7
Carnal Christians (3:1–9)
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to
spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ. 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, for you are still
fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you
not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? For when one
says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you
not mere men? What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants
through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each
one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So
then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything,
but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters
are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own
labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field,
God’s building. (3:1–9)
In his book The New Life Michael Green reports
that a friend of his came to him and explained his new-found
Christian life in words something like these: “It is rather like a
cyclist who, when he is climbing a long hill, thinks he will be able
to freewheel down the other side. It is not until he reaches the top
that he sees that his task has only just started and that the road
winds on with even steeper hills than the one he has just climbed.”
Many Christians have come to the same conclusion.
Faithful Christian living becomes increasingly more difficult and
more demanding. It is the furthest thing from a downhill ride. Christ
does solve all of our important problems. He does bring peace, joy,
meaning, purpose, and many other blessings of which the unbeliever
knows nothing. But the Christian life is not easy. In many ways
living is far more demanding than before we were saved.
How is this so? How—when we have God’s own Spirit
within us, the mind of Christ, and the power of God—could it become
more difficult to do what is right, to do what our Lord wants us to
do? There are two reasons: the world and the flesh. The first is
outside us, the second is inside us. They are Satan’s supreme
instruments in tempting believers and keeping them from faithfulness
and victory.
The promise of the New Covenant in Christ is the promise
of a new spirit and a new heart (Ezek. 36:25–27). When a person
becomes a Christian he also becomes a new creation, with a new
nature, a new inner being, and a favorable disposition toward
God—none of which a person can have apart from Christ (2 Pet. 1:4;
2 Cor. 5:17). From that point, until the Lord takes him to be with
Himself, he is swimming upstream. Like a salmon returning to spawn,
he discovers that gravity and the current are continually against
him. His new heart drives him in an entirely different direction from
that of the world around him.
The church has often thought of worldliness only in
terms of dancing, alcoholic drinking, and the like. But worldliness
is much deeper than bad habits; it is an orientation, a way of
thinking and believing. Basically it is buying the world’s
philosophies, buying human wisdom. It is looking to the world—to
human leaders, to influential and popular people, to neighbors,
associates, and fellow students—for our standards, attitudes, and
meaning. Worldliness is accepting the world’s definitions, the
world’s measuring sticks, the world’s goals.
The second great obstacle Christians face is the flesh.
In fact, it is the flesh that produces the bridge the world uses to
reach us. When we are given Christ’s divine nature, our flesh is
not removed. That will not occur until we are glorified (Rom.
8:18–25). Until then the flesh continually resists and opposes the
new heart. Paul tells about the struggle in his own life:
For that which I am doing, I do
not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but
I am doing the very thing I hate.… For the good that I wish, I do
not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish.… For I
joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a
different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law
of my mind. (Rom. 7:15, 19, 22–23)
When we were born physically we inherited from Adam the
flesh with its propensity to sin. When we were born spiritually and
given a new spirit, a new heart, God broke the back of sin, crippled
its ability, and paid its penalty. But the tendency to evil remains.
The one word that best characterizes the flesh, our humanness, our
Adamic nature, is selfish. The sin of Adam, like the sin of
the tempter when he fell (Isa. 14:13), centered on setting his own
will and interests against God’s; and that has been the center of
sin ever since.
The world and the flesh are closely related. They are
used by the same power, Satan, and they serve the same purpose, evil.
They complement each other and are often hard to distinguish. But it
is not necessary to precisely distinguish between them, because both
of them are spiritual enemies, and both must be fought with the same
weapons—God’s Word and God’s Spirit.
Our ultimate triumph over the world and the flesh is
certain, but our continued struggle with them in this life is also
certain. We will win the ultimate battle, but can lose a lot of
skirmishes along the way.
The Corinthian believers had an especially hard struggle
against those twin enemies, a struggle which they seldom won. They
would not break with the world or break with the flesh and were
continually succumbing to both. Consequently they fell into one
serious sin after another. Almost all of this epistle has to do with
identifying and correcting those sins.
