Carnal Christians
Parkdale Grace Fellowship
Sunday AM, April 6, 2008
1 Corinthians 3:1-4
Carnal Christians
The world often accuses Christians of being hypocrites and unfortunately we’ve all witnessed many examples of professing Christians behaving just as badly as unbelievers and sometimes we have been guilty ourselves. How do we explain the behavior of the Christians in the church at Corinth with their divisions, drunkenness, sexual immorality and so on? How do we explain the chronic failure in some of our own lives? In 1 Corinthians chapter three the Apostle Paul says this kind of behavior is the result of being carnal.
The Bible teaches that there are three main spiritual categories of people in the world: There is the natural person, the spiritual person and the carnal person. The natural person is the unbeliever who does not have the Spirit of God dwelling in him or her. They are separated from God – All they have available to them for living life is their natural abilities and natural resources. The spiritual person is the believer who possesses the Holy Spirit. Their life is now governed and controlled by the Spirit of God and therefore their character, their actions and their speech are usually an expression of the life of Jesus Christ.
The third category of people in the world is the group we will be studying today. They are the carnal Christian. The carnal Christian is a believer who possesses the Holy Spirit and they have access to all of the Spirit’s gifts and power. But their life is not yielded to the control of the Holy Spirit and therefore their life more closely resembles the natural person than the spiritual person. They live out of the natural resources.
The majority of the believers in the church at Corinth were described by Paul as being carnal and not spiritual. It has often been observed that often the majority of believers in most churches at any given time in history would fit into the category of being carnal Christians rather than spiritual Christians. However the vast majority of carnal Christians do not realize that they are carnal. Most Christians typically identify themselves as being spiritual. This was true of the church at Corinth. They considered themselves to be spiritual, mainly because of the many gifts of the Holy Spirit at work among them. But God’s Word here in chapter three bursts their naïve bubble and begins to expose them for what they really are.
I pray that the Lord will do the same thing among us today, because until a person recognizes and acknowledges their own carnality that individual will never be able to move on toward spiritual maturity. The first step toward moving from being carnal to spiritual is to recognize and confess that you are carnal.
Vs. 1
In other words, Paul is saying, “As far as my own experience of you goes, brethren, I could not speak to you as spiritual.” Paul is referring back to his previous encounters with the believers in Corinth. He could not interact with them as with spiritual people but as with carnal people. Paul is not implying that they were not believers or that they were not saved or that they did not have the Holy Spirit living in them. We know this because he refers to them as brethren and he specifically says they were “in Christ” however they were like infants in Christ.
There is nothing wrong with being like babes in Christ if you are a new believer. But there is a problem when that baby never grows up. There is a problem when an adult has only the maturity of a young child even after many years of life. Spiritually that is what was wrong with the believers in Corinth. That is also the situation that some of you today find yourselves in. As you look back over your life have you continued to grow more and more in Christ-likeness and fruitfulness? Is each passing year marked by growth in the grace of God with increasingly more of Him and less of you? A Spiritual life should be steadily developing and progressing upward. Or as you look back do you see very little progress in your spiritual life over the years? Or even worse, perhaps you realize that your spiritual life was greater and more vibrant in the past than it is today. Perhaps you find that most or all of your spiritual highpoints are now history, all in days gone by. Those are indications that you are living a carnal Christian life.
Vs. 2
Here Paul says that when he was ministering to the believers at Corinth in the early days he fed them with simple, easy to understand and digest basic truths of the spiritual faith, because they were immature brand new baby Christians who could not handle the deeper truths of the mysteries of God. That was OK back then because they were new believers. However there is now a problem because after all this time they should be spiritually mature enough to receive the deeper truths of God’s wisdom but even now they are still not able to grasp these spiritual concepts. (c.f. Hebrews 5:12)
The mere passing of time does not automatically bring spiritual maturity. Spending a lifetime in church studying God’s word does not automatically bring spiritual maturity. Why not? What was preventing these Corinthian believers from growing to maturity in Christ? What prevents us today from growing to maturity in Christ? The first line in verse three gives us the answer: “For you are still carnal.” A person is not carnal because they are immature. A very young, immature Christian can be very spiritual, and as time passes they will grow in spiritual maturity. A person is not carnal because they are immature, but a carnal Christian will never mature spiritually. The depth of their spiritual maturity today is much the same that it has always been.
Spiritual maturity in a person’s life is dependant upon that individual making a transition from being carnal to being spiritual. A carnal Christian will never mature spiritually no matter how old they are or how long they have been a Christian. A carnal Christian will never mature spiritually no matter how much they study the Bible. They may have theological degrees and know the Bible inside out, they may pastor a church, they may be a missionary, they may have written religious books and yet still be carnal and therefore they are spiritually immature, still like a babe in Christ when it comes to the mystery of the message of the cross. They may be religiously mature but still carnal and therefore they are spiritually immature and spiritually ignorant. That statement may surprise some of you if you do not have a clear understanding of what the word carnal means.
The word carnal is synonymous with the word fleshly. To be carnal is the same thing as to be walking after the flesh or to be living the self life. Sometimes the word carnal is synonymous with being worldly. Typically when Christians talk about someone being a carnal Christian or a worldly Christian they mistakenly understand that to refer narrowly only to a backslidden Christian who is drinking in the bars or sleeping around in sexual immorality or pursuing some other blatantly sinful lifestyle. It is true that a backslidden Christian is carnal or worldly . . . if indeed they are even saved. But the Carnal Christian can also be the morally upright, respectable, decent living, regular church going Christian who serves on the church board and has taught Sunday school for twenty years. Another common misconception is to believe that when I do good I am spiritual and when I do bad I am carnal.
