Part 8 of 14 - The Essential Spirit -

The Sin-Spirit of the Devil Vs the “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”

Paul here describes “the walk” of the Ephesian Christians before Christ’s “Spirit of life” is working in them.

Eph. 2:2-3 ²… in time past ye walked … according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: ³… in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.   

Here we see that Christians in time past walked according to the Sin-spirit, the Sin nature indwelling them.

Paul goes on; Eph 2:8-10 For by grace are ye saved (sozo, made whole) through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: ⁹ Not of works…. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship (poiema, as His product), created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. God “saves” or “completes” each believer (Eph 2:8) by adding Christ’s overcoming “Spirit of life” into them. He then makes us His “workmanship” or “product,” by Him working within us; so we might then walk differently.

Paul says “the spirit that doth work in the children of disobedience” is “the prince of the power of the air,” Satan, the Devil himself. The Devil is the original sinner, the one who “sinneth from the beginning” (1John 3:8). His is the fallen Sin nature that indwells every human since Adam’s fall, including Christians.

Believers might ask, “Where in us is this Sin-spirit located, since Christ’s Spirit is in our spirit?” Here Paul tells us the Sin-spirit and nature is located in man’s physical body members.

Romans 7:17-23 … it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. … ²⁰Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. ²¹I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. … ²³But I see another law (operating principle) in my (body) members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law (operation) of sin which is in my (body) members.

Rom 8:3 God sending his own Son… condemned  sin in the flesh.

Since Adam, every man possesses the God-breathed human spirit he receives at his physical birth; each of us is also born with the Sin-spirit in our body of flesh. Adam, by believing and trusting the words of the Serpent, rebelled against God’s injunction to not eat of that forbidden “tree of the knowledge of good & evil.”  He took that tree’s fruit into his body, causing ultimate death. By Adam’s rebellious act, Sin and death entered the flesh of mankind. Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man (Adam) sin (as a nature) entered into the world (of mankind), and death by sin… (1Cor 15:56). Being born of Adam’s seed, we’re conceived in Sin (Psalm 51:5), to have the Adamic Sin nature. We then have added our own acts of that Sin nature in our flesh, called sins.

Just as Adam, we each have misused our God-given human life; we’ve acted out the dictates of the Sin nature in our flesh. “But God, who is rich in mercy…quickened us” (Eph 2:4-5). He made a way for us to be reconciled to Him and overcome "sin and death." We have the capacity to say yes or no to receiving reconciliation to God by receiving Christ. God’s works in our spirit’s conscience, prompting us to open our soul’s heart to receive reconciliation that is in Christ, and receive Christ’s very own resurrected, Spirit of life into our spirit.  1John 4:13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him (Christ), and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.With reconciliation, God imparts to us the Spirit-life of His “only begotten Son,” Jesus Christ. Thereby, we can come to have peace and union with God (Rom 5:1). Each of us can receive the eternal “spirit of life in Christ Jesus” to complete us and enable us to overcome the Sin and death.  

Jesus was the sinless sacrifice for Sin; thus Jesus was “justified in the Spirit” (1Tim 3:16). The spirit of a man who receives Christ, trusting in His shed blood, death, burial, and resurrection, thereby becomes justified, innocent (Gal 2:16). The believer then simultaneously receives the deposit of the eternal, “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” to abide in his newly justified spirit. So, when we receive Christ we are justified and reconciled to God; then immediately receiving Christ’s Spirit of life into our human spirit, to complete us and save us daily from the influence of indwelling Sin. Rom 5:10 … we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved (sozo, completed) by his life. That element of completion is nothing less than the overcoming life of God, in Jesus, now as “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” within us.