“And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual
men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants 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?” (1
Corinthians 3:1–3, NASB95)
In that same Crusade booklet, “Have You Made the Wonderful
Discovery of the Spirit-Filled Life?” I learned that while there are only two
camps for men in the large scheme of things, there are also two camps for
Christians. There are those who, like the description in the previous post,
live Christ directed lives and who are marked by their trust and growth in Him
even in the midst of stumbling, and there are those who while being saved still
live as if they are largely in control. It may be because of a lack of maturity
and not growing in their knowledge and understanding of who they are in Christ
and how they are to walk before God or it may be because they are in a season
of rebellion and choosing to ignore the things of God.
Paul wrote of the Corinthian believers that he could not
write to them as to spiritual men because they weren’t living as spiritual men.
Instead he was placed in the position of writing to them correctively as men of
flesh. The word “flesh” in our modern translations is written as “carnal” in
the King James and subsequent New King James translations. The roots of
“carnal” are not in the Greek word used (sarkinos), but in Latin and then late
middle English. And, a form of this word, “carne” is frequently found in many
Latin-based foods where it simply means meat. It is this word carnal, that
flows from our earlier translations that Crusade and others have adopted this
term to describe the Christian who is living a self-, or of himself- or his
flesh-directed life. This the person who walks according to his wisdom and his
own desires without significant regard to the ways of God. He may go to church
on Sunday or things like that, but the rest of his life or certain areas of his
life bear little resemblance to his true identity as one who belongs to Christ.
In Crusade we learned that this is the person who while possessing great a
great spiritual inheritance lives in spiritual poverty and defeat. In the
simplest of terms, he has not grown up. These people are still “infants in
Christ.” (https://www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/the-spirit-filled-life.html)
The Corinthian church was struggling because the believers
in the church were not growing in the Word. They were still being influenced by
the outside world and most probably the things of the pagan worship surrounding
them and that had influenced many of them. Paul wrote to them as believers,
meaning that they were no longer “natural.” They had been saved. This was
clearly stated in chapter 1, verse 2 where he wrote, “To the church of God
which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints
by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, their Lord and ours:” (1 Corinthians 1:2, NASB95) But they also could
not be called “spiritual” because they were not living as if they had been
saved. For these people their walk did not match their identity. To the world
they looked one way, but God knew them to be different. And, it is this
difference for which Paul is calling them to account.
It didn’t matter their chronological age or even the number
of years or months that they had been saved. What mattered is that they had not
grown from the initial things they had heard from Paul which was the basics of
salvation. Paul called them “infants.” There are a number of words used in the
New Testament to refer to children. There is only one used to refer to a group
younger than the word used here, and that word refers to those yet unborn or
just born. Here the word “nēpios” is not a general term used of
children such as even children of God which is true of all of us who are saved,
but specifically referring to little children or infants. It would be like
saying they had not grown beyond the initial milk and were still acting
infantile in their faith.
My littlest grandson and granddaughter are grabbing for
their parents’ food. What they see them eating is very enticing and they want
to move past the milk to get the seemingly good stuff that everyone else is
eating. But they are 7 and 5 months old. It would be problematic if they were 7
or 5 years old and they were not eating what the rest were. For them, even at
their young age they know there is something more and they want it. These
believers in Corinth had not gone past the spiritual milk, and this was a real
problem in the church.
Paul added that this problem was such an issue that they
still were not able to receive solid spiritual food, because they were still
“fleshly” as evidenced by how they were interacting with each other.
Specifically, he returned to an issue previously brought up; “For since there
is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking
like mere men?” There problem was not that they could not understand more
complicated doctrines, but that they weren’t even applying the truths that they
knew. There was not spiritual depth in their lives. They had not put off the
things that they probably knew they were supposed to and started to live as
they were led. Later in this letter Paul would speak of himself writing, “When
I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a
child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.” (1 Corinthians
13:11, NASB95) This was the step that these believers needed to take in order
to start seeing real growth.
In the English Standard Version, the end of verse 3 reads,
“…are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Corinthians
3:3, ESV) This was the question Paul rhetorically asked them as he presented to
them what he had heard. Paul pointed t how they related to each other as a mark
of their immaturity. Jesus presented this same mark as the standard for how we
are to be as believers. He wrote, “A new commandment I give to you, that you
love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
(John 13:34, NASB) And the result of this kind of love in the church, rather
than souring people toward Christianity, Jesus went on to say, “By this all men
will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John
13:35, NASB)
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of
the flesh.” … “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things
there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh
with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by
the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:16, 22–25, NASB)
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