Understanding the difference between “ Carnal and Spiritual ”
You will find the words from which I want to speak to you in 1 Corinthians 3:1-4“ And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.”
The Apostle commences the chapter by telling these Corinthians that there are two stages of Christian experience. Some Christians are carnal, some are spiritual. By the discernment which God’s Spirit gave the Apostle, he saw that the Corinthians were carnal, and he wanted to tell them so. You will find the word carnal four times in these four verses.
The Apostle felt that all his preaching would do no good if he talked about spiritual things to men who were unspiritual. They were Christians, real Christians, babes in Christ; but there was one deadly fault they were carnal. So the Apostle seems to say: I cannot teach you spiritual truth about the spiritual life, you cannot take it in. But that was not because they were stupid. They were very clever, and full of knowledge, but unable to understand spiritual teaching. That teaches us this simple lesson that all the trouble in the Church of Christ among Christians who sometimes get a blessing and lose it again, is just because they are carnal, and all that we need if we want to keep the blessing is, that we become spiritual. We must choose what style of Christian life we would like to live the carnal life or the spiritual. Choose the spiritual, and God will be delighted to give it you.
Now, if we are to understand this teaching we must begin by trying thoroughly to know what this carnal state is. I think I shall be able to point you to four very marked characteristics of the carnal state.
The first thing I have to say about it is, that the carnal state is a state of protracted infancy. It is a long time ago since you were converted, and you ought to have been a young man by these time, but you are still a babe in Christ. “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it ”. You know what a babe is, and what a beautiful thing babyhood is. You cannot have a more attractive little thing than a child six months old, with its ruddy cheeks, its laughing and smiling face, the kicking of its little feet, and the movement of its little fingers. What a beautiful object! But suppose I saw such a child, and came back after six months and the child was not a bit bigger, the parents would begin to say, “We are afraid there is something the matter; the child won’t grow”. And if after three years I came back and saw there the baby no bigger yet, I should find the parents sad. They would tell me, “The doctor says there is some terrible disease about the child; it cannot grow. He says it is a wonder it is alive, and yet it does live.” I come back after ten years, and there is that helpless infant, and still there is no growth.
You see, babyhood at the proper time is the most beautiful thing in the world, but babyhood continued too long is a burden and a sorrow, a sign of disease. And that was the state of many of those Corinthian Christians. They continued babes.
Now, what are the marks of a babe? There are specially two marks a babe cannot help itself, and a babe cannot help others.
1. A babe cannot help itself, and that is the life of many Christians. They make their ministers spiritual nurses of babes. It is a solemn thing that those spiritual babes keep their ministers occupied all the time in nursing them and feeding them, and they never help themselves. They do not know themselves how to feed on Christ’s Word, and the minister must feed them. They do not know what contact with God is, and the minister must pray for them. They do not know what it is to live as those who have God to help them; they always want to be nursed. Do take care that it does not become the reason why you come to the Convention to get your nurses to give you spiritual meat. God be praised for the preaching of the gospel and for the fellowship of the Convention. But, oh, you know what baby does baby always keeps the house going, and very often mother cannot go out because there is baby, or the servant must be there to keep baby, or the nurse must be there; baby always occupies somebody. You cannot leave him alone. So there are many spiritual infants to whom ministers are always going, and who are always wanting some help. Instead of allowing themselves to be trained up to know their God and be strong, alas!
It is a protracted infancy. They cannot help themselves and can therefore not help others. Is not that just what we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews? There was the very same condition; we read that those who had been so long converted, and who ought to have been teachers, needed themselves to be taught the very rudiments of Christianity. And there are, as I have said, people who are always wanting to be helped instead of being a help to others.
For a little child, a spiritual babe of three month old, to be carnal and not to know altogether what sin is, and not yet to have got victory, it is, as Paul said, a thing not to be wondered at. But when a man continues, year after year, in the same state of always being conquered by sin, there is something radically wrong.
Nothing can keep a child in protracted infancy but disease of some sort. And if we have to say continually, “I am not spiritual”, then do let us say, “O God, I am carnal; I am in diseased state, and want to be helped out of it”.
2. The second mark of a carnal state is, that sin and failure prove master. Sin has the upper hand. What proof does Paul give that those people were carnal? He first charges them, and then he asks a question, “Among you there are envying, and strife’s, and divisions; are ye not carnal?” And then again, one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollo’s,” and another, “I am of Cephas”. Are you not carnal? Asks Paul in effect; is not that evident? You just act like other men; you are not acting like heavenly, renewed men, who live in the power and love of the Holy Ghost. You know that God who loved us dwelled in light, and that love is the great commandment, and that the Cross of Christ is nothing but the evidence of God’s love, and that the first fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. The whole of John’s Gospel means love. And when men give away to their tempers and pride and envying and divisions; when you hear people saying sharp things about others; when a man cannot open out his whole heart to a brother who has done him wrong, and forgive him; when a woman can speak about her neighbor with contempt as “That wretched thing”, or say to another, “Oh, how I dislike that women” all these are fruits of carnal spirit. Every touch of unlovingness is nothing but the flesh. The word carnal is a form of the Latin word for flesh, and all unlovingness is nothing but the fruit or work of the flesh.