The sin of division was closely related to numerous
other sins. Sins are always interrelated. There is no such thing as
an isolated sin. One sin leads to another, and the second reinforces
the first. Every sin is a combination of sins, and a sinning believer
cannot confine the evil to one dimension.
From 1:18 through 2:16 Paul points out that the
Corinthians were divided because of worldliness, because of their
continued love for human wisdom. In 3:1–9 the apostle shows them
that they also were divided because of the flesh, because of their
continued yielding to the evil in their humanness. He shows the
cause, the symptoms, and the cure.
The Cause of Division: the Flesh
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to
spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to babes in Christ. 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, for you are still
fleshly. (3:1–3a)
The cause of division in the church was more than an
external, worldly influence. It was also internal, fleshly. The
Corinthians had succumbed to the pressures of the world, but they
were also succumbing to the pressures and enticements of their own
flesh.
Before Paul chastises them for their immature
sinfulness, he reminds them again that he is speaking to them as
brethren, as fellow believers. That is a term of recognition
and of love. It reminded his brothers in Christ that they were still
saved, that their sinning, terrible and inexcusable as it was, did
not forfeit their salvation. He did not try to diminish the
seriousness of their sins, but he did try to diminish or prevent any
discouragement that his rebuke might otherwise have caused. He stood
with them as a brother, not over them as a judge.
But Paul could not speak to the Corinthian believers as
spiritual men. They had come through the door of faith but had
gone no farther. Most of them had received Jesus Christ years earlier
but were acting as if they had just been born again. They were still
babes in Christ.
The New Testament uses the word spiritual in a
number of ways. In a neutral sense it simply means the realm of
spiritual things, in contrast to the realm of the physical. When
applied to men, however, it is used of their relationship to God in
one of two ways: positionally or practically. Unbelievers are totally
unspiritual in both senses. They possess neither a new spirit nor the
Holy Spirit. Their position is natural and their practice is natural.
Believers, on the other hand, are totally spiritual in the positional
sense, because they have been given a new inner being that loves God
and is indwelt by His Holy Spirit. But practically, believers can
also be unspiritual.
In 2:14–15 Paul contrasts believers and unbelievers,
and his use of “spiritual” in that context refers, therefore, to
positional spirituality. The “natural man” (v. 14) is the
unsaved; “he who is spiritual” (v. 15) is the saved. In the
positional sense, there is no such thing as an unspiritual Christian
or a partially spiritual Christian. In this sense every believer is
equal. This spiritual is a synonym for possessing the life of
God in the soul, or as we saw in 2:16, having the mind of Christ.
A positionally spiritual person is one with a new heart,
indwelt by and controlled by the Holy Spirit. “You are not in the
flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.
But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong
to Him” (Rom. 8:9; cf. v. 14). When we trust in Jesus Christ, His
Spirit takes charge of our lives and remains in charge until we die.
He will control us to His own ultimate ends, whether we submit or
not. “We know that God causes all things to work together for good
to those who love God, to those who are called according to His
purpose” (Rom. 8:28). Our resistance and disobedience can cause
many unnecessary detours, delays, and heartaches, but He will
accomplish His work in us. “He who began a good work in you will
perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).
Practically, however, believers may be anything but
spiritual. Such were the Corinthian Christians. Paul addressed them
as brethren, but he made it clear that he had to speak to them on the
lowest possible spiritual level. He had to speak to them as if they
were men of flesh.
Men of flesh (sarkinos) is literally
“fleshy ones.” In this context it refers to man’s fallen
humanness, his Adamic self—his bodily desires that manifest
rebelliousness toward God, his glorying in himself, and his proneness
to sin. As mentioned above, the flesh is not eradicated when we are
saved. It no longer can ultimately dominate or destroy us, but it can
still greatly influence us. That is why we yearn for the redemption
of the body (Rom. 8:23). Glorification, in one sense, will be less of
a change than justification. Justification was transformation of the
inner being; glorification is the elimination of the outer being,
which bears the curse.
