center of life.
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This life is God and his rulership. The light of the life given in
Christ shines more brightly on our weak, selfish existence than the
sun into our night. And just as the sun gives life and nourishment
to this planet, Jesus alone gives his us the strength and nourish
ment to begin a real life and build that up in place of our previous
sham existence. Jesus is the bread of life for which we hunger. He
has the water of life for which we thirst. His life, which far exceeds
all other possible ways of living, merits our dismissing once and for
all our own weak, selfish life and all ideals restricted and deter
mined by our blood. We must turn away from all the will-o'-the
wisps that flit around churchyards. We must hold his burning light
firmly in the hands of our heart because he wants to bring life into
every grave. Nothing should be in our hands but his radiant life,
because it alone is victorious over all the worlds of death.
There is a legend about a soldier who for a long time seemed to
seek nothing but murderous battle and vainglory. He devoted him
self wholeheartedly to war, and even when he joined a crusade,
vainglory seemed to be all he looked for. It so happened that he
was the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem. He had the privilege of
being the first to light his candle at the altar of the Holy Sepulcher.
This flame transformed his life, though. He forsook the prince
dom that beckoned him. He took the candle. It became everything
to him. He rode and traveled roundabout ways to bring this flame
to his people without letting it go out. He was looked upon by
many as a madman, for he held the burning light in his hands wher
ever he went, never taking his eyes off it. In the depths of loneli
ness, fallen upon by thieves, in want and exposed to storms, in hun
ger and privation and mocked at by the crowds, he concentrated
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on one thing: shielding the flame. From then on he could never
have another thought but to protect each tiny flame of holiness.
His life became a vigorous light of love that spent itself for others.*
Whoever wants to protect the flame of God's love and guard the
light of life will have to show the same attitude. Once we have
kindled our life from the flame of the crucified one, his spirit with
all its powers expresses itself in an undreamed-of way. We could
never learn it elsewhere. It is the torch of his spirit that shows the
way then. If we want to reach the goal of our destiny we can only
do it by letting his divine love flood us with its radiance.
Wherever God's fire is kept burning in our hearts, it means life
for the whole world. It stands as a light on a candlestick set up for
everyone. It represents the complete community of faith that will
bring light to the whole world as the city on the hill. Its innermost
life gathers all members around the carefully protected central
flame, as around a bonfire. Only those who protect this grail of the
church know what wealth of life God sends out into all lands from
his city.
Once we have come to recognize God as the only element of true
life, all inner powers of the soul seek to unfold in order to come
fully and completely into action, concentrated on him. The soul
that is filled with God embraces the whole of life with all its activi
ties, inner and outer, intellectual and physical. In order to bring life
completely under the authority of God's vital power, its inner
aspect must be brought under his influence first of all. The power
of infinite life sinks its roots into the innemost depths of the soul
before it has a strong and active influence on external life. The
confession "Thou givest my soul great strength" can be made
*Selma Lagerlöf, The Sacred Flame.
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truthfully only when this strength has begun to reign in our inner
being.
The inmost heart of the believing church, in which God dwells,
is like a well-watered garden, full of quiet, peace, and security. En
emies cannot find the way in. A living wall of tall trees rooted in
fertile ground protects it from the storms raging outside. The noise
of the world outside does not penetrate into the secluded center of
this garden, in which God's heart has its dwelling. And yet the gates
of the garden stay wide open so that all that is living can go in.
They stay open because all the powers and capabilities of the soul
are sent out to share in the world's distress and to bring help wher
ever possible.
When we speak of the life of the soul, we usually think only of
the innermost part of a believing spirit. But we have to remember
that the soul embraces the whole of life. That is why the apostles
of old exhorted the believers to become new in mind and spirit.
What the believer must do, therefore, is search his innermost be
ing, because his life in Christ shall be hidden in God, so that from
the bottom of his heart he can say, "I live, yet now it is no longer I
but Christ who lives in me." The spirit is our inmost treasure. When
it is illuminated by God's spirit, the Holy Spirit, our own spirit will
be able to recognize what is in us. When it is led by the spirit of
Jesus Christ, our spirit can become a lamp of God that searches the
innermost reaches of the soul by lighting them up.