The flesh is selfish and proud and unloving; therefore every sin against love is nothing but a proof that the man is carnal.
You say, “I have tried to conquer it, but I cannot”. That is what I want to impress upon you. Do not try, while you are in the carnal state, to bear spiritual fruit. You must have the Holy Spirit in order to love, then the carnal will be conquered. He will give you the spirit to walk in love.
And it is not only true of the sins against love, but there are so many other sins. Take worldliness, which somebody says has “honeycombed the Church”; take the love of money; take the pursuit of business, making people sacrifice everything to the increase of riches; take so much of our life, the seeking after luxury and pleasure and position. What is all that but the flesh? It gratifies the flesh, it is exactly what the world thinks desirable and delights in, and if you live like the world it is a proof that the spirit of the world which is in the flesh is in you. The carnal state is proved by the power of sin.
Someone asked me recently, “How about the want of love of prayer?” He wanted to know how the art of loving fellowship with God could be attained. I said, “My brother, that cannot be attained in any way until you discover that it must come outside of the carnal state. The flesh cannot delight in God; that is your difficulty.
You must not say or write down a resolution in your journal that ‘I will pray more’ You cannot force it. But let the axe come to the root of the tree; cut down the carnal mind. How can you cut it down? You cannot, but let the Holy Spirit of God come with the condemnation of sin and the Cross of Christ, and give over the
flesh to the death, and the Spirit of God will come in. And then you will learn to love prayer and love God and love your neighbor, and you will be possessed of humility and spiritual-mindedness and heavenly mindedness.” The carnal state is the root of every sin.
3. I come to the next point. If we want to know this carnal state, thoroughly, we must take very special notice that the carnal state can coexist with great spiritual gifts.
Remember, there is a great difference between spiritual gifts and spiritual graces and that is what many people do not understand. Among the Corinthians, for instance, there were very wonderful spiritual gifts. In the first chapter, Paul says, “I thank my God….. that ye are enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge.” That was something wonderful to praise God for. And in the Second Epistle he says in effect, “You do not come behind in any gift; see that you have the gift of liberality also.” An in the twelfth chapter, how he speaks about the gifts of prophecy, and of faith that could remove mountains, and of knowledge as things that they were ardently seeking for; but he tells them these will not profit them without they have love. They delighted in the gifts, and did not care for the graces. But Paul shows them a more excellent way to learn to love and to be humble. Love is the greatest thing of all, for love is God like above everything.
It is a very solemn thing for us to remember that a man may be gifted with prophecy, that a man may be a faithful and successful worker in some particular sphere among the poor and needy, and yet by the sharpness of his judgment and the pride that comes into them, and by other things, he may give proof that while his spiritual gifts are wonderful, spiritual graces are too often absent. Oh, take care that Satan does not deceive one of us with the thought, “But I work for God, and God bless me, and others look up to me, and I am the means of helping others.” Beloved fellow Christians, that a carnal man may have spiritual gifts is unspeakable solemn, because it must bring the most earnest and successful man to his knees before God with the thought, “Am I not, after all that God’s Spirit works in me as a matter of gift, possibly giving way to the flesh, in lack of humility, or love, or purity, or holiness?” God search us and try us, for His name’s sake.
4. A further point is this, that the carnal state renders it impossible for a man to receive spiritual truth. You see, perhaps, hundreds of Christians hungering for the Word, and they listen and they say, “What beautiful truths, what clear doctrines, what beautiful expositions of God’s Word!” and yet they do not get helped one step; or they get helped for two or three weeks, and the blessing passes away. What is the reason? There is an evil at the bottom; the carnal state is hindering the reception of spiritual truth.
I am afraid that in our churches we often make a terrible mistake. We preach to carnal Christians what is only fit for spiritual men, and they think it so beautiful, and they take it into their heads and delight in it and say, “That is grand; what a view of the truth that man can give!” Yet their lives remain unchanged; they are carnal, with all the spiritual teaching they get. If there is one thing that we ought each to ask God at this Convention, it is this: “Lord deliver me from taking up spiritual teaching into a carnal mind!” The only evidence that you get a blessing is, that you are lifted out of the carnal into the spiritual state. God is willing to do it, and let us plead for it, and accept it. So much for the meaning of carnal .
Now comes the very important and solemn question, Is it possible for a man to get out of the carnal into the spiritual state? And how is it possible? I want to answer that, and to point out the steps which must be taken to that end. I have asked God that He may help me to speak as simply as to little children, for I want to say to every honest, earnest heart that is longing to be spiritual, you can get out of the carnal state tonight into the spiritual state. And what is needed for that?
1. I think the first thing needed is, that a man must have some sight of the spiritual life and some faith in it. At bottom our hearts are so full of unbelief, without our knowing it, that we do not accept, as a settled matter, that we can become spiritual men tonight. We do not believe it.