So a Christian is not characterized by sin; it no longer
represents his basic nature. But he is still able to sin, and his sin
is just as sinful as the sin of an unbeliever. Sin is sin. When a
Christian sins, he is being practically unspiritual, living on the
same practical level as an unbeliever. Consequently Paul is compelled
to speak to the Corinthian believers much as if they were
unbelievers.
Perhaps somewhat to soften the rebuke, he also compares
them to babes in Christ. It was far from a compliment, but it
did recognize that they truly belonged to Christ.
The Corinthian believers were spiritually ignorant. Paul
had ministered to them for eighteen months, and after that they were
pastored by the highly-gifted Apollos. Some of them were acquainted
with Peter and others apparently had even heard Jesus preach (1:12).
Like the “babes” of Hebrews 5:13, they had no excuse for not
being mature. Yet they were exactly the opposite. They were not babes
because they were newly redeemed, but because they were inexcusably
immature.
The Corinthians were not unintelligent. Their problem
was not low iq or lack of teaching. They were not ignorant of the
faith because they were dumb, but because they were fleshly. The
cause was not mental but spiritual. Because they refused to give up
their worldly ways and their carnal desires, they became what James
calls forgetful hearers (James 1:25). A person who does not use
information will lose it; and spiritual truth is no exception.
Spiritual truths that we ignore and neglect will become less and less
remembered and meaningful (cf. 2 Pet. 1:12–13). Nothing causes us
to ignore God’s truth more than not living it. A sinning Christian
is uncomfortable in the light of God’s truth. He either turns from
his fleshly behavior or he begins to block out God’s light. Only
when we put aside “malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and
all slander”—that is, the flesh—are we able to “long for the
pure milk of the word” and “grow in respect to salvation” (1
Pet. 2:1–2).
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, for you are still fleshly. (3:2–3a)
When Paul first preached to the Corinthians he taught
the more easily digestible elementary truths of doctrine, the milk.
But now, some five years later, they still needed to be fed milk.
They could not yet spiritually digest solid food.
Like many Christians today, the Corinthians seemed quite
content to stay on milk. Some congregations do not want the
pastor to get “too deep.” Their fleshly habits are not much
threatened if, for instance, the preacher sticks primarily to
evangelistic messages. Evangelism is the cutting edge of the church’s
mission, but it is for unbelievers, not believers. Or the
congregation wants Scripture to be preached so superficially that
their sin is not exposed, much less rebuked and corrected.
There is no difference at all between the truths of a
spiritual milk diet and a spiritual solid food diet, except in detail
and depth. All doctrine may have both milk and meat elements. It is
not that we are to be continually learning new doctrines in order to
grow, but that we are to be learning more about the doctrines we have
known for years. A new Christian might explain the atonement, for
example, as, “Christ died for my sins.” A long-time student of
the Word, on the other hand, would go into such things as
regeneration, justification, substitution, and propitiation. One
explanation would not be truer than the other; but the first would be
milk and the second, solid food.
For a Christian preacher or teacher to give only milk
week after week, year after year, is a crime against the Word of God
and the Holy Spirit! It cannot be done without neglecting much of the
Word and without neglecting the leading and empowering of the Holy
Spirit, the supreme Teacher and Illuminator. It is also a terrible
disservice to those who hear, whether or not they are satisfied with
having only milk. The appetite must be created.
Nothing is more precious or wonderful than a little
baby. But a twenty-year-old with the mind of an infant is
heartbreaking. A baby who acts like a baby is a joy; but an adult who
acts like a baby is a tragedy. It doubtlessly grieved the Holy
Spirit, as it grieved Paul, that the Christians in Corinth had never
gotten out of their spiritual infancy. This tragedy is immensely
worse than that of the physically or mentally retarded, who have no
responsibility for their conditions. Spiritual retardation, however,
is always primarily our own doing. We may not have the best human
preacher or teacher, but every believer has the perfect Teacher
within, who longs to instruct him in the things of God (cf. 1 John
2:20, 27). If we do not grow spiritually, the reason is always that
we are still fleshly.
