1 Corinthians 3:1-3

Introduction

In the first half of 1 Corinthians 1, we discovered the church had two devastating flaws: the first flaw that Paul dealt with extensively was their incorporation of “the wisdom of man” in their ministry model. To incorporate “the wisdom of man” meant the church had rejected “the wisdom of God,” and, in rejecting “the wisdom of God,” they did not enjoy divine power in their ministries. We spent several weeks addressing Paul’s corrective actions the church must take to get back to enjoying the power and blessing of God. Namely, they needed to embrace “the wisdom of God,” which puts the focus on the the old rugged cross (1 Corinthians 1:18 and 1 Corinthians 2:2). In addition, they were to rely on the Holy Spirit and not the spirit of this world for results. Regardless of success they may have had in ministry, the spirit of this word kept lost people lost. The only Spirit that can penetrate a person’s heart and regenerate them is the Holy Spirit. As he closed his argument, he divides people into two groups: the natural person and the spiritual person. The natural person is lost and the spiritual person is saved. The mission of the church is not to reform the natural person but to be used of God to transform the natural person into a spiritual person.

Paul mentioned another devastating flaw in the first half of 1 Corinthians 1. The church was divided over who to follow. 1 Corinthians 1:12–13 “Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” The purpose of the division was not over substance of teaching or assertions made by Peter, Paul, or Apollos as to why they should be followed over others. The most likely reason the Corinthian Church was divided had to do with personality traits. Not inherently good personality traits versus inherently bad personality traits. The issue was not Paul was humble and Apollos was arrogant; or, Peter had a closer walk with the Lord than Paul. It seems the personality traits were trivial. In 1 Corinthians 1:12-13, Paul reminded them that to be contentious over like-minded leaders was tantamount to dividing the Body of Christ. However, Christ body is not divided; therefore, stop being divided as a body in Christ over like-minded people.

In chapter 3, Paul resumes addressing their division. At the conclusion of chapter 2, Paul describes two kinds of people on earth. It does not matter where you were born, how you were raised or the successes or failures you may have. A person is either spiritual (saved) or natural (lost). Their position before God is either saved or lost. A person has the mind of Christ or the mind of man. There is no in between. In chapter 3, Paul describes two character traits of people within the church in Corinth: spiritual and carnal. Positionally, they were spiritual in the sense that God had forgiven them of their sins and had given them the Holy Spirit. However, the character trait was spiritual or carnal. This leads me to my first point:

The struggle in serving the Lord

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. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?”

Sadly, the Corinthian church’s character trait was carnal. Paul wrote: “For ye are yet carnal.” Before we diagnose the causes that made them a carnal church, I want to highlight the difficulties in serving the Lord. Serving Jesus Christ is not always easy because we have inner battles that often rage in a more fierce way than a destructive wild fire. Lost people do not have this raging battle. The reason Christians have conflict is our dual nature. When God saved us, He did not take away our sinful nature that is often referred to as the flesh, but He did give us a new nature that Peter calls “divine” (2 Peter 1:4 “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust”) that is referred to often as the Spirit. The divine nature spearheads transformational changes in our lives that result in us becoming a new person in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new”).

Even though Heavenly change does occur in the Christian, this does not mean the changes come by easy. There are battles between our sinful nature and divine nature. Paul wrote in Galatians 5:16–17 regarding the intensity of these battles: “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” The most difficult thing to do is to “walk in the Spirit, and…not fulfill the lust of the flesh.” To accomplish this means we must conquer the sinful desires of the flesh. The lust (or desires) of the flesh are not the Spirit’s and vice versa. In these competing desires, there is not a treaty but a winner take all. Therefore, how we fight to conquer the sinful desires determines whether we are “spiritual” or “carnal.”