I heard a most interesting story just before I left the Cape. I was talking to a man of much Christian experience about my coming over to England, and I said to him, “Tell me what is the state of the Christians in England. You have worked among them, and know them well.” He replied, “I believe there is nothing so terrible amongst them as unbelief.” Then he told me a story of a young man of high promise, who was in England working for Christ. That young man had great gifts, but my friend could not understand why, with all those gifts, he did not get more blessing. Well, these two men spent a whole day in trying to find out what it was that was hindering the younger of them from being a greater blessing. It was only gradually they discovered that the root of the trouble was unbelief. He did not think it possible to live out the consecrated life. He was not assured that God was ready to give the blessing. The younger had to take a meeting, but the other said, “I will take your meeting. Go home, and come back tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.” He came back the next morning, and they began to speak and pray again, and in the course of the day the young man saw what it was to trust God for the power of a life in full surrender, and received a blessing from God, and since that time he had been ten times more blessed in his work than ever before Oh, do believe that if you are ready and willing it is possible for God to make a spiritual man of you.
Only try and just get a vision of the spiritual life.
What is that vision? You know the Word speaks about two powers of life the flesh and the Spirit: the flesh, our life under the power of sin; the Spirits, God’s life coming to take the place of our life. What we need, and what the Bible tells us, is to give our whole life, with every idea of strength or power, away unto death, to become nothing, and receive the life of Christ and of the Spirit to do all for us. Do believe that can be.
You say,“That is so high and holy and glorious, I do not think I can reach it.” No, you cannot, but God will send it down to you. Your reaching up is the great danger; you cannot reach it, but if you believe that God wants in a supernatural way, according to His everlasting love, to give you down from heaven the power of the Holy Spirit, then God will do for you more than you can ask or think.
I do believe that it is possible for a man to live every day as led by the Holy Ghost. I have read in God’s Word that God sheds abroad His love in the heart by the Holy Spirit. I have read in God’s Word that as many as are led by the Spirit, they are the children of God. I have read in God’s Word that if we are born again, we are to walk by the Spirit, or in the Spirit. Dear friends, it is possible; it is the life God call us to, and that Christ redeemed us for. As soon as He shed His blood, He went away to heaven to send the Spirit to His people. As soon as He was glorified, His first work was to give the Holy Spirit. If you will begin to believe in the power of Christ’s blood to cleanse you, and in the power of the glorified Christ to give His Spirit in your heart, you have taken the first step in the right direction.
Though you should feel ever so wretched, do hold fast to Jesus. He can fill you with the Spirit, for He has command you to “be filled with the Spirit”.
2. But secondly, it is not enough that a man should be really convicted of his carnality. This is a difficult and solemn, but, as I say, needful lesson. There is a great difference I ask you to notice this between the sins of the unconverted man and the sins of the believer. As an unconverted man, you had to be convicted of sin, and make confession of it; you all admit that.
But what were you convicted of chiefly? Of the grossness of sin, and very much of the guilt and punishment of sin. But there was very little conviction of inward, spiritual sins. You had no knowledge of them. There was very little conviction of inward sinfulness. God does not always give that, or ordinarily, in conversion. And so,
how is a man to get rid of these two things, the more hidden sins and the deep inner sinfulness? In this way: after he has become a Christian, the Holy Spirit convicts him of the carnal, fleshly life, and then the man begins to mourn over it, and be ashamed of it, and cry out like Paul, “Oh, wretched man that I am! I am a believer, but who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” He begins to turn round for help and to ask, where am I to get deliverance? He seeks it in many ways, by struggling and resolve; but he does not get it until he is brought to cast himself absolutely at the feet of Jesus. Do not forget that if you are to become a spiritual man, if you are to be filled with the Holy Ghost, it must come from God in heaven. God alone can do it.
How different our living and praying and preaching would be, if the presence of the Holy One, who fills eternity, who fills the universe, were revealed to us! To That end, God wants to bring us to a condition of utter brokenness. Somebody said to me, “It is dreadful, that call to die.” Yes, it is dreadful, if you had to do it in your own strength. But oh! If you would only understand that God gave Jesus to die, and that God wants
to plant you into Jesus that you may be delivered from the accursed power of the flesh! Oh, do believe that it is a blessing to be utterly broken down and utterly in despair, that you may learn to trust in God alone. Paul says somewhere, in effect, “I had the sentence of death in myself, that I might learn not to trust in myself, but in God, who raised the dead.” That is the place you must come to under conviction of your carnality “The flesh prevails and triumphs in me, and I cannot conquer it. Have mercy, my God! God help me!” And God will. Oh, become willing to bow before God in conviction and confession.
3. And then comes the third thing and that is, to believe that we can pass from the carnal to the spiritual condition in one moment of time. People want to grow out of the carnal into the spiritual, and they never can. They seek more preaching and teaching, in order, as they think, to grow out of the carnal into the spiritual. That child that I spoke of, though ten years old, remained as a babe of six months; it had got disease, and it wanted healing. Then growth would come. Now, the carnal state is a state of terrible disease. The carnal Christian is a babe in Christ. He is a child of God, Paul says, but he has this terrible disease, and consequently he cannot grow. How is the healing to come?
It must come through God and God longs to give it you this very hour. Let me say here that a man who becomes a spiritual man tonight is not yet a man of spiritual maturity. I cannot expect from a young Christian who has got the Holy Spirit in His fullness, what I can expect from a mature Christian who has been filled with Him for twenty years. There is a great deal of growth and maturity in the spiritual life. But what I speak of, when I speak of one step, is this: you can change your place, and, instead of standing in the carnal life, enter the spiritual life in one moment.