By and large, the heart embraces the inner aspect of life. There
fore we find the manifestations of life in the heart –
our thinking, feeling, and willing, our disposition and the character
of our heart – ascribed to the soul as well. For the soul by its very
8 6 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L
nature includes the heart as the inner core of life. We can imagine
life as concentric circles of different colors superimposed on each
other and enclosing each other. Our external, material body, part
of nature as a whole, forms a comprehensive gray circle. A blue
circle denoting the organic life we have in common with plants is
just as big. The third circle, a red one, has the same dimensions and
stands for the life of the soul in the blood, which, as a human per
son, embraces the whole consciousness. This last circle of life is
characteristic of the animal kingdom as well.
With the smaller circles it is different. In contrast to the large
perimeter three times covered, the heart forms a smaller concen
tric circle, perhaps best indicated by fiery coloring. This is made up
of the life of inner feelings and thoughts and activities of the will,
that is, the deeper part of a character. This alone is enough to dis
tinguish us from all other living creatures. The spirit, however,
forms the center that dominates the whole. It is a secluded, inner
circle, which in view of our destiny should be colored white. This
spirit is given solely to humankind. Schiller refers to this when he
says: "Once I have searched the core of man, I know what he wants
and what he is doing." It is this core that is all important. God's
spirit wants to make his dwelling among us, beginning in our spirit.
The higher will of the soul is spirit. The spirit is the active and
creative genius. The spirit is reason working constructively to meet
the demands made by religion, ethics, and society. It is the spirit
that directly perceives and experiences what is divine in the human
heart. The soul on the other hand gets its feeling for life more
through what is physical and determined by the blood. It includes
all desires and longings and also what is purely receptive. The
whole reception of all the outer stimulations of life takes place in
the soul. It remains more sensual, more closely related to the body,
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more strongly rooted in the body, and more firmly bound to it than
the spirit. The spirit lives in the activity of the highest and freest
relationships and aims of the will. It dwells in the most royal of all
the chambers of the consciousness. For the spirit, the highest des
tiny will be infused with the Holy Spirit.
The consciousness of the soul is a living mirror of all the rela
tionships into which the life of humankind is woven. The influence
of these relationships varies greatly according to their intensity. It
is in the life of the soul that the decision is made as to which feel
ings, desires, ideals, and thoughts we allow to cross the threshold
of our innermost being.
As long as the feelings of the soul in the blood (which work in
darkness) are controlled by the power of the spirit ruling in our
hearts, they cannot grow into base intentions or evil deeds. Yet we
see in all the excitement of our times how these feelings wait for a
moment when the image of God and his influence grow weaker in
us. From that moment on, the lusts and false ideals of the blood
(allied to other powers of darkness) can cross the threshold of our
heart. They become the will to do evil, and then they unite in evil
action. Sin has come. "Lust when it has conceived gives birth to sin;
and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death."
Joyless lust for murder and hate, poisonous readiness to accuse
one's opponents and use lies to disparage them, loveless joy in
property and other personal privileges, impure and unspiritual lusts
of the body – all these lie in wait for the will with insatiable greed.
They have to capture the will with the dazzling temptations of
fered by stolen and pseudo-spiritual virtues before they can work
their evil.
The soul is able to ward off these temptations, but only when the
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will that is good has found strength to resist, coming from a firm
foothold. It finds this foothold when the content of the soul, what
fills the soul, is clearly and definitely of the Holy Spirit. The will can
reject all the enticements of seductive mental images; it can over
come all the temptations of murky ideals and aims; but it can do
this only when – through being constantly reminded by the Holy
Spirit – the soul's consciousness is firmly and clearly ruled by the
unity that comes from the heart of God, by the unity of all the
thoughts of his love, by the unity of all the pictures of his future
kingdom and its powers, and by the image of Jesus with all his
words and deeds. "Strength of character depends on this, that a
definite unity of images and ideas continually occupies the
conscious mind, weakening any opposing images and not allowing
them to enter."* If the seductive powers of other aspirations are
not to gain admittance and rule over our will, then the innermost
chamber of our soul must always be filled with the spirit of Jesus
Christ. The chamber where our spirit is enthroned must always be
filled with all his thoughts and with his will; that is, with every
impulse of his heart.