To be carnal means to live your life out of your own resources independent of a conscious reliance upon God for everything. In contrast, to be spiritual means to put no confidence in your self but rather to depend upon the Lord for everything. To be carnal, or to walk after the flesh, means to be self-sufficient. It is expressed in the common saying that says, “Do your best and trust God for the rest.” This implies that I must do most of the stuff out of my own resources of strength and understanding and only when I run into a situation that is too difficult for me to handle do I then begin to depend on God. Or another common expression of the carnal live is, “God helps those who help themselves.” The Bible teaches that God comes to the aid of those who trust in Him.
True biblical spirituality is to put no confidence in our self but to depend upon God for everything. A spiritual Christian does not have more of the Holy Spirit than a carnal Christian. But the Holy Spirit has more of the spiritual Christian than He does of the carnal Christian.
Because the meaning of being carnal is to rely upon your own understanding, your own strength and abilities, a carnal Christian will therefore live a life that is very similar to the life of an unbeliever. This is because when you take Christ out of the picture a Christian has nothing more going for them than an unbeliever. Have you ever wondered why the lives of so many Christians are not really much more victorious than the lives of many unbelievers? Have you wondered why the divorce rate among believers is very similar to the divorce rate among the unsaved? Or why many Christians seem lose their temper just as frequently as non-believers and just as unreliable as the unsaved employee? Or why Christians are often just as materialistic and dependent as unbelievers upon entertainment to make them happy?
Or flip it around; how is it that the average Mormon or Jew is capable of living just as morally upright and respectable of a life as many Christians? The reason for this unsettling similarity between many Christians and the average religious non-Christian is that many Christians are carnal, living out of their own limited resources. Therefore both the carnal Christian and the religious non-Christian are relying on the exact same resources for living. Both rely on their self and as a result both demonstrate a comparable quality of life. They have a comparable failure rate and a comparable success rate. As a result, the average carnal Christian will live a life that is externally indistinguishable from that of the average religious non-Christian.
A person can be very devoutly religious and still be carnal if their religion is something that they do for God in their own strength rather than something that they let God do through them by the power and impetus of His Holy Spirit. To be spiritual is to deny yourself, reckon yourself crucified with Christ, and therefore to surrender control of your life to God letting Him day by day, moment by moment do what He wants with you and through you. To be carnal is to keep control of your own life. Even if you live a very religious life for God but you are still living out of your own strength, then you are carnal and you will never experience spiritual maturity so long as you are carnal. Therefore a very devoutly religious person who is faithfully doing their best in their own strength to keep the laws and requirements of their religion is still a carnal person, whether they are Buddhist, Mormon, or Christian, because all that they do is done for their God but independent of the Holy Spirit.
Vs. 3-4
Here in verse three the Bible clearly expresses what I have been saying; when we are carnal we act like mere men. Or in other words, when we are carnal we act like unsaved people. You are not carnal because of the way you act. It is not your behavior that makes you carnal. That’s backwards; instead sinful actions are the result of living out of your own feeble strength, controlled by natural impulses and failing to let God have control of your lives.
Verse three gives a partial list of the trouble plaguing the church at Corinth: there was envy, strife, and divisions among them. This wasn’t simply the work of the devil; it was the result of them being carnal. Let’s look at these words individually:
“Envy”: When our life is yielded to the Holy Spirit we are content and satisfied with Jesus as our life. But when we are controlled by the flesh we are always discontent, always wanting what others have and envying those who have what we do not or who have a newer model than ours. Envying those who are more talented or more popular or seemingly more used of God.
“Strife”: The spiritual life that is abiding in Christ is at peace even when others do not agree with us or when others do not see things our way. But a carnal life wants to be in control and it loses all peace when others do not do things the way we want them to. There is strife in the home, there is strife in the church and strife with others at work.
“Divisions”: Because of envy and strife there are certain people that the carnal Christian just can no longer tolerate so they create divisions and segregate themselves with those they can get along with and avoid those who see or do things differently.
Romans chapter seven records the heart cry of a carnal Christian. “I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do . . . For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” (Romans 7:14-19)
Within the carnal Christian there is a constant conflict, a moment by moment battle between the Spirit and the flesh. Galatians 5:16-17 says, “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.”
Carnal Christians are forgiven, they are born again, they are children of God, they are part of the church, but they are desperately unfulfilled in their faith. Carnal Christians have been saved from the world they used to live in and therefore they can no longer enjoy the things of the world that they used to enjoy because their nature has been changed. They no longer belong in the world but neither can they enjoy their new Christian life because they have no power over sin and they live in spiritual failure and defeat. Therefore carnal Christians are often some of the most frustrated people on earth. They are like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, barren and spiritually unfruitful and unfulfilled. Occasionally they yield to the Spirit of God and experience moments of victory, but the perpetual drift of their life is downward, away from God and into chronic failure. Although the Holy Spirit dwells within their hearts, their lives are mastered and controlled by their own flesh and its desires.
Does that describe you today? Is your experience as a Christian characterized by constant conflict, frustration and repeated defeat? You may be rejoicing because your sins are forgiven but you experience no power over sin in your life. The Lord does not intend any of us to continue living a carnal Christian life. If through this study today you have been convicted that you are a carnal Christian that recognition is the first step toward change. I urge you to cry out to God in prayer, confessing this fact to Him and ask Him to begin taking control of your life. Ask Him to lead you out of the wilderness of carnal Christian living into the Promised Land of victorious spirituality. This is a process that will take some time but if you are sincerely willing and hungry for that change then the Lord will faithfully lead you through.