Note the reason why the two expressions are used. In the carnal man there is something of the spiritual nature; but you know that bodies get their names from that which is their most prominent element. A thing may be used for two or three objects, but it will likely get its name from that which is the most prominent. A thing may have several characteristics, but the name will be given according to that which is the most striking.
So, Paul says in other words, to those Corinthians, “You babes in Christ are carnal; you are under the power of the flesh, giving away to temper and unloveliness, and not growing, or capable of receiving spiritual truth, with all your gifts.”
And the spiritual man is a man who has not reached final perfection; there is abundant room for growth. But if you look at him, the chief mark of his nature and conduct is, that he is a man given up to the Spirit of God. He is not perfect, but he is a man who has taken the right position, and said,“Lord God, I have given myself to be led by Thy Spirit. Thou hast accepted me and blessed me, and the Holy Spirit now leads me.”
Do let us get hold of the thought that, God helping us, we can tonight leave our place on the one side, and take it on the other.
You may have heard the story that is often used in evangelistic services, about the man who was converted by a minister drawing a line, and talking to him about it. There was a sick man, seventy years of age, and a minister visited him faithfully, and talked to him about the blood of Christ, “Oh yes,” responded the man, “I know about the blood of Christ, that it can save us , and about pardon, and that if God does not pardon us we cannot enter heaven.” Yet the minister saw that the man had not the slightest sense of sin. Whatever the minister said, he said “Yes” to, but there was no life in it, no conviction of sin. The minister tells that when he himself was beginning to get into despair, he one day prayed “O God, help me to show this man his state.” All at once a thought came into his mind. The floor of the man’s room was strewn with sand, and the minister drew a line with his stick in the sand, and on the one side he wrote the words, “Sin,” “Death,” “Hell,” and on the other side,“Christ,” “Life,” “Heaven”. The old man asked, “What are you doing?” The minister answered: “ Listen! Do you think one of these letters on the left side could get up and go over the line to the right side?” “Of course not,” was the answer. Then the minister said solemnly, “Just as little can a sinner who is on the left side get over to the right side.
That line divides all mankind, and those who are saved are on the right side, and the unsaved are on the left side. It is Christ who must take you up from the left side and bring you to the right side. On what side are you?” There was no answer. The minister prayed with him, and went home praying that God would bless
him. He went back next day, and the question was,“Well, my friend, on what side are you? He at once answered with a sigh, “On the wrong side.” But it was not long before that man welcomed the gospel and accepted Christ.
I would like tonight to draw a line straight through the centre of this hall, and ask all of you who believe and confess that God has given you His Holy Spirit to lead you, and who know what the joy of the Holy Ghost is, to take your place at the right hand side. Then I would ask all you who have felt tonight that you are still carnal, under the power of the flesh. Then I would plead with you, and tell you that you cannot save yourselves from the flesh, or get rid of it, but that if you come and accept Christ after tonight, Christ can lift you over into the new life. You belong to Christ, and He belongs to you; but what you need is just to cast ourselves upon Him, and He will reveal the power of His crucifixion in you, to give you victory over the flesh.
Cast yourselves; with the confession of sin, and with utter helplessness, at the feet of the Lamb of God. He can give you deliverance.
That brings me to my last thought.
1. The first was, a man must see the spiritual life.
2. the second, a man must be convicted of and confess his carnal state.
3. the third a man must see that it is but one step from the one to the other; and then, lastly;
4. he must take the decisive step in the faith that Christ is able to keep him.Yes, it is not a mere view, it is not a consecration in any sense of its being in our power, it is not a surrender by the strength of our will. No. These are elements that may be present, but the great thing is, that we must look to Christ to keep us tomorrow, and next day, and always; we must get the life of God within us. We want a life that will last not only till another “Keswick”, but till death. We want, by the grace of God, to experience what the almighty indwelling and saving power of Christ can do, and all that God can do for us.
Oh, God is waiting, Christ is waiting, the Holy Spirit is waiting. Do not you see what has been wrong, and why it is you have been wandering in the wilderness? Do not you see the good land, the land of promise, in which God is going to keep and bless you? Oh, remember the story of Caleb and Joshua and the spies. Ten men said is effect: We never can conquer those people. Two said: We are able, for God has promised. Step out tonight upon the promises of God. Listen to God’s Word: “The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. Take a word like that, and claim that God shall do for you through His Holy Spirit what He has offered you.
Come tonight, and never mind though there be no new experience, and no feeling, and no excitement, and no light, but apparently darkness. Come and stand upon the Word of God, the everlasting God. God promises, as Father, His Holy Spirit to every hungering child. Will He then not give it to you? How shall He not give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? How could He not do it? Brethren, as truly as Christ was given for you on Calvary, and you have believed in the blood, so truly the Holy Spirit has been given for you and me. Open your hearts and be “filled with the Spirit”. Come and trust the blood of Christ for the cleansing, confess the carnality of every sin, and cast it into the fountain of the blood, and then believe in the living Christ to bless you with the blessing of His Spirit.
