The ever present danger in the Christian’s life is accepting and substituting the good for the best. It is possible for good to be the enemy of the best. Eve put good before God. The natural is not spiritual; the former mocks the latter, as Ishmael did Isaac. Natural temperament can bestow all its goods to feed the poor, and even give its body to be burned at the stake; yet be void of spirituality. The natural can never receive the things of the Spirit of God, no matter how well it passes itself off as being good.
The great peril of “natural niceties” is that one ends up thinking, “I…have need of nothing.” It will leave Christ on the doorstep of your life. Let us beware of flaunting our natural gifts as spiritual. C. S. Lewis writes, “The Devil was an archangel once; his natural gifts were as far above yours as yours are above those of a chimpanzee.”
A naturally nice temperament is as corrupt and vile in God’s sight as a loathsome one, if it has not been crucified. Oswald Chambers said, “Beware of not going to the funeral of your own independence.” Our natural only becomes divinely acceptable, when it is under the supernatural control of God.
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