Satan, the archenemy of our soul, always has a powerful band of
accomplices at the ready to shatter and destroy it. But in the hush
of night God speaks clearly and unmistakably to the soul to draw it
away from destruction and make it his follower. He awakens our
spirit and shows us the way to life. He wants to fill our awakened
soul with his peace so that dark powers have no room. When the
soul cries out for God, driven by the distress of our time, it will be
led to the goal – to the church and to the kingdom – if by the will it
is lifted up to Jesus Christ and stays concentrated on him alone.
*Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841.
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The Conscience and Its Witness
Life resists everything that threatens to destroy or kill it. It
tries to build up its strength. It protects itself instinctively against
all the influences of death and everything hostile and harmful. Only
in a life that is going to rack and ruin – in one that has already
come under the power of death – do the instincts fail and allow
poisons to come in and destroy it. Every organism endowed with a
soul tries to ward off what is harmful to body and soul.
The innermost part of the soul – the spirit – has also an instinct
for life. This is the conscience. As a first sign of inner life, it has
become a watcher at the threshold. It is the quiet, impersonal
confidant of the human spirit. "For no one knows what is in
anyone except the spirit itself, which is within" (1 Cor. 2:11). The
conscience is one of the most primeval stirrings of life. The human
spirit, as the profoundest part of us, has to represent our innermost
calling. The most necessary tool for this is the conscience, an
instrument that warns, rouses, and commands.
The conscience is the spirit's sensitive organ of response. Its task
is to warn the character against degeneration and destruction. It is
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there to preserve moral order. The conscience has to show the
character where it can find healing, strengthening, and the direc
tion in life it is meant to take. Every time the soul is deeply
wounded, the conscience makes us painfully aware of it. It is a
warning bell that sounds every time the spiritual life falls sick.
Above all, it gives warning of the deadly misery of isolation, when
the soul has separated itself from the core of life, from the destiny
of its being – when it has separated itself from God. Therefore with
all the urgency of love, it demands reconciliation with God himself
and, as part of that, a uniting with all people. For unity is the
hallmark of life. Unity finds complete fulfillment in God and his
kingdom.
The conscience in each individual arouses a longing to come out
of all constraint and isolation and to have community with the
highest consciousness, the all-embracing consciousness of God. As
a result there will be a unanimous accord and unity of life with all
who believe in God. This urge toward God and his community of
life and faith accords with the nature of the human spirit as it was
originally. Leibnitz described God as the only object directly per
ceived by the soul that can be distinguished from the soul itself.*
God is in direct living contact with the soul and demands absolute
love and community.
The conscience awakens a direct consciousness of good and evil –
a knowledge of what promotes life and what destroys it. As such,
it can never be separated from the spirit's direct consciousness of
God. It plays a part whenever the certainty of an absolute "thou
shalt" or "thou shalt not" penetrates the consciousness. In the ab
soluteness of "thou shalt," God works directly on us. Our con
science urges us to stand by our consciousness of God. It demands
*Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, –.
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obedience to him. With every warning it gives, the conscience tries
to help our consciousness of God toward free and willing obedi
ence in faith.
It is God who wants to determine our life and lay obligations
upon it through the conscience. The conscience has been compared
to a mountain range along which God's thunder echoes a
millionfold. The further away the receiving heart is from the one
who calls, the weaker will be the echo. The nearer we are when we
receive the call of God, the more powerfully will our conscience be
struck and impressed. There is always, however, a necessary dis
tance between God's truth and our response. The conscience drives
the anxious, hesitating heart nearer and nearer to the thunderous
judgment of evil and the lightning-lit revelation of good. And yet
at the same time it keeps us at a respectful distance. There can be
no echo if there is no distance at all from the mountain wall.