You will find the words from which I want to speak to you in 1 Corinthians 3:1-4“ And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.”
The Apostle commences the chapter by telling these Corinthians that there are two stages of Christian experience. Some Christians are carnal, some are spiritual. By the discernment which God’s Spirit gave the Apostle, he saw that the Corinthians were carnal, and he wanted to tell them so. You will find the word carnal four times in these four verses.
The Apostle felt that all his preaching would do no good if he talked about spiritual things to men who were unspiritual. They were Christians, real Christians, babes in Christ; but there was one deadly fault they were carnal. So the Apostle seems to say: I cannot teach you spiritual truth about the spiritual life, you cannot take it in. But that was not because they were stupid. They were very clever, and full of knowledge, but unable to understand spiritual teaching. That teaches us this simple lesson that all the trouble in the Church of Christ among Christians who sometimes get a blessing and lose it again, is just because they are carnal, and all that we need if we want to keep the blessing is, that we become spiritual. We must choose what style of Christian life we would like to live the carnal life or the spiritual. Choose the spiritual, and God will be delighted to give it you.
Now, if we are to understand this teaching we must begin by trying thoroughly to know what this carnal state is. I think I shall be able to point you to four very marked characteristics of the carnal state.
The first thing I have to say about it is, that the carnal state is a state of protracted infancy. It is a long time ago since you were converted, and you ought to have been a young man by these time, but you are still a babe in Christ. “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat; for hitherto ye were not able to bear it ”. You know what a babe is, and what a beautiful thing babyhood is. You cannot have a more attractive little thing than a child six months old, with its ruddy cheeks, its laughing and smiling face, the kicking of its little feet, and the movement of its little fingers. What a beautiful object! But suppose I saw such a child, and came back after six months and the child was not a bit bigger, the parents would begin to say, “We are afraid there is something the matter; the child won’t grow”. And if after three years I came back and saw there the baby no bigger yet, I should find the parents sad. They would tell me, “The doctor says there is some terrible disease about the child; it cannot grow. He says it is a wonder it is alive, and yet it does live.” I come back after ten years, and there is that helpless infant, and still there is no growth.
You see, babyhood at the proper time is the most beautiful thing in the world, but babyhood continued too long is a burden and a sorrow, a sign of disease. And that was the state of many of those Corinthian Christians. They continued babes.
Now, what are the marks of a babe? There are specially two marks a babe cannot help itself, and a babe cannot help others.
1. A babe cannot help itself, and that is the life of many Christians. They make their ministers spiritual nurses of babes. It is a solemn thing that those spiritual babes keep their ministers occupied all the time in nursing them and feeding them, and they never help themselves. They do not know themselves how to feed on Christ’s Word, and the minister must feed them. They do not know what contact with God is, and the minister must pray for them. They do not know what it is to live as those who have God to help them; they always want to be nursed. Do take care that it does not become the reason why you come to the Convention to get your nurses to give you spiritual meat. God be praised for the preaching of the gospel and for the fellowship of the Convention. But, oh, you know what baby does baby always keeps the house going, and very often mother cannot go out because there is baby, or the servant must be there to keep baby, or the nurse must be there; baby always occupies somebody. You cannot leave him alone. So there are many spiritual infants to whom ministers are always going, and who are always wanting some help. Instead of allowing themselves to be trained up to know their God and be strong, alas!
It is a protracted infancy. They cannot help themselves and can therefore not help others. Is not that just what we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews? There was the very same condition; we read that those who had been so long converted, and who ought to have been teachers, needed themselves to be taught the very rudiments of Christianity. And there are, as I have said, people who are always wanting to be helped instead of being a help to others.
For a little child, a spiritual babe of three month old, to be carnal and not to know altogether what sin is, and not yet to have got victory, it is, as Paul said, a thing not to be wondered at. But when a man continues, year after year, in the same state of always being conquered by sin, there is something radically wrong.
Nothing can keep a child in protracted infancy but disease of some sort. And if we have to say continually, “I am not spiritual”, then do let us say, “O God, I am carnal; I am in diseased state, and want to be helped out of it”.
2. The second mark of a carnal state is, that sin and failure prove master. Sin has the upper hand. What proof does Paul give that those people were carnal? He first charges them, and then he asks a question, “Among you there are envying, and strife’s, and divisions; are ye not carnal?” And then again, one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollo’s,” and another, “I am of Cephas”. Are you not carnal? Asks Paul in effect; is not that evident? You just act like other men; you are not acting like heavenly, renewed men, who live in the power and love of the Holy Ghost. You know that God who loved us dwelled in light, and that love is the great commandment, and that the Cross of Christ is nothing but the evidence of God’s love, and that the first fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. The whole of John’s Gospel means love. And when men give away to their tempers and pride and envying and divisions; when you hear people saying sharp things about others; when a man cannot open out his whole heart to a brother who has done him wrong, and forgive him; when a woman can speak about her neighbor with contempt as “That wretched thing”, or say to another, “Oh, how I dislike that women” all these are fruits of carnal spirit. Every touch of unlovingness is nothing but the flesh. The word carnal is a form of the Latin word for flesh, and all unlovingness is nothing but the fruit or work of the flesh.
