7Carnal 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:

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.