"No one is good," Jesus tells us, "save God alone" (Matt. 19:17).
One alone is truly good. Those who blasphemously identify them
selves with him cannot hear the voice of God. If in the soul there is
something of the breath of this one and only being who alone is
good, then even in depraved and irreverent souls there will be a
live witness. This witness will demand a distance and yet press
closer because it judges evil and engenders good. It is the
conscience of the human spirit. When we do evil, it warns and
insists; it smites and punishes. It makes clear to us how far we are
from God. But it does still more. Even though there may be nothing
good about us, this witness lives in our souls to make it possible for
us to recognize good as good, to assure us that God is the only
source of good, and to urge us on toward it.
Even where consciousness of guilt seems to have died out, we
cannot feel at home in our selfish existence. We are well aware that
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we lack inner unity and the community that takes shape as a result.
Even the hardest heart yearns for this. We were created for com
munity. Our conscience fights against things being turned so up
side down that life is destroyed by selfish isolation. It protests
against every attempt to sever the living cohesion of things. When
ever a thread of life is broken, the conscience shows that it is
wounded. Every time our inner being is divided and, just as much,
every time the community that must come to outward expression
is disrupted, the conscience gives a warning – life is being threat
ened by destruction. To the conscience, disharmony seems terrify
ing and deadly because the very nature of the soul demands unity
of life.
Any separation from God is bound to lead the human spirit to a
deadly division within itself and cold estrangement from others.
When the conscience makes us aware of the urge toward God hid
den within us, a conflict arises between the true calling of the ego
and its actual condition. Every time we resist this urge and act
against it, our conscience blames no one but us.
Julius Müller calls the conscience, even when it is utterly ruined,
the divine bond that ties the created spirit to its origin.* It is the
conscience that shows us we belong to the people of God, although
we are degenerate and depraved members. It is the longing for God
that rouses opposition to evil. This longing is for community in his
kingdom of active love, brought about by him alone. It opposes the
divisive power of the kingdom of mammon with its lies, murder,
and impurity. The conscience makes us think about ourselves and
our depraved condition and, at the same time, about the revelation
of the higher truth of our original nature, our true nature. It shows
at the same time our wretchedness and our greatness.
*Julius Müller, –.
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The conscience is an inextinguishable part of human con
sciousness. As such, it gives bold witness to the fact that the origin
of the human spirit is noble and divine. It never lets us quite forget
that as humans we have been called to be images of God, however
weather-beaten our spiritual coat of arms, however deeply rusted,
however thickly overgrown with moss. Even in the most erring off
shoots of the human race, the memory of this image is never so
irretrievably lost that it cannot be brought back to the light once
more through God's intervention.
For this reason Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, testifies expressly
that even peoples estranged from God have a conscience. Paul is so
deeply convinced of the divine origin of all living souls that he sees the
works of the law written in the hearts of so-called heathen. In every
thing they experience and undertake, their conscience too gives wit
ness through the conflicting thoughts that accuse or excuse them.
After all, the living book of God's creation lies open for all to see;
it points constantly to the divine calling for which we were placed
in nature. Nature is a continual admonition to us, for nowhere has
God's creation departed so far from its origin and primeval purpose
as in the human race. This is made obvious by the history of the
human conscience.
Human beings were called to God's love. But once they gave
themselves to murder and rebellion and refused to let themselves
be judged and ruled by God's spirit, the pure, free spirit gave up
pleading with them (Gen. 6:3–13). He no longer even wanted to
plead with them. Violence presupposes a lack of freedom. There
fore God sent man the law and conceded him the death penalty, at
first in the form of the appointed blood-for-blood revenge: an eye
for an eye! A tooth for a tooth! "Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man again shall his blood be shed" (Gen. 9:6).