The flesh is selfish and proud and unloving; therefore every sin against love is nothing but a proof that the man is carnal.
You say, “I have tried to conquer it, but I cannot”. That is what I want to impress upon you. Do not try, while you are in the carnal state, to bear spiritual fruit. You must have the Holy Spirit in order to love, then the carnal will be conquered. He will give you the spirit to walk in love.
And it is not only true of the sins against love, but there are so many other sins. Take worldliness, which somebody says has “honeycombed the Church”; take the love of money; take the pursuit of business, making people sacrifice everything to the increase of riches; take so much of our life, the seeking after luxury and pleasure and position. What is all that but the flesh? It gratifies the flesh, it is exactly what the world thinks desirable and delights in, and if you live like the world it is a proof that the spirit of the world which is in the flesh is in you. The carnal state is proved by the power of sin.
Someone asked me recently, “How about the want of love of prayer?” He wanted to know how the art of loving fellowship with God could be attained. I said, “My brother, that cannot be attained in any way until you discover that it must come outside of the carnal state. The flesh cannot delight in God; that is your difficulty.
You must not say or write down a resolution in your journal that ‘I will pray more’ You cannot force it. But let the axe come to the root of the tree; cut down the carnal mind. How can you cut it down? You cannot, but let the Holy Spirit of God come with the condemnation of sin and the Cross of Christ, and give over the
flesh to the death, and the Spirit of God will come in. And then you will learn to love prayer and love God and love your neighbor, and you will be possessed of humility and spiritual-mindedness and heavenly mindedness.” The carnal state is the root of every sin.
3. I come to the next point. If we want to know this carnal state, thoroughly, we must take very special notice that the carnal state can coexist with great spiritual gifts.
Remember, there is a great difference between spiritual gifts and spiritual graces and that is what many people do not understand. Among the Corinthians, for instance, there were very wonderful spiritual gifts. In the first chapter, Paul says, “I thank my God….. that ye are enriched in all utterance and in all knowledge.” That was something wonderful to praise God for. And in the Second Epistle he says in effect, “You do not come behind in any gift; see that you have the gift of liberality also.” An in the twelfth chapter, how he speaks about the gifts of prophecy, and of faith that could remove mountains, and of knowledge as things that they were ardently seeking for; but he tells them these will not profit them without they have love. They delighted in the gifts, and did not care for the graces. But Paul shows them a more excellent way to learn to love and to be humble. Love is the greatest thing of all, for love is God like above everything.
It is a very solemn thing for us to remember that a man may be gifted with prophecy, that a man may be a faithful and successful worker in some particular sphere among the poor and needy, and yet by the sharpness of his judgment and the pride that comes into them, and by other things, he may give proof that while his spiritual gifts are wonderful, spiritual graces are too often absent. Oh, take care that Satan does not deceive one of us with the thought, “But I work for God, and God bless me, and others look up to me, and I am the means of helping others.” Beloved fellow Christians, that a carnal man may have spiritual gifts is unspeakable solemn, because it must bring the most earnest and successful man to his knees before God with the thought, “Am I not, after all that God’s Spirit works in me as a matter of gift, possibly giving way to the flesh, in lack of humility, or love, or purity, or holiness?” God search us and try us, for His name’s sake.
4. A further point is this, that the carnal state renders it impossible for a man to receive spiritual truth. You see, perhaps, hundreds of Christians hungering for the Word, and they listen and they say, “What beautiful truths, what clear doctrines, what beautiful expositions of God’s Word!” and yet they do not get helped one step; or they get helped for two or three weeks, and the blessing passes away. What is the reason? There is an evil at the bottom; the carnal state is hindering the reception of spiritual truth.
I am afraid that in our churches we often make a terrible mistake. We preach to carnal Christians what is only fit for spiritual men, and they think it so beautiful, and they take it into their heads and delight in it and say, “That is grand; what a view of the truth that man can give!” Yet their lives remain unchanged; they are carnal, with all the spiritual teaching they get. If there is one thing that we ought each to ask God at this Convention, it is this: “Lord deliver me from taking up spiritual teaching into a carnal mind!” The only evidence that you get a blessing is, that you are lifted out of the carnal into the spiritual state. God is willing to do it, and let us plead for it, and accept it. So much for the meaning of carnal .
Now comes the very important and solemn question, Is it possible for a man to get out of the carnal into the spiritual state? And how is it possible? I want to answer that, and to point out the steps which must be taken to that end. I have asked God that He may help me to speak as simply as to little children, for I want to say to every honest, earnest heart that is longing to be spiritual, you can get out of the carnal state tonight into the spiritual state. And what is needed for that?
1. I think the first thing needed is, that a man must have some sight of the spiritual life and some faith in it. At bottom our hearts are so full of unbelief, without our knowing it, that we do not accept, as a settled matter, that we can become spiritual men tonight. We do not believe it.