Two things to note about this battle: first, no Christian is excluded from this battle. Regardless of your stature or position in the faith, every Christian feels the heat of this battle. The Apostle Paul wrote about his struggles in this battle in Romans 7:15, 19, 22-23: “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I…For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do…For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” Later in Romans Paul wrote about how inner man groans for this battle to be over. Paul wrote in Romans 8:23: “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

The difficulty of the fight does not give us a pass if we fail. God has given us His Spirit and His word. His Spirit is a greater power than the sinful desires of our flesh. John wrote in 1 John 4:4 “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” The Holy Spirit effectually working through truth has the power to make us free from the gravitational pull of sin. John wrote in John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” It is on this foundation that Paul rebukes the Corinthian Church’s character not his perfections. In fact, before, he rebukes them he calls them “brethren.” As if to say in a loving and compassionate way: “I know the battle is not easy, we have good days and bad days, but there is no excuse to be carnal.”

What did Paul have in mind when he called the church carnal?

When I was a kid there was a game show called Name That Tune. One of the segments was a contest between two participants on who can know the tune in the least amount of notes. I can name the tune on why Paul called the Corinthian church carnal in three notes: growth, feeding, and behavior.

Growth - They were babes in Christ. There is a time when every Christian is a babe in Christ. Whenever a natural person is born again into a spiritual person, this person is a babe in Christ. They are a new born Christian. Paul saying to the church that he could not speak unto them as “spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as babes in Christ,” was a rebuke. Babies are adorable and beautiful. However, you do not want your baby to do baby things at 12 or 16. You hope that they have grown in their maturity and decision making. A baby will put anything into their mouth and they will touch anything. A 21 year old should have grown enough to know what not to put in their mouth and know it is not a good activity to play with your #2’s. A 21 year old’s decision making ability should be light years ahead of a 1 year old’s decision making. The Corinthian believers had been saved long enough to have grown in their faith to adulthood but their decision making abilities showed them to still be babes in Christ. Ray Stedman wrote: “Paul was in Corinth for almost two years, teaching, preaching, mentoring-yet they never advanced beyond babyhood.

They were still governed by worldly thinking.” The issue at hand that prevented them from growing in Christ was their yearning for “the wisdom of man” and “the spirit of this world,” instead of “the wisdom of God” and the Holy Spirit. G. Campbell Morgan wrote: “You have life, but you are yielding yourself to the carnal side of your nature, instead of the spiritual.” Yielding to the wrong nature kept them “undeveloped (and) immature” in their faith. G. Campbell Morgan calls Paul “a great doctor of the soul.” The reason is Paul understood the malady and knew the remedy. The malady to their division was carnality. Their carnality kept them undeveloped in their faith. However, what makes this diagnoses more alarming was the Corinthian church believed they were developed in their faith. 12 or 13 years ago, I went to the dentist. She saw that my gums were receding from my teeth. She knew the malady. The problem was two-fold: first, I was too aggressive with brushing my teeth; second, I had a habit of gritting my teeth. After she explained the maladies to me, I remember telling her that neither was the case. She gave the look that said something like this: “yeah, ok, continue to live in denial.” Later that evening I caught myself gritting my teeth and brushing my teeth aggressively. My point is, I did not even know that I was doing these two activities that were harmful to my gum and teeth relationship. Similarly, the Corinthian Church did not know they were not growing as they ought to have because they were caving into their natural or carnal desires rather than their spiritual desires.

Feeding - They were fed milk instead of meat. They kept repetitively tripping over elementary things so they could not advance in their knowledge. A student will never master multiplication if they do not understand addition; and, a student will never master division if they fail to grasp subtraction. Similarly, a Christian cannot understand the meat of God’s word if they do not know the milk of God’s word. The difference between learning math and spiritual truth is we have the greatest teaching in the history of the world guiding and teaching us truth. Jesus said in John 16:13, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.” The issue is not the teacher or the student’s ability. The student has the Holy Spirit within them. The issue is not willing to advance in truth and/or listening to the wrong teachers. It appears the problem with the Corinthian church was they stayed in the milk of God’s word because the listened to the wrong teachers. The kind of teachers who focused on “the wisdom of man.” In an academic understanding, they were in the class room as the teacher taught them the right was to do addition and subtraction but they had headphones on listening to a new kind of math that was not focused on getting the answer right.