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Again, in their servile spirit, the children of those who were
meant to be God's people wanted a human king instead of God's
rulership, instead of his dominion. God in his wrath thus gave them
a completely human authority to enforce severe punishment for
murder and acts of wickedness (1 Sam. 8). Today we have long for
gotten what we have lost through these historical facts. Yet these
measures to check still worse instances of evil will remain as long
as men refuse to let God's spirit judge and rule.
The inner acquiescence of the conscience can be seen in our atti
tude to legal authority. For the sake of the conscience, everyone
must still be subject to legal authority as to an appointed servant
of God. For this authority judges and punishes evil as the conscience
demands. Yet as soon as the conscience is roused through God's
spirit, it demands – even in the face of authority – that we should
obey God rather than people. God's kingdom claims recognition
over and above all the kingdoms of this world. However, there is a
prerequisite for this all-inclusive demand of God and his spirit. It is
fulfilled only when this spirit who rules in God's kingdom really and
truly rules over us, when he can actually plead with us and determine
our whole life in an objective way according to God's kingdom.
Through the judgment and power of governmental authority, the
conscience is punished and sharpened. Through God's kingdom and
his spirit, it is set free and fulfilled. It looks everywhere for the
source of the guilt that separated us from the rulership of God. In
everything, the conscience wants to become clear in its judgment
over the boundary between good and evil, because evil has sepa
rated us from God. Evil is its enemy. It sees the enemy everywhere –
waiting to the right and to the left, besetting us behind and
before. The most dangerous outpost of all is in our heart. The evil
9 5 I N N E R L A N D : A G U I D E I N T O T H E H E A R T O F T H E G O S P E L
that surrounds and pervades our life is more than our enemy. It is
God's enemy.
Murder, deceit, lust, and possessiveness – these are the faces of
evil. Jesus called the evil spirit the "murderer from the beginning"
and "father of lies," and he called his subordinate spirits impure
spirits. Finally he has confronted us with a decision: "You cannot
serve God and mammon." God's rule is incompatible with killing,
with lying, with sexual immorality, and most of all with the rule of
property. Therefore God's kingdom is diametrically opposed to the
powers of death and sin. This is true not only for personal life but
also for human society in general, which may try to subjugate evil
and yet is mired in mammon and property: it cannot cut itself loose
from lying and impurity, and is therefore driven to greater evil –
even to mass murder.
Detection of the enemy, however, achieves nothing more than a
reconnaissance before the battle. Even the progress of the battle,
even the annihilation of the enemy does not mean that the victory
is consummated. It is only positive reconstruction that gives triumph
its value. Therefore the conscience longs for vigorous work at what is
truly good in order to be able to celebrate victory over evil.
The life of Jesus had nothing to do with killing and harming oth
ers, with untruthfulness and impurity, or any influence of mammon
or property. And Jesus went even further: in dying he defeated this
hostile power in its home territory and shattered every weapon of
the enemy. But he did still more. He brought the kingdom of God
down to the earth; he roused body and soul from death; he rose as
the living one; and through his spirit he laid the foundation for a
kingdom of complete unity for everything in heaven and on earth.
He broke down the barriers between nations, and he created the
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unity of the body of his church as his second incarnation. This new
unity and bodily reality of Jesus lives on our earth and in our
human race.
We are called to this way as soon as we accept the call. When
through Christ and his spirit we believe in the unity of God as the
one and only good, when we live in faith out of his strength, we lay
aside everything that is opposed to perfect love. We fight it to the
death on every front; we live as believers in the church of full
community, ambassadors of God's kingdom, representing Jesus
Christ and commissioned by him. In this fight for the recognition of
God's rule, in representing the final kingdom in opposition to all
governmental authorities and powers of the kingdoms of this age,
the conscience is the quiet ally of the Holy Spirit.
The conscience is that faculty of sensitivity in our inner being
which responds with pleasure to every good deed and with
displeasure to every evil deed. It exposes evil as alien and hostile to
our nature as it originally was, and as it is ultimately intended to
be. Therefore no quasi-superior point of view and no knowledge
that sets itself up as progressive can reconcile it to evil. As soon as
God's spirit takes possession of the human spirit to make a common
witness, the conscience develops a resolute firmness. It revolts with
a revulsion that becomes almost unbearable every time love is
wounded, every time love's obligations are neglected, every time
love's justice is clouded, every time love's truth is betrayed, and
God's kingdom misrepresented.