I heard a most interesting story just before I left the Cape. I was talking to a man of much Christian experience about my coming over to England, and I said to him, “Tell me what is the state of the Christians in England. You have worked among them, and know them well.” He replied, “I believe there is nothing so terrible amongst them as unbelief.” Then he told me a story of a young man of high promise, who was in England working for Christ. That young man had great gifts, but my friend could not understand why, with all those gifts, he did not get more blessing. Well, these two men spent a whole day in trying to find out what it was that was hindering the younger of them from being a greater blessing. It was only gradually they discovered that the root of the trouble was unbelief. He did not think it possible to live out the consecrated life. He was not assured that God was ready to give the blessing. The younger had to take a meeting, but the other said, “I will take your meeting. Go home, and come back tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.” He came back the next morning, and they began to speak and pray again, and in the course of the day the young man saw what it was to trust God for the power of a life in full surrender, and received a blessing from God, and since that time he had been ten times more blessed in his work than ever before Oh, do believe that if you are ready and willing it is possible for God to make a spiritual man of you.
Only try and just get a vision of the spiritual life.
What is that vision? You know the Word speaks about two powers of life the flesh and the Spirit: the flesh, our life under the power of sin; the Spirits, God’s life coming to take the place of our life. What we need, and what the Bible tells us, is to give our whole life, with every idea of strength or power, away unto death, to become nothing, and receive the life of Christ and of the Spirit to do all for us. Do believe that can be.
You say,“That is so high and holy and glorious, I do not think I can reach it.” No, you cannot, but God will send it down to you. Your reaching up is the great danger; you cannot reach it, but if you believe that God wants in a supernatural way, according to His everlasting love, to give you down from heaven the power of the Holy Spirit, then God will do for you more than you can ask or think.
I do believe that it is possible for a man to live every day as led by the Holy Ghost. I have read in God’s Word that God sheds abroad His love in the heart by the Holy Spirit. I have read in God’s Word that as many as are led by the Spirit, they are the children of God. I have read in God’s Word that if we are born again, we are to walk by the Spirit, or in the Spirit. Dear friends, it is possible; it is the life God call us to, and that Christ redeemed us for. As soon as He shed His blood, He went away to heaven to send the Spirit to His people. As soon as He was glorified, His first work was to give the Holy Spirit. If you will begin to believe in the power of Christ’s blood to cleanse you, and in the power of the glorified Christ to give His Spirit in your heart, you have taken the first step in the right direction.
Though you should feel ever so wretched, do hold fast to Jesus. He can fill you with the Spirit, for He has command you to “be filled with the Spirit”.
2. But secondly, it is not enough that a man should be really convicted of his carnality. This is a difficult and solemn, but, as I say, needful lesson. There is a great difference I ask you to notice this between the sins of the unconverted man and the sins of the believer. As an unconverted man, you had to be convicted of sin, and make confession of it; you all admit that.
But what were you convicted of chiefly? Of the grossness of sin, and very much of the guilt and punishment of sin. But there was very little conviction of inward, spiritual sins. You had no knowledge of them. There was very little conviction of inward sinfulness. God does not always give that, or ordinarily, in conversion. And so,
how is a man to get rid of these two things, the more hidden sins and the deep inner sinfulness? In this way: after he has become a Christian, the Holy Spirit convicts him of the carnal, fleshly life, and then the man begins to mourn over it, and be ashamed of it, and cry out like Paul, “Oh, wretched man that I am! I am a believer, but who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” He begins to turn round for help and to ask, where am I to get deliverance? He seeks it in many ways, by struggling and resolve; but he does not get it until he is brought to cast himself absolutely at the feet of Jesus. Do not forget that if you are to become a spiritual man, if you are to be filled with the Holy Ghost, it must come from God in heaven. God alone can do it.
How different our living and praying and preaching would be, if the presence of the Holy One, who fills eternity, who fills the universe, were revealed to us! To That end, God wants to bring us to a condition of utter brokenness. Somebody said to me, “It is dreadful, that call to die.” Yes, it is dreadful, if you had to do it in your own strength. But oh! If you would only understand that God gave Jesus to die, and that God wants
to plant you into Jesus that you may be delivered from the accursed power of the flesh! Oh, do believe that it is a blessing to be utterly broken down and utterly in despair, that you may learn to trust in God alone. Paul says somewhere, in effect, “I had the sentence of death in myself, that I might learn not to trust in myself, but in God, who raised the dead.” That is the place you must come to under conviction of your carnality “The flesh prevails and triumphs in me, and I cannot conquer it. Have mercy, my God! God help me!” And God will. Oh, become willing to bow before God in conviction and confession.
3. And then comes the third thing and that is, to believe that we can pass from the carnal to the spiritual condition in one moment of time. People want to grow out of the carnal into the spiritual, and they never can. They seek more preaching and teaching, in order, as they think, to grow out of the carnal into the spiritual. That child that I spoke of, though ten years old, remained as a babe of six months; it had got disease, and it wanted healing. Then growth would come. Now, the carnal state is a state of terrible disease. The carnal Christian is a babe in Christ. He is a child of God, Paul says, but he has this terrible disease, and consequently he cannot grow. How is the healing to come?
It must come through God and God longs to give it you this very hour. Let me say here that a man who becomes a spiritual man tonight is not yet a man of spiritual maturity. I cannot expect from a young Christian who has got the Holy Spirit in His fullness, what I can expect from a mature Christian who has been filled with Him for twenty years. There is a great deal of growth and maturity in the spiritual life. But what I speak of, when I speak of one step, is this: you can change your place, and, instead of standing in the carnal life, enter the spiritual life in one moment.
