Carnal or Spiritual; 1
Corinthians 3:1-9
This is s crucial
passage for understanding the dynamics for the spiritual life. One of the most
difficult things that has plagued pastors, theologians and many Christians ever
since the early days of the church is, what do you do with sin in the life of a
believer? It is amazing that even in the early church under the apostles they
struggled with this. Many Christians don’t understand the dynamics and there is
much that is taught that is wrong on these passages. Much that is taught is
wrong simply because it appears on the surface, just reading through the
Scriptures, to be saying one thing and it is really saying something else. It
seems that if you come at the passage with a certain preconceived mindset that
the last half of 1 Corinthians 2 and 1 Corinthians 3 is addressed to issue of
spiritual maturity, or to spirituality as maturity, as opposed to maturity in
terms of an absolute. That is really the issue and something that is so rarely
understood.
There are four
problems that people have when they come to this passage when they come to the
spiritual life. The first problem is that people so often have an inadequate
view of the sin nature, that somehow, especially for the believer after
salvation, just is not as bad as it was before salvation,
that somehow something happens at salvation which limits the influence,
power and evil of the sin nature. So the conclusion is that if you are a
believer, a child of God, a member of the royal family of God,
that somehow you won’t do what unbelievers do. That is an inadequate
view of sin and part of the problem is that there is a superficial view of what
sin is. With folks struggling with issues with issues related to this it always
comes down to the fact that people are over-emphasizing certain overt sins.
Often they are sexual sins, sins of perversion, sins that shock and offend many
people. There is this idea that somehow there is a relativity to sin. And there
is a relativity to sin. In other words, the realm of relativity in son has to
do with its consequences in time. Some sins have greater consequences in time
than others, some sins have greater consequences on your soul than other sins, some sins have greater consequences in your personal life,
in your career. So there are some sins we can commit that, relatively speaking
when compared to other sins and compared to other people, have grater
consequences. But there is also an absolute status to sin and that has to do
with its comparison to the absolute righteousness of God. All sin is sin,
whether it is a small white lie, a mental attitude sin such as arrogance or
pride which can manifest itself in rather benign forms in terms of
pseudo-compassion and pseudo-humility where it doesn’t look so bad and doesn’t
seem to be so harmful. To more egregious forms of arrogance that produce
someone like Adolf Hitler or Adam Hussein, or Bin
Laden. In some cases it is religious arrogance that is even more destructive to
the lives of people. But arrogance, because it is not overt, because it is
often masked and cloaked under the guise of morality and doing good, is often
overlooked. But someone who is a mass-murderer, somebody who is a serial
killer, someone whose life just reeks of hatred and bitterness and anger
towards other people, is the type of person that our society tends to taint
with that dark brush of evil, and so we tend to look at certain sins and
classify them as so evil that not Christian, no true child of God, could ever
commit such a sin. When a person does these things the tendency is to say that
person wasn’t ever saved, weren’t genuinely saved, weren’t a true believer, that they just had an intellectual faith and not a
heart faith. So the first problem arises from the fact the people have an
inadequate view of the sin nature.
The second reason
we have a problem in understanding sin in the life of the believer after
salvation is the distorted view of regeneration. We don’t understand just
exactly what happened at regeneration.
The third problem
is a misunderstanding of what the Bible teaches about the makeup of man in
terms of body, soul and spirit, what we call trichotomy; that man is made up of
a body and a soul at birth but then at regeneration he receives a human spirit,
and that that human spirit, therefore, is a distinct immaterial element of
man’s nature that is not to be contrasted with the sin nature. It is not the
human spirit versus the sin nature, this isn’t comparing like with like, it is
not apples and oranges. There is tremendous confusion sometimes about the
nature of these terms that speak of man’s basic makeup.
The fourth area
of problems is that because of the first three preconceived notions, because of
problems in the first three areas, people tend to mistranslate certain key
passages such as 1 John 3:9 where it talks about the fact that a believer would
not sin, and they translate that present tense there as “continue to sin.”
Recent Greek scholarship has shown that that is a poor use of the present tense
in that verse and it doesn’t mean to continue to sin. Other passages such as
Galatians 5 and Romans 7 are also mistranslated because of these preconceived
notions.
We need to
briefly review the doctrine of the sin nature and carnality.
1)
The
sin nature remains in the believer after salvation, and that sin nature is just
as powerful as it was before salvation, nothing changes. The believer receives
a new nature and that is the reception of the human spirit but the sin nature
continues. The core of the sin nature is the lust pattern, and that is derived
biblically from Galatians 5:16-18 where it talks about the lusts of the flesh,
wars against the Holy Spirit. So lust is the key motivator. It drives the sin
nature in two different directions: a) the area of strength; b) the area of
weakness.