Whenever human self-preservation seeks an advantage, a
pleasure, or an influence that is contrary to the pure, absolute, and
all-embracing love of Jesus Christ, the conscience –being now an
instrument of the Holy Spirit – raises its voice in sharp protest in
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the name of the sovereign God and his absolute rule. With just as
much intensity, it furthers every fulfillment of justice and social
obligation, every disinterested act of devoted love, and every
brotherly and sisterly uniting in full community.
The impulse of joyful agreement and inner satisfaction in our
conscience when we have acted rightly in the works of love (at least
as far as motive and aim are concerned) implies an assessment of
values. In the same way, when evil and godlessness gain the upper
hand in our life, the conscience experiences qualms of shame, disquiet,
and silent self-accusation. These challenge us to evaluate our actions.
The conscience is the organ constantly at work evaluating and
passing judgment. It evaluates by feeling. It has joy in what is good,
for what is good is also just. It has joy in love, for love is also pure,
and in genuine unity and community. It feels pain and revulsion
against evil,for evil is injustice.It is pained by all that denies love;
that is, everything that destroys community, everything selfish,
impure, ungenuine, and untrue.
The conscience speaks as the divine voice within us. It strives to
bring home to us what we are (although we should be different),
what we are not (although we ought to know how we should be),
what human society is like without community, and what the
nations are like without the unity of the kingdom of God. The more
the heart is touched by God's holy nature, the more clearly does
the conscience indicate what the church of God is, and the more
clearly does it also point out how, from the basis of this church, the
believer should represent love, unity, peace, and justice, all of
which bear fruit in community.
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When we examine ourselves in the light of the destiny God has
ordained for us, we become aware of the sharp contrast between
what we should be and what we are. The conscience belongs to
human consciousness and yet represents a "thou shalt" that is quite
different. The conscience is a decidedly subjective feeling. Yet it is
based on and aims at an absolutely objective "thou shalt." Only
when the demands of the conscience agree with the objective
"thou shalt," do subjective impressions gain weight and meaning.
The conscience must represent an objective power that wants to
take possession of us from within. It needs the Holy Spirit because
within itself it does not have the power to rise above all that we
are subjectively capable of. Without God's spirit it is unable to rep
resent clearly the cause it wants to serve. And yet in remotest pa
ganism also, the conscience remains active even though, without
the spirit of the cause, its accusations and demands are distin
guished more by unbridled ferocity than by shining clarity. Like the
Furies of pagan mythology, it pursues those who flee and seizes
those who resist, so that even such masters of evil as the emperor
Nero must undergo tortures of conscience.
The comparison of the conscience with the Furies, those relent
less spirits of doom and vengeance in ancient history, is all the
closer because the Furies served just as much to protect the good
and pure as to atone for crime. They cannot point anywhere to
God's rulership because they know nothing of his Holy Spirit. They
represent the conscience that is not yet illuminated by Christ, that
does indeed know of good and evil but misses the way to the goal.
They are handmaids of the holy order of natural life, which they
strive to represent. Without it, the life that lives and moves in our
blood inevitably destroys itself.
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The Furies are keen-sighted huntresses armed with whips and
spears, bows and arrows. Shrouded in mist, they lie in wait for evil
doers, ready to distract their senses, derange their spirits and suck
their blood. For they too represent the old order – "blood for
blood." Thus they correspond to the merciless authority of the
criminal court, about which God spoke his awful word after the
flood, when his spirit no longer wanted to plead with a perverse
people: "I will demand your lifeblood. Whoever sheds the blood of
man, by man again shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his
own image" (Gen. 9:5–6).