Thomas Schreiner wrote: “We know the Corinthians were proud of their wisdom; thus, Paul’s rebuke must have cut deeply when he said they were not able to digest solid food when he first ministered to them” nor able to digest solid food at the writing of 1 Corinthians.

Behavior - They walked as men not Christians. 1 Corinthians 3:3 “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” Paul wrote in Galatians 5:19–21 in describing the person who yields to the flesh or is carnal. He wrote: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” This does not mean that a carnal person has all these traits. They just have to be one of them. The Corinthian church exhibited many of these character traits that are decidedly against the truth. Paul grouped these mindsets into three headings: “envying, and strife, and divisions.” The Apostle could have mentioned more than these three areas. Perhaps the reasons he limited himself to these three areas are: to explain the cause of their division over people, and to illustrate how “envy” leads to “strife” and how “strife” leads to “divisions.” Paul did not simply focus on the effect, which was division, but goes into the cause, which was “envy.”

Envy - “Envy” is to be consumed with jealousy. “(Envy) is a severe form of selfishness, begrudging someone else what we wish were ours.” At the root of envy is pride. Pride convinces us that we are deserving of what others have.

Strife - “Strife” means contentions. It is possible the contention was based upon “envy.” One pastor noted: “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.”

Divisions - “Divisions” mean “disunion.” Are you saying, doing, or thinking in ways thats do not bring us together as one. There can be no union when the church family is envious of one another.

Their carnality was not Paul’s or their environments fault, but their own.

Paul could not speak to them as spiritual because they had not grown and they could not bear the meat of God’s word because of their choices. Their lack of growth was not God’s, Paul’s, their environment, or the church member sitting across from them’s fault. The reason they had not grown as they should have was their incorporation of “the wisdom of man.” “The wisdom of man” or “the spirit of this world” prevents us from growing. As one Church Father noted: “These (Corinthians) were carnal becasue they were still slaves to the desires of the present age.” Chrysostom wrote: “The Corinthians inability to receive solid food was not by nature but by choice, so they were without excuse.” Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2:2, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” Peter’s point is regardless of how long we have been saved, we need to desire God’s word as a baby desires milk. The Corinthians did not “desire the sincere milk of the word, that (they) may grow.” Instead, they desired to be fed by the philosophy and culture of their community.

The Roman Empire was divided into social classes. “Unlike today, where class and status are somewhat dynamic…the Roman class hierarchy was very rigid.” The social order was divided into 7 classes: the Roman Emperor, the Senator, the Equestrian (primarily those who served in the military who gained wealth through plunder of a defeated enemy), the Decurion (a class of elite aristocrats and government officials), the Middle Class, the Poor, and the Slaves. You would never see these classes mixing during a banquet. Yet, within the Lord’s churches there is not a division based upon social class. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:12–14 “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.”

However, the Corinthian Church adopted the culture of the city and not God’s culture when it came to their banquets and observances of the Lord’s Table. In 1 Corinthians 11:17–19, 22 Paul rebuked the church as they approached and partook of the Love Feats and Lord’s Table. He said: “Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you…What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.” It appears the division that Paul had in mind in chapter 11 was centered on economic status. The church did not behave as one body but cliques based on social order. They (the superior classes) decided to follow the pattern on their community, rather than God’s word. The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 133:1 “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity!” Decisions that separated them into social orders within the church prevented them from growing.

Conclusion

James 3:14 “But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth.”

“Henry Morris (Defender's Study Bible) has a wise comment on men of flesh - There is thus a distinction between ‘spiritual’ believers and ‘carnal’ believers, the one controlled by the Spirit, the other still largely controlled by the flesh (Romans 8:5-13; Galatians 5:16-25).” Who controls you?

“Robert Murray McCheyne was a minister in Scotland in the last century. He was only thirty years old when he died, but he made an enormous spiritual impact on Scotland that still continues. He said, ‘It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likenesses to Jesus... A man cannot be a faithful minister until he preaches Christ for Christ’s sake, until he gives up striving to attract people to himself, and seeks only to attract them to Christ.’”