The Masters Indwelling | Page 5

his eyes are opened, he learns to be afraid of his sin, and to flee from it to
Christ, and to accept Christ as a mighty deliverer. But a man needs a second conviction of
sin; a believer must be convicted of his peculiar sin. The sins of an unconverted man are
different from the sins of a believer. An unconverted man, for instance, is not ordinarily
convicted of the corruption of his nature; he thinks principally about external sins,--"I
have sworn, been a liar, and I am on the way to hell." He is then convicted for conversion.
But the believer is in quite a different condition. His sins are far more blamable, for he
has had the light and the love and the Spirit of God given to him. His sins are far deeper.
He has striven to conquer them and he has grown to see that his nature is utterly corrupt,
that the carnal mind, the flesh, within him, is making his whole state utterly wretched.
When a believer is thus convicted by the Holy Spirit, it is specially his life of unbelief
that condemns him, because he sees that the great guilt connected with this has kept him
from receiving the full gift of God's Holy Spirit. He is brought down in shame and

confusion of face, and he begins to cry: "Woe is me, for I am undone. I have heard of
God by the hearing of the ear; I have known a great deal of Him and preached about Him,
but now mine eye seeth Him." God comes near him. Job, the righteous man, whom God
trusted, saw in himself the deep sin of self and its righteousness that he had never seen
before. Until this conviction of the wrongness of our carnal state as believers comes to
each one of us; until we are willing to get this conviction from God, to take time before
God to be humbled and convicted, we never can become spiritual men.
Then comes the third mark, which is that out of the carnal state into the spiritual is only
one step. One step; oh, that is a blessed message I bring to you--it is only one step. I
know many people will refuse to admit that it is only one step; they think it too little for
such a mighty change. But was not conversion only one step?
So it is when a man passes from carnal to spiritual. You ask if when I talk of a spiritual
man I am not thinking of a man of spiritual maturity, a real saint, and you say: "Does that
come in one day? Is there no growth in holiness?" I reply that spiritual maturity cannot
come in a day. We can not expect it. It takes growth, until the whole beauty of the image
of Christ is formed in a man. But still I say that it needs but one step for a man to get out
of the carnal life into the spiritual life. It is when a man utterly breaks with the flesh;
when he gives up the flesh into the crucifixion death of Christ; when he sees that
everything about it is accursed and that he can not deliver himself from it; and then
claims the slaying power of Christ's cross within him,--it is when a man does this and
says: "This spiritual life prepared for me is the free gift of my God in Christ Jesus," that
he understands how one step can bring him out of the carnal into the spiritual state.
In that spiritual life there will be much still to be learned. There will still be imperfections.
Spiritual life is not perfect; but the predominant characteristic will be spiritual. When a
man has given himself up to the real, living, acting, ruling power of God's Spirit, he has
got into the right position in which he can grow. You never think of growing out of
sickness into health; you may grow out of feebleness into strength, as the little babe can
grow to be a strong man; but where there is disease, there must healing come if there is to
be a cure effected. There are Christians who think that they must grow out of the carnal
state into the spiritual state. You never can. What could help those carnal Corinthians? To
give them milk could not help them, for milk was a proof they were in the wrong state.
To give them meat would not help them, for they were unfit to eat it. What they needed
was the knife of the surgeon. Paul says that the carnal life must be cut out. "They that are
Christ's have crucified the flesh." When a man understands what that means, and accepts
it in