Throughout all ages, sin against the blood of a soul endowed with
the breath of God has struck the conscience as the gravest crime,
the capital offense against God and his order. Therefore avenging it
is seen as the first duty of human authority. The avenging authority
(representing human order) and also the wild raging of the Furies
(representing the unredeemed conscience) are far removed from
the spirit of the heart of God, and nothing can be found in them
that reveals anything of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet hidden
within them lies a corrective justice, a justice of wrath. It is the
wrath of God, which through his judgment wants to make us ready
for the perfect justice of love.
In this way the old Furies, as handmaids of punitive justice and as
executioners of necessary law, are the strictest avengers of evil. But
they are more. Like the authority of the state, they are intended to
uphold and protect upright and law-abiding hearts. They hold their
threatening snakebites in readiness for evildoers, but the good they
meet with friendly eyes, bestowing their blessings as goddesses of
the earth.
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The Furies are more tormenting than any judicial authorities can
ever be, for they are an objective personification of the conscience
that has not yet been gripped by the gospel of perfect love. They
symbolize the same punishment of conscience that Pestalozzi
describes so vividly when his character Hans Wüst rolls on the floor
in torment over his perjury – howling like a dog whose entrails are
torn.* When Hans tears his hair out and draws his own blood with
his fists, the cry is wrung out of him: "Satan, cursed Satan, has me
in his clutches!" Abuse, shame, and imprisonment are nothing to
him compared with the horror, the despair, and the fear that God
might never be merciful to him again in all eternity. Here, with the
eyes of the modern world, we see the Furies come to life again as
agony of conscience.
The same agony of conscience made Luther cry out, "Oh, my sins,
my sins, my sins!" It is the same indescribable torture about which
he said:
I too know someone who declares he has often suffered this punishment. True, it did not last long, but it was so severe and so hellish that no tongue can tell of its severity, no pen can describe it, nor can anyone believe it who has not experienced it. If it had reached its peak or continued for half an hour longer –yes, for only a tenth of an hour longer – he would have been utterly destroyed and all his bones burned to ashes. Here God appears, mighty in his wrath, and all creation too, so no one knows where to turn. There is no comfort and everything is full of accusations.
Still at that time, Luther's conscience stood in the midst of this
deadly fear of wrath and punishment, outside the gate and outside
the grace of God, and yet he pursued the positive goal of divine
justice. The conscience is more than a protection for what is good,
*Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, –.
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which has to be guarded from evil. It is more than the terrifying
discovery that there is nothing really good in us. It is more than the
punishment of evil through the justice of God. Rather, through the
devastating judgment of evil, the conscience must prepare our in
ner vision for the restoration of what is good. When the conscience
is gripped and illuminated by the spirit of God, it must prepare the
way for faith and rebirth through deep repentance and a complete
change of heart. The darkened inner eye must become like the sun
so that it can see the kingdom of God. The conscience that is break
ing down under wrath must be led to justice – making it possible
for a new life of active love to arise from faith.
As part of the human spirit, the conscience can never reveal
the kingdom of God of its own accord. It can only strengthen the
echo when the call to repentance reaches the heart – a call from
God, piercing the heart and directing it to the kingdom of God. The
call to life can come only from the origin of life, from God's heart.
God's heart revealed itself in the voices of his prophets. In Jesus
Christ it reached man as fullness of beauty, grace, and truth. The
conscience is a God-created organ that is part of the life of the hu
man soul, but it can do no more than answer his call as a call from
the Holy Spirit. What it can do from its seat in the human spirit is
to accept, affirm, and represent the demands made by God, that is,
by the divine life of Jesus.
The divine spirit wants to penetrate and rule over all areas of life.
