Ephesians

In the Spirit—or the Sinful Nature?

You might be surprised by the suggestion that it is possible to use a spiritual gift in the power of the sinful nature. The fact is that each of us begins life on the basis of the sinful nature, we live our lives fully in the sinful nature until the moment we receive Christ as Lord and Savior, and we easily revert to living in the sinful nature even throughout our Christian lives. That is the inner war that Paul describes in Romans 7-8—the fact that every Christian is a walking battleground in a war between the spirit and the sinful nature.

The world operates on the basis of the sinful nature. We who are in Christ are to operate in the power of the new life in Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit. When we exercise our gifts in the power of the Spirit we become the Lord’s hands, feet, and lips on earth, spreading His healing touch and saving message wherever we go. When we exercise our gifts in the power of the sinful nature, what issues from us is not ministry, but corruption.

Perhaps you have heard preachers speak in the sinful nature—exercising the gift of preaching but doing so out of a self-centered desire for self-exaltation and self-advancement. Such preaching often attracts hundreds or thousands, and sounds very pleasant, but it does not spring from the power of the Spirit. Such preaching ultimately produces death and corruption. Nothing is more tragic and wasteful than to exercise a spiritual gift in the power of the sinful nature.

We need the help of the Scriptures to see what the sinful nature is, and who the Holy Spirit is, and how He operates in our lives and through our gifts. We must continually immerse our minds and hearts in God’s Word, allowing Him to open our eyes to new and deeper insights into the gifts He has given us and how He wants us to use them.

We need to put our gifts to daily use, exploring the unique capabilities with which God has endowed us. And as we use those gifts, we will encounter joys and successes—and we will also encounter obstacles and setbacks. Don’t be discouraged—the obstacles and setbacks can be even more important to your maturity and understanding of your gifts than the joys and successes. God knows that, gifted as we are, we still have rough edges. We need to be planed and sandpapered and smoothed. God has several grades of sandpaper, running from extremely fine to extremely rough! Our job is to cooperate with Him in having our corners rounded, and our coarse and scratchy surfaces polished to shiny perfection.