The believer’s growth times are those times when he
walks in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16–17). It is essential to understand
that carnality is not an absolute state in which a believer exists
(Rom. 8:4–14), but a behavior pattern he chooses one moment at a
time. To say it another way, a Christian is not fleshly in the sense
of being, but in the sense of behaving.
The Symptoms of Division: Jealousy and Strife
For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are
you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? For when one
says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you
not mere men? (3:3b–4)
Immature, fleshly Christians are never the result of
deficient spiritual genes or of a spiritual birth defect. They are
the way they are by their own choices. One of the worst and most
disappointing problems the church can have is a congregation full of
babes, Christians who are not growing because they seek to fulfill
fleshly appetites.
Because self-centeredness is at the heart of fleshly
behavior, jealousy and strife are always found in an immature
congregation. Jealousy is the attitude, and strife is the action that
results from it. One is the inner emotional condition, the other the
outward expression of selfishness.
Those two problems, however, are merely representative
of the many symptoms of the flesh. Sinful desire is like cancer; it
has many forms and affects many parts of the church in many ways—all
of them destructive. Carnality is a general evil that has many
manifestations. It will corrupt morals, weaken personal
relationships, produce doubt about God and His Word, destroy prayer
life, and provide fertile ground for heresy. It will attack right
doctrine and right living, right belief and right practice.
Jealousy and strife are not the least of the symptoms of
fleshly living. Those sins are more destructive than many Christians
seem to think. They are far from being petty sins, because, among
other things, they cause division in the church, Christ’s body, for
whom He gave His life. They are among the surest marks of fallen
humanness, just as unity is one of the surest marks of divine
transformation.
Jealousy is a severe form of selfishness, begrudging
someone else what we wish were ours. And selfishness is one of the
most obvious characteristics of babyhood. An infant’s life is
almost totally self-centered and selfish. Its whole concern is with
its own comfort, hunger, attention, sleep. It is typical of a young
child to be self-centered, but it should not be typical of an adult,
especially a Christian adult. It is spiritually infantile to be
jealous of and to cause strife among fellow believers, and it betrays
a fleshly perspective.
Division can only occur where there is selfishness.
Fleshly, immature people cooperate only with those leaders and fellow
believers with whom they happen to agree or who personally appeal to
them or will flatter them. Factions cannot help resulting where there
is jealousy and strife, or any other form of carnality. When a
congregation develops loyalties around individuals, it is a sure
symptom of spiritual immaturity and trouble. It was sinful for
factions to develop around Paul and Apollos, and it is
sinful for divisive factions to develop around any leader in the
church today. Are you not walking like mere men? is another
way of saying, “You are thinking and behaving in a fleshly way.”
The Cure for Divisions: Glorifying God
What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants
through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each
one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So
then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything,
but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters
are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own
labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field,
God’s building. (3:5–9)
The cure for division is turning away from self and
setting our eyes on the one God whom we all glorify. When our
attention is focused on our Lord, as it always should be, there will
be no time and no occasion for division. When our attention is on Him
it cannot be on ourselves or on human leaders or human factions.
Apollos and Paul were simply the servants
through whom you believed. They were the instruments, not the
source, of salvation. As Paul had reminded them earlier, he had not
died for them and they were not baptized in his name (1:13). The same
was true, of course, for Apollos and Peter, as it is true for all
other ministers of the Lord of all time. All Christians, including
even such men as those, whom the Lord used so mightily, are but His
servants (diakonoi), or ministers (KJV). It is not the
same word (doulos) often translated “servant, slave, or
bond-servant” (7:21–23; Rom. 1:1; etc.), but simply meant a
menial worker of any sort, free or slave. It was often used of a
table waiter or what we would now call a busboy.