Consequently, the awakened conscience cannot be restricted just
to the area of morals. As the aesthetic conscience, it promotes joy
in what is beautiful, edifying, and pure. From deep within, it
cleanses our taste – also as regards the creation of art – from filth
and ugliness, from artificiality and ungenuineness. As an intellec
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tual conscience, it is the instinct for honesty and integrity; it has an
understanding for what must be acknowledged as the truth, and
expresses it in accordance with the facts. As a social conscience, it
demands the dedication of the whole of our life, with all our
faculties and possessions, to the service of love –to brotherliness,
to justice, and to full community with the poor and oppressed. As a
spiritual conscience, it desires all this for the sake of God's truth,
for his love and justice – that is, for the supreme demand of unity
with God himself and unity with his absolute sovereignty. Every
where, the conscience is revealed as the heart's will for truth, jus
tice, and unity. In everything, it demands obedience in the face of
the objective absolute. It is the absolute will of God that challenges
the conscience to let him become acknowledged as lord over all
that belongs to life on earth.
Jesus Christ alone, in accord with the divine word of the Jewish
prophets, proclaimed that the will of God's love is turned toward
the earth and its peoples. He alone has brought the authority and
reality of his kingdom to the earth.
The social yearning for brotherly justice and the longing for
peace (which is born of active love for the enemy) are possible
nowhere but on the ground of Christ, or under his influence and
direction. This is why some individualistic anarchists argue that
communism and atheistic socialism are secularized expressions of
Christianity. And indeed, the assertion would not be thinkable
without Christianity's love for one's neighbor, equality of birth,
faith in the future as faith in a kingdom of peace and justice, and a
social conscience awake to the stirrings of the divine.
When the conscience has found God's justice in Christ, it recog
nizes human injustice as the opposite of his love and of his alive
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ness. God's justice, which comes to expression in Jesus, is greater
than the justice of the best human court, system, or code; it is
greater than the religious and social justice of theologians and
moralists. Like salt, like a light, like a tree, it is a real and living
power of radiant warmth, strength, and protection – the real
power of life in all its fullness. Therefore the life that God's justice
gives birth to as perfect love must be completely different from
the life born of any other justice, however socially admirable.
Even the social conscience of the believer does not exhaust the
truth of this life (although this truth remains the most important
expression of the social conscience). Christianity has shown that
honesty with oneself is the most basic prerequisite for a Christian
life. Even its bitterest opponents have to admit that the inner
history of Christianity has produced an increasing exactness in the
conception of truth. They can see that the sensitivity of the
Christian conscience has been transferred to the scientific
conscience, at times producing the finest intellectual integrity. The
continual sharpening of the instinct of truthfulness has meant such
a growth in scholarly exactness that Friedrich Nietzsche had to
admit: "Conscientiousness in small things – the self-control of the
religious person – was a preparatory school for the scientific or
scholarly character and, above all, for the attitude in which we can
treat a problem seriously without taking into consideration how it
affects us personally."
The intellectual conscience of the believer also does not exhaust
the truth of life. The conscience in Christ recognizes that what is
untrue is the opposite of what is alive and essential to life. Truth
means more than the intellect being indisputably right. Truth must
seize onto the ultimate reality of life in all that is genuine and
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essential to it, all that is unadulterated and clear, all that has
effective strength and power. Consequently truth, in unity with
justice, must show itself as the very marrow of life, as vital energy
and courage, as a productive joy in creative work, and as the power
of love. Truth, as love, is master of the essential nature of things.
The activity of the conscience is not exhausted by the condemnation
of what is evil, unlovely, and wrong. It works toward the accep
tance of all the life-energies of love, for they are the very core of
life. Just as love itself never ends, so the conscience that works for
love can never come to the end of its activity. The conscience can
never put a stop to its working. Even though it may not always
have to suffer to the same degree from the consciousness of what
is evil, ugly, and untrue, and even though there may be nowhere
any good in need of its protection, the work of the conscience will
never come to an end.
A good conscience is more than just a conscience that is not bad.
It is not only a witness that condemns or approves but, above all
else, a voice that impels us to loving dedication. We can see it
perfected in the apostle Paul, when his heart beat for his people
and demanded a readiness for the ultimate sacrifice. A good
conscience never waits in passive silence; it always longs for action
and drives toward it. It impels the will toward a truly loving life –
ultimately, toward God and his kingdom.
Something of the demands made by the active conscience can be