2)
The
sin nature does not lose power after salvation. There is no biblical basis for
the idea that the sin nature is less potent after salvation. In fact, the sin
nature does not decrease in power as you mature as a believer. It is just as
powerful the day you die as it was the day you became a believer. No matter how
mature you become the sin nature remains the same.
3)
The
sin nature is not only the source of sin but it is also the source of morality,
and we have to distinguish between morality and what we can produce on our own
apart from God the Holy Spirit and the spiritual virtues that are produced by
God the Holy Spirit and categorized as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians
5:22, 23. So the sin nature not only produces sin but it also produces morality
in the unbeliever. Remember, the unbeliever can only operate on the sin nature, his morality cannot come from any other source.
4)
Many
unbelievers will have a more impressive morality if their trend is toward
asceticism and legalism than believers who have a trend in their sin nature
toward licentiousness.
5)
The
believer can choose not to operate on the sin nature, and only the believer can
make that choice under the Holy Spirit. The basis for this for the believer is
found in Romans 6:12, 13; Galatians 5:16-18. The believer has the option to not
sin; the unbeliever never has the option to not operate on the sin nature; he
may not sin, he may be involved in human good, but it still comes from the sin
nature.
6)
We
cannot overestimate the power of the sin nature. Jeremiah 17:9 NASB
“The heart [leb, the sin nature] is more
deceitful than all else and is desperately sick [incurable]; Who
can understand it?” Even at salvation it is not sure, the power is broken but
it is still there and not limited in any way.
7)
The source of sin
is volition; the basis for sin is the influence of the sin nature. Because
there is no alternate in the unbeliever he can only choose to sin. Only the believer has an option not to sin.
8)
The issue in the
Christian life is, whose leadership are you following?
The Holy Spirit or the sin nature? That is the issue.
When we come to 1 Corinthians there are four things that need to be clarified.
First of all we have to understand the contrast between the natural man in
1)
1
Corinthians
2)
The
spiritual man is spiritual in two senses. In that passage he is spiritual because
he possesses a human spirit in contrast to the natural man who does not possess
a human spirit. The contrast is clearly between unregenerate, so the first
sense of spiritual has to do with being regenerate, born-again. That gives them
the ability, then, the potential, to understand the Word—1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians 3:1
NASB “And I, brethren, could
not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in
Christ.”
Before we get
started in chapter three we have to understand the flow of Paul’s argument.
Remember back in chapter one he started off with reminding the Corinthians that
they were sanctified, they were “in Christ,” they had a position in Christ, and
because they failed to understand that there were all kinds of problems and
divisions in the congregation. Now Paul is going to tie all of this together.
He has left that subject, and it seems like he is on this rabbit trail because
for the rest of chapter one and down through chapter two he is talking about
knowledge. He is talking about the way man naturally knows, human viewpoint
thinking versus divine viewpoint thinking, the contrast between the wisdom of
God versus the wisdom of man. That was his whole subject. He is talking about
knowing God’s Word and knowing truth from divine viewpoint. He is going to tie that
back in chapter three where the issue is going to come right back to both knowledge
and the divisions in the congregation, and then at the end of the chapter he is
going to move into the judgment seat of Christ. What does the judgment seat of
Christ have to do with knowledge, and carnality versus spirituality? That is
where he drives the argument home because the emphasis is that carnality is
related to ignorance of doctrine. When you are carnal
you can’t learn doctrine because it is God the Holy Spirit who teaches you
doctrine and who produces maturity, and when you are carnal there is no growth
in knowledge, you can’t understand divine viewpoint, and the result is going to
be negative production in the spiritual life. When there is negative production
in the spiritual life you are going to end up at the judgment seat of Christ
with wood, hay, and stubble, and no productivity and no rewards. That is where
he heads with this.
So here there is
tremendous practical value and motivational value, that if we are not advancing
in knowledge of the Word and divine viewpoint then there can’t be any
production, and consequently without production—it doesn’t matter how much
Christian service there is—the result is loss at the judgment seat of Christ.
