378 The Spiritual Man
Frequently the enemy entices Christians to harbor an unforgiving
spirit—a very common symptom indeed among God’s children.
Perhaps the fall of spiritual Christians can be traced chiefly to this
very cause. Such bitterness and fault-finding and enmity inflict a
severe blow upon spiritual life. If believers fail to see that such an
attitude is distinctly from the enemy and not from themselves, they
shall never be emancipated from the spirit of hatred.
At still other times Satan induces the spirit of God’s people to
become narrow and confined. He seduces these Christians into
separating themselves from others by drawing lines of demarcation.
If anyone is blind to the concept of the church as a body he will be
devoted to his “small circle,” proving that his spirit is already
shrunken. The spiritual person, however, does not consider the things
of God as his own but loves the whole church in his heart. If one’s
spirit is open, the river of life overflows; should his spirit shrink, he
hinders God’s work and lessens his own usefulness. A spirit that is
not large enough to embrace all the children of God has been
poisoned already.
Often Satan injects pride into the believer’s spirit, evoking in him
an attitude of self-importance and of self-conceit. He causes him to
esteem himself a very outstanding person, one who is indispensable
in God’s work. Such a spirit constitutes one of the major reasons for
the fall of believers: “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty
spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16.18).
The evil spirit infects the believer’s spirit with these and other
venoms. If these poisons are not opposed instantly they soon become
“the works of the flesh” (Gal. 5.19). At first these are only poisons
from Satan, but they can be transformed into sins of the flesh if the
Christian accepts them, even unconsciously, rather than resists them.
If the venom in the spirit is not dealt with it shall immediately
become the sin of the spirit, a sin severer than any other. James and