Note the reason why the two expressions are used. In the carnal man there is something of the spiritual nature; but you know that bodies get their names from that which is their most prominent element. A thing may be used for two or three objects, but it will likely get its name from that which is the most prominent. A thing may have several characteristics, but the name will be given according to that which is the most striking.
So, Paul says in other words, to those Corinthians, “You babes in Christ are carnal; you are under the power of the flesh, giving away to temper and unloveliness, and not growing, or capable of receiving spiritual truth, with all your gifts.”
And the spiritual man is a man who has not reached final perfection; there is abundant room for growth. But if you look at him, the chief mark of his nature and conduct is, that he is a man given up to the Spirit of God. He is not perfect, but he is a man who has taken the right position, and said,“Lord God, I have given myself to be led by Thy Spirit. Thou hast accepted me and blessed me, and the Holy Spirit now leads me.”
Do let us get hold of the thought that, God helping us, we can tonight leave our place on the one side, and take it on the other.
You may have heard the story that is often used in evangelistic services, about the man who was converted by a minister drawing a line, and talking to him about it. There was a sick man, seventy years of age, and a minister visited him faithfully, and talked to him about the blood of Christ, “Oh yes,” responded the man, “I know about the blood of Christ, that it can save us , and about pardon, and that if God does not pardon us we cannot enter heaven.” Yet the minister saw that the man had not the slightest sense of sin. Whatever the minister said, he said “Yes” to, but there was no life in it, no conviction of sin. The minister tells that when he himself was beginning to get into despair, he one day prayed “O God, help me to show this man his state.” All at once a thought came into his mind. The floor of the man’s room was strewn with sand, and the minister drew a line with his stick in the sand, and on the one side he wrote the words, “Sin,” “Death,” “Hell,” and on the other side,“Christ,” “Life,” “Heaven”. The old man asked, “What are you doing?” The minister answered: “ Listen! Do you think one of these letters on the left side could get up and go over the line to the right side?” “Of course not,” was the answer. Then the minister said solemnly, “Just as little can a sinner who is on the left side get over to the right side.
That line divides all mankind, and those who are saved are on the right side, and the unsaved are on the left side. It is Christ who must take you up from the left side and bring you to the right side. On what side are you?” There was no answer. The minister prayed with him, and went home praying that God would bless
him. He went back next day, and the question was,“Well, my friend, on what side are you? He at once answered with a sigh, “On the wrong side.” But it was not long before that man welcomed the gospel and accepted Christ.
I would like tonight to draw a line straight through the centre of this hall, and ask all of you who believe and confess that God has given you His Holy Spirit to lead you, and who know what the joy of the Holy Ghost is, to take your place at the right hand side. Then I would ask all you who have felt tonight that you are still carnal, under the power of the flesh. Then I would plead with you, and tell you that you cannot save yourselves from the flesh, or get rid of it, but that if you come and accept Christ after tonight, Christ can lift you over into the new life. You belong to Christ, and He belongs to you; but what you need is just to cast ourselves upon Him, and He will reveal the power of His crucifixion in you, to give you victory over the flesh.
Cast yourselves; with the confession of sin, and with utter helplessness, at the feet of the Lamb of God. He can give you deliverance.
That brings me to my last thought.
1. The first was, a man must see the spiritual life.
2. the second, a man must be convicted of and confess his carnal state.
3. the third a man must see that it is but one step from the one to the other; and then, lastly;
4. he must take the decisive step in the faith that Christ is able to keep him.Yes, it is not a mere view, it is not a consecration in any sense of its being in our power, it is not a surrender by the strength of our will. No. These are elements that may be present, but the great thing is, that we must look to Christ to keep us tomorrow, and next day, and always; we must get the life of God within us. We want a life that will last not only till another “Keswick”, but till death. We want, by the grace of God, to experience what the almighty indwelling and saving power of Christ can do, and all that God can do for us.
Oh, God is waiting, Christ is waiting, the Holy Spirit is waiting. Do not you see what has been wrong, and why it is you have been wandering in the wilderness? Do not you see the good land, the land of promise, in which God is going to keep and bless you? Oh, remember the story of Caleb and Joshua and the spies. Ten men said is effect: We never can conquer those people. Two said: We are able, for God has promised. Step out tonight upon the promises of God. Listen to God’s Word: “The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. Take a word like that, and claim that God shall do for you through His Holy Spirit what He has offered you.
Come tonight, and never mind though there be no new experience, and no feeling, and no excitement, and no light, but apparently darkness. Come and stand upon the Word of God, the everlasting God. God promises, as Father, His Holy Spirit to every hungering child. Will He then not give it to you? How shall He not give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? How could He not do it? Brethren, as truly as Christ was given for you on Calvary, and you have believed in the blood, so truly the Holy Spirit has been given for you and me. Open your hearts and be “filled with the Spirit”. Come and trust the blood of Christ for the cleansing, confess the carnality of every sin, and cast it into the fountain of the blood, and then believe in the living Christ to bless you with the blessing of His Spirit.