Paul was saying in effect, “No one builds a movement
around a waiter or busboy, or erects monuments to them. Apollos and I
are just waiters or busboys whom the Lord used as servants to bring
you food. You do not please us by trying to honor us. Your honor,
your glory, is misplaced. You are acting like the world, like mere
men. Build your monuments, give your praise to the One who
prepared the spiritual food we delivered.”
The world honors and tries to immortalize great men
because men are the highest thing it knows. The world cannot see
beyond itself. But Christians know God—the Creator, the Sustainer,
the Savior, the Lord of the universe, and the Source of all things.
He alone is worthy of honor. We are but His servants, His
instruments. If an artist is to be honored, you do not make a statue
of his brush or his palette. It makes no more sense for Christians to
glorify men, even a Paul or an Apollos, who are only brushes or
palettes in the Master’s hands. Such are to be esteemed and loved
for their work (1 Thess. 5:12–13), but not revered or set against
each other.
Those men had their God-appointed work to do. Using
agricultural metaphors, Paul acknowledged that he had planted
and that Apollos watered. They had done their work well and
faithfully. But the real work was the Lord’s. God was causing
the growth. No man, not even the best farmer or the best
horticulturist, can give physical life or growth to a plant. How much
less can anyone, even an apostle, give spiritual life or growth to a
person. The most that men can do in either case is to prepare and
water the soil and to plant the seeds. The rest is up to God. Neither
the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who
causes the growth. The human instrument is not anything
but a tool. All the honor for the accomplishment goes to God.
Paul here mentions only two types of ministry,
represented by planting and watering. His principle, however, applies
to every type of ministry. In our eyes, some Christian work is more
glamorous, or seems more important or more significant than other
work. But if God has called a person to a work, that is the most
important ministry he can have. All of God’s work is important. To
glorify one kind of Christian work above another is just as carnal
and divisive as to glorify one leader above another.
Our Lord’s parable in Matthew 20:1–16 demonstrates
the equality of our ministries in the day of rewards. Jesus gave the
parable as a corrective to the disciples’ feeling that they were
more worthy than others (19:27–30). We will all equally inherit the
promised eternal life, with all its blessings. That is the sameness
of future glory.
He who plants and he who waters are one. All of
God’s workers are one in Him, and to Him all glory should go.
Recognition of our oneness in the Lord is the sure and only remedy
for divisiveness. It leaves no place for the flesh and its jealousy,
strife, and division.
God does not fail to recognize the faithful work of His
servants. Each will receive his own reward according to his own
labor. God will “give their reward to [His] bond-servants the
prophets and to the saints and to those who fear [His] name, the
small and the great” (Rev. 11:18). That is the uniqueness of future
glory.
God rewards on the basis of labor, not success or
results. A missionary may work faithfully for 40 years and see only a
handful of converts. Another may work far fewer years and see far
more converts. Jeremiah was one of God’s most faithful and
dedicated prophets, yet he saw little result of his ministry. He was
ridiculed, persecuted, and generally rejected along with the message
he preached. Jonah, on the other hand, was petty and unwilling, yet
through him God won the entire city of Nineveh in one brief campaign.
Our usefulness and effectiveness are purely by God’s grace (cf. 1
Cor. 15:10).
It is appropriate that God’s faithful servants be
appreciated and encouraged while they are on earth. But they are not
to be glorified, set apart, or made the center of special groups or
movements.
Paul
and Apollos were but God’s
fellow workers. It
was not their own ministry that they worked in, but His. What divine
companionship! It was God’s
church in Corinth, not Paul’s or Apollos’s or Peter’s. The
believers there were God’s
field, God’s building,
and His alone. And the glory for any good work done there, or
anywhere, is also His alone.
Over lunch, several friends were discussing a church
we all knew about which was so wracked with internal strife that it
had become common knowledge in the community. Some members, who had
no stomach for a fight, were drifting into neighboring churches.
