it?” It is because you have been fighting with the temper, and you have not been fighting with the root of the temper.  You have not seen that it is all because you are in the carnal state, and not properly given up to the Spirit of God.  It may be that you never were taught it; that you never saw it in God’s Word; that you never believed it.  But there it is; the truth of God remains unchangeable.  Jesus Christ can give us the victory over sin, and can keep us from actual transgression.  I am not telling you that the root of sin will be eradicated, and that you will have no longer any natural tendency to sin; but when the Holy Spirit comes not only with His power for service as a gift, but when He comes in Divine grace to fill the heart, there is victory over sin; power not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh.  And you see a mark of the carnal state not only in unlovingness, self-consciousness and bitterness, but in so many other sins.  How much worldliness, how much ambition among men, how much seeking for the honor that comes from man—­all the fruit of the carnal life—­to be found in the midst of Christian activity!  Let us remember that the carnal state is a state of continual sinning and failure, and God wants us not only to make confession of individual sins, but to come to the acknowledgment that they are the sign that we are not living a healthy life,—­we are yet carnal.

A third mark which will explain further what I have been saying, is that this carnal state may be found in existence in connection with great spiritual gifts.  There is a difference between gifts and graces.  The graces of the Spirit are humility and love, like the humility and love of Christ.  The graces of the Spirit are to make a man free from self; the gifts of the Spirit are to fit a man for work.  We see this illustrated among the Corinthians.  In the first chapter Paul says, “I thank God that you are enriched unto all utterance, and all knowledge, and all wisdom.”  In the 12th and 14th chapters we see that the gifts of prophecy and of working miracles were in great power among them; but the graces of the Spirit were noticeably absent.

And this may be in our days as well as in the time of the Corinthians.  I may be a minister of the Gospel; I may teach God’s Word beautifully; I may have influence, and gather a large congregation, and yet, alas!  I may be a carnal man; a man who may be used by God, and may be a blessing to others, and yet the carnal life may still mark me.  You all know the law that a thing is named according to what is its most prominent characteristic.  Now, in these carnal Corinthians there was a little of God’s Spirit, but the flesh predominated; the Spirit had not the rule of their whole life.  And the spiritual men are not called so because there is no flesh in them, but because the Spirit in them has obtained dominance, and when you meet them and have intercourse with them, you feel that the Spirit of God has sanctified them.  Ah, let us beware lest the blessing God gives us in our work deceive us and lead us to think that because he has blessed us, we must be spiritual men.  God may give us gifts that we use, and yet our lives may not be wholly in the power of the Holy Ghost.