LIKE UNCHANGED MEN
1 CORINTHIANS 3:1-4 NKJV
3 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; 3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? 4 For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal?
There is a truckload of information packed into these four verses. Paul has experienced a great deal of trouble with this Corinthian church, and here is one of the key reasons why. Paul says that he can not talk with these people as spiritual people, but rather as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. That one verse is enlightening.
Evidently, there is a distinction made between people who are spiritual and people who are carnal. Carnal means fleshy or meat. It is where we get the word carnivore. The church at Corinth was made up of people who were dominated by their flesh, as opposed to being spiritual people who would be dominated by their spirits.
One of the main reasons these people were flesh ruled is that they were babes in Christ. They had not matured to the place where they would be governed by their spirits, making decisions apart from their feelings.
So, because they were babies, Paul said he could not feed them with spiritual meat and had to give them milk. Babies can not handle solid food. If you read further into the book of 1 Corinthians, what Paul calls spiritual milk is some pretty stiff stuff. Paul must have had the capacity to go much deeper.
And Paul has not let go of the carnal theme. He lists reasons that they are carnal. These are markers that revealed that the church in Corinth was made up of spiritual babies. The markers were envy, strife, and divisions. Because the church was filled with envy and arguments and people dividing into groups, Paul called them carnal. And Paul said these believers were acting like mere men. A better translation would be mere unchanged men.
Paul did not say that the church in Corinth was lost. He did not say they were all going to hell or that they had never been saved. What he was saying is that they were walking according to the flesh, not by faith and not by the spirit. This may help us understand why we have known people who have received Christ but acted no differently than unsaved people. Why someone could sit in church for years and still act in a way that causes strife and divisions. One of Paul’s main objectives was to help people grow up in Christ, and this church was not moving in the right direction.
This Corinthian church had even gone so far as to divide up by the preachers they liked. They were identifying with being connected to Paul or Apollos. Paul thought that was amazingly carnal. In the rest of chapter two, Paul spells out why this division was so wrong. You can almost hear his frustration. They were acting as if they had never become new creations in Christ.
APPLICATION:
We have to be intentional about receiving Christ as Savior. And we have to be intentional about growing in Christ. We do not want to stay babies and be carnal. We want to become spiritual people.
So we’ll have to make a conscious effort to allow our lives to be governed by God’s word and led by His Holy Spirit. It will not happen overnight, but if we will continue with the Lord, we can grow.
In growing, the envy and jealousy that may have marked our life earlier will no longer rule us. The strife and arguing that used to trip us up will no longer have the upper hand. And instead of dividing up along denominational or political lines, we’ll identify with Christ and who we are in Him. We can live like the changed people that we are!
PRAYER:
Thank you, Lord, that I have the capacity to grow spiritually. I want to become a spiritual person not a carnal one.