Those who remained were being pushed by the opposing groups to take
sides, and the affair was becoming very unpleasant. The issue that
had precipitated such a furor was the changing of the job description
of the organist, who had been there for years and had built a small
empire in her area of work. She had developed great skill in using a
loyal following as a power base for budget, program, and calendar
advantages. So when a special lay committee brought a report to the
congregation suggesting a slight change in her duties, she took it as
a personal rebuke and declared war. Since none of us were having to
deal with the situation, most of us agreed with the one who said,
“That doesn’t sound like a big enough problem to split a church.”
Then one of the group reminded us of a truth that is too easily
forgotten: “Any problem that has to be dealt with by people who are
spiritually immature can divide a church, no matter how small it may
appear.”
Later, as I reflected upon the conversation, I realized
how true that statement was. During the years I’ve been a Christian
and a church member I’ve seen divisions created by who was going to
play the piano, who would chair a certain committee, or over
something as trivial as moving a Sunday school class from one room to
another. I have also seen churches face with great spiritual maturity
radical change in the community, new and different leadership, and
every kind of hardship and seem to become stronger and more united.
In this chapter the apostle Paul ties the partisan spirit that is
dividing the church to the failure of the members to grow up
spiritually.
Spiritual
Immaturity Divides
3:1 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?
—1 Corinthians 3:1–4
In
the third chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, while Paul
is about to say some pretty devastating things to them about their
spiritual condition, he shows that he does view them as fellow
Christians by calling them “brethren.” In chapter two, Paul had
indicated that one reason he had not come to them with a
philosophical approach was that true wisdom was divine in origin and
not human. In this chapter he suggests that the reason he has not
shared more of the divine wisdom with them is that they have not been
spiritually mature enough to receive it.
Many of us think that the controlling factor in what we
learn is the knowledge and ability of our preacher or teacher. Paul
is suggesting that the spiritual immaturity of the Corinthian
Christians had limited what he was able to teach them. I once heard a
speaker say, “A great audience makes a great speaker.” At the
time I really didn’t understand what he meant, but I’ve come to
realize the truth in the statement. Whether one is preaching to a
church, teaching a class, or talking to just one person, what is
communicated is controlled by the interest, experience,
understanding, and spiritual maturity of the listener.
The two terms that Paul used to describe them were
“carnal” and “babes in Christ” (3:1). As Paul
used the words, they mean the same thing. To be carnal means not to
be spiritual. They had received the Spirit, but their lives were
still being controlled by their old nature. To be “babes in
Christ” meant that they had truly experienced new birth, but
that instead of having begun to grow up and mature they had remained
in a state of spiritual infancy. In this condition they were neither
able to cope with the adult problems that confronted them nor receive
mature teaching from Paul about God.
In a renewal conference the leader gave each participant
several pipe cleaners and instructed them to spend several minutes
thinking about where they were spiritually in their lives and then to
shape the pipe cleaners into something which symbolized their
condition. When the time for the activity was over, each person was
given a chance to tell a small group what he or she had made and how
it symbolized his or her own spiritual condition. I was especially
moved by a middle-aged man who had made a cradle. He explained it
with a tone of shame and regret: “I’m a Christian who has never
grown, so I thought this cradle best told the story.” This was the
condition of most of the Corinthian Christians, and it created a
tremendous obstacle to Paul’s leadership with them.
There is nothing wrong with being an infant or a child.
Each week in my last church I had the joy of doing a sermon for the
children in kindergarten and the first three grades. I had an old
yellow rocking chair at the front of the church sanctuary, and at a
certain time in the morning worship the children came and sat on the
floor in front of me for “their sermon.” It lasted less than two
minutes and had only one very simple idea. As a means of catching and
holding their interest, I usually had a picture or some object in my
hand. But there were many subjects and ideas that were “off limits”
to them because of their limited capacity. I did not resent this
because it is natural for children to have the understanding of
children. But if when they are grown physically and intellectually
and have been Christians for many years, they still have only the
child’s capacity for understanding, I know they will not be able to
function as God wants them to. This was Paul’s problem in Corinth
and, to some degree, it is the problem of many churches today.