Paul says, “And
I, brethren.” He says brethren, not brothers and sisters. More and more we are
going to discover that modern translations (from people who ought to know better)
are coming out with gender-sensitive language. The problem with that is that it
is built on a human viewpoint concept of culture and language but inherently it
is an extremely subtle attack on inerrancy and verbal plenary inspiration. When
you change the meaning of the text in translation to be gender-inclusive it
changes the meaning and emphasis in the original Greek. It is also a very
subtle attack on God because God revealed the Word in a certain way and if God
had wanted Paul to say “brothers and sisters” He could have said that. So it is
an assault on inspiration and inerrancy and we have to be careful. There is a
new translation out on the internet called the NET Bible and it completely buys
into gender-sensitive language. It is not as bad as another new translation
called Today’s New International Version which is completely gender-sensitive
and inclusive and has just created a firestorm of controversy.
“Brethren”
emphasizes the fact that Paul is talking to believers. “…could not speak to you as to spiritual.” Paul is beginning
to change the notion here of spiritual, not just as regenerate but he is
talking then as regenerate in terms of something more. In this first use here
we don’t get all that he is going to pack into it, it doesn’t become apparent
except in the contrast, “…but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ.” When
we look at this initially in the English it looks like men of flesh is
equivalent to being immature, to being a baby in Christ, but there is more to
it than that. The word for “men of flesh”—and incidentally, the NIV horribly
mistranslates this as ‘worldly,’ typically a
translation of the Greek word KOSMOS [kosmoj], meaning world—is SARKIKOS [sarkikoj] which means flesh (from SARX [sarc]). Men of flesh (‘carnal’ in the KJV) here has to do with those who are living according to the flesh
or the sin nature. Carnal means to live according to the sin nature.
1 Cor 3:2 NASB “I
gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able {to receive
it.} Indeed, even now you are not yet able…” So in the state of carnality they
are not able to receive or really understand or move beyond basic doctrine. [3]
“for you are still fleshly [SARKIKOS]. For
since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you
not walking like mere men?” In the Greek it says, “walking according to man” – KATA ANTHROPOS [kata a)nqrwpoj], the
same kind of phraseology as in Galatians
Let’s go back and plug that
into that phrase “babes in Christ,” because that looks like that is talking
about simple immaturity, which is how 99% of people will translate this. However,
the Greek word here is not BREPHOS [brefoj].
There are two different words that can refer to a baby. BREPHOS refers
to a baby who is immature in age and the emphasis is on helplessness due to
infancy. The word used here, though, is NEPIOS [nhpioj].
This is important because it was used as a term of insult. It emphasizes
ignorance, not helplessness. What is the subject? All the way back through
chapter one the emphasis has been on knowledge, divine viewpoint versus human
viewpoint. The contrast is between learning God’s Word and learning to think
like God versus learning to think like man. NEPIOS was a pejorative term, an insulting term, like when a
parent says to a child, ‘Stop acting like a baby.’ So a believer can be many
years past his time of regeneration but still be acting like an ignorant baby.
So the emphasis here is not on immaturity per se but on ignorance. The reason
they are ignorant is because they haven’t been walking by the Holy Spirit and
learning doctrine under the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit. They have
rejected positional truth, they don’t understand it, they are not applying it,
they have rejected divine viewpoint, and they are failing to confess their sins.
So Paul says that because of
that, when he was first there—it is a historical aorist tense here—“I gave you
milk to drink,” because at that time they were BREPHOS, a young believer. They
were immature at that time and not able to receive solid food, and typical of
immature believers they were spending most of their time out of fellowship. But
then he goes on to say that even now they are not able, they are still not
able. Why? They were not walking by the Spirit. They were still carnal, still
operating on the sin nature, and this was evident from the
jealousy and strife among them, and “are you not fleshly, and are you
not walking like mere men?”—still walking like an unbeliever. The point here is
that the believer can live and act and look like an unbeliever. This is what
Paul is saying here. Remember what Paul says over in Galatians 5 about the sin
nature: “…the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity,
sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy…” That is exactly
what is going on in
At the instant of salvation we
are baptized by means of the Holy Spirit and placed in Christ. That is
positional truth. At the same time we
have our day-to-day experience. At the instant of salvation we are filled by
the Holy Spirit and we are walking by the Spirit, but it is not long before we
sin. When we sin we are out of fellowship. We start walking according to the
sin nature, we are walking in darkness, John says, we are operating on the
basis of the sin nature, which is called carnality. The only way to recover is
to use 1 John 1:9, confess or admit our sins to God, and we are restored to
fellowship so that we can continue to grow. When we are walking by the Spirit
we are walking by the light. That means we can learn the Word of God, and it is
the Word of God and the Spirit of God that produces spiritual growth. When you
don’t have the Word of God with the Spirit of God there is no spiritual growth
and you maybe chronologically and old believer but you are still living like a
baby, not a helpless baby but an ignorant baby. The issue isn’t age; the issue
is ignorance. That is the problem with the folk at Corinth.