The analogy in which Paul contrasts the different types
of spiritual food was very popular with other biblical writers. In 1
Peter, new Christians are urged, “like newborn babes, [to] long for
the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to
salvation” (1 Pet. 2:2). These words assume the naturalness of
spiritual milk for spiritual babies as a way to stimulate growth. But
the author of Hebrews is dealing with a Corinthian-like situation
when he writes:
“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you
need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles
of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food” (Heb.
5:12). Like Paul, he concludes that “solid food belongs to those
who are of full age” (Heb. 5:14). Throughout the New Testament
“milk” is used to mean that first preaching of the Good News of
Jesus Christ. It is the message of the evangelist and the missionary
that calls for a response of repentance and faith. It is the first
and very important word.
In the same way “meat” is understood to symbolize
that teaching which moves beyond our conversion and expands the
implications of the gospel to every area of life. In a conversation
we had, Billy Graham said, “I envy the work of the pastor. I’m
called to preach the gospel and to ask for that first decision for
Christ. But the pastor has the privilege of relating all the
teachings of the Scripture to that convert as he grows.” Dr. Graham
was making the same distinction the biblical writers made.
Through the years of my ministry I have been haunted by
the number of people who take the first step of faith and fail to
move on to spiritual maturity. If Paul were giving leadership to the
church today, there would probably be many who felt that his ABC’s
were too deep for them. But while each Christian must accept some
responsibility for how he or she responds to growth opportunities, I
feel there are certain factors that contribute to the inordinate
number of immature Christians. A flawed theology of evangelism will
fill the church with “babes in Christ” who are unaware of the
need to develop beyond where they are. An anemic understanding of the
biblical idea of discipleship will present Christian growth and
development as an option and not as a requirement. And a total
preoccupation with the numerical growth of the church has been known
to have resulted in a neglect of the spiritual growth of the church
members.
Now, for Paul at Corinth it was easy to tell who was
spiritual and who was carnal: Where there was a spirit of love and
unity they were spiritual and where there was strife and jealousy
they were carnal. This is a much better system for judging maturity
than many people use today. We have a tendency to equate being
spiritual with how people talk or with the activities in which they
participate. But Paul tied spiritual maturity not to activities but
to character and attitude where the Spirit of God was creating in
Christians the fruits of the spirit (“love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control,” Gal.
5:22–23). The person with these qualities could then be called
spiritual. Conversely, when jealousy and strife were a part of a
person’s life, which was the situation in Corinth, then the “deeds
of the flesh are evident” (Gal. 5:19). In these definitions of
spiritual and carnal, Paul cuts through all the superficial human
definitions and applies true wisdom.
When we don’t grow, several things happen, all of
which are bad. First, we lose sight of the real goal that Christ has
for us, and that is to become spiritual persons. Then, we look a lot
like people who are not Christians. Lostness and spiritual infancy
look a lot alike. Finally, both the individual and the church suffer.
Prolonged immaturity creates self-doubt, an extended dependence on
leaders, and a bridge for sin in the life of the individual. It is
only as we do grow that we are able to face adult problems, minister
to others, and overcome temptation1
1
Corinthians 3:1–4 (NKJV)
Sectarianism
is Carnal
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?
The Family—Maturity (1 Cor. 3:1–4)
Paul already explained that there are two kinds of
people in the world—natural (unsaved) and spiritual (saved). But
now he explained that there are two kinds of saved people: mature and
immature (carnal). A Christian matures by allowing the Spirit to
teach him and direct him by feeding on the Word. The immature
Christian lives for the things of the flesh (carnal means
“flesh”) and has little interest in the things of the Spirit. Of
course, some believers are immature because they have been saved only
a short time, but that is not what Paul is discussing here.
Paul was the “spiritual father” who brought this
family into being (1 Cor. 4:15). During the eighteen months he
ministered in Corinth, Paul had tried to feed his spiritual children
and help them mature in the faith. Just as in a human family,
everybody helps the new baby grow and mature, so in the family of God
we must encourage spiritual maturity.
What are the marks of maturity? For one thing, you can
tell the mature person by his diet. As I write this chapter,
we are watching our grandson and our granddaughter grow up. Becky is
still being nursed by her mother, but Jonathan now sits at the table
and uses his little cup and (with varying degrees of success) his
tableware. As children grow, they learn to eat different food. They
graduate (to use Paul’s words) from milk to meat.
What is the difference? The usual answer is that “milk”
represents the easy things in the Word, while “meat” represents
the hard doctrines. But I disagree with that traditional explanation,
and my proof is Hebrews 5:10–14. That passage seems to teach that
“milk” represents what Jesus Christ did on earth, while “meat”
concerns what He is doing now in heaven. The writer of Hebrews wanted
to teach his readers about the present heavenly priesthood of Jesus
Christ, but his readers were so immature, he could not do it (note
Heb. 6:1–4).
The Word of God is our spiritual food: milk (1 Peter
2:2), bread (Matt. 4:4), meat (Heb. 5:11–14), and even honey (Ps.
119:103). Just as the physical man needs a balanced diet if his body
is to be healthy, so the inner man needs a balanced diet of spiritual
food. The baby begins with milk, but as he grows and his teeth
develop, he needs solid food.
It is not difficult to determine a believer’s
spiritual maturity, or immaturity, if you discover what kind of
“diet” he enjoys. The immature believer knows little about the
present ministry of Christ in heaven. He knows the facts about
our Lord’s life and ministry on earth, but not the truths
about His present ministry in heaven. He lives on “Bible stories”
and not Bible doctrines. He has no understanding of 1 Corinthians
2:6–7.
In my itinerant ministry, I have preached in hundreds of
churches and conferences; and I have always been grateful for
congregations that wanted to be enlightened and edified, not
entertained. It is important that we preach the Gospel to the lost;
but it is also important that we interpret the Gospel to the
saved. The entire New Testament is an interpretation and application
of the Gospel. Paul did not write Romans, for example, to tell the
Romans how to be saved—for they were already saints. He wrote to
explain to them what was really involved in their salvation. It was
an explanation of the “deep things of God” and how they applied
to daily life.
There is another way to determine maturity: the mature
Christian practices love and seeks to get along with others. Children
like to disagree and fuss. And children like to identify with heroes,
whether sports heroes or Hollywood heroes. The “babes” in Corinth
were fighting over which preacher was the greatest—Paul, Apollos,
or Peter. It sounded like children on the playground: “My father
can fight better than your father! My father makes more money than
your father!”
When immature Christians, without spiritual discernment,
get into places of leadership in the church, the results will be
disastrous. More than one brokenhearted pastor has phoned me, or
written me, asking what to do with church officers who talk big but
live small. (In all fairness, I should say that sometimes it is the
officers who write asking what to do with an immature pastor!)
The work of the pastor is to help the church grow
spiritually and mature in the Lord. This is done by the steady,
balanced ministry of the Word. Ephesians 4:1–16 explains how this
is done: It is necessary for each member of the body to make his own
contribution. God gives spiritual gifts to His people, and then He
gives these gifted people to the various churches to build up the
saints. As the believers grow, they build the church.
Paul will have more to say about spiritual gifts in 1
Corinthians 12–14, but this should be said now: A mature Christian
uses his gifts as tools to build with, while an immature believer
uses gifts as toys to play with or trophies to boast about. Many of
the members of the Corinthian church enjoyed “showing off” their
gifts, but they were not interested in serving one another and
edifying the church.
What is the ministry all about? It involves loving,
feeding, and disciplining God’s family so that His children mature
in the faith and become more like Jesus Christ.2
1
Chafin, K. L., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1985). 1,
2 Corinthians (Vol. 30, pp. 47–51). Nashville,
TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.
2
Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The
Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, pp.
577–578). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
