“And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?” (1 Corinthians 3:1-3)

The Existence of the Carnal Christian

A believer who is carnal is under the control of his flesh and not the indwelling Holy Spirit. Like it or not, Christians do sin. The Bible is filled with stories of those who put their trust in the Lord for salvation and yet still sinned after their conversion. Most of the stories of believers in the Word of God are of those who became carnal, then rebounded. Noah built an ark, then got drunk. Abraham tried twice to give away Sarah to the harem of heathen kings, just to save his own life. Isaac tried the same thing. The list is too long to tell of Jacob, David and Solomon. The New Testament tells the same stories.

The Greek word for “carnal” means body or meat. It has come into the English language in such usages as chili con carne, chili with meat. When you as a Christian sin, you have relinquished the control of the Holy Spirit over your life and turned it over to the flesh nature found in your body. You, at any time, are a spiritual Christian or a carnal Christian. Happily, we have been given 1 John 1:4-9 as a means of coming back under the control of the Holy Spirit by confessing our sins to the Lord Jesus. He cleanses us from our sins by the same blood He saved us with in the point of salvation.

A carnal believer imitates an unbeliever. He acts like a “mere man”, the unbeliever. A spiritual believer imitates God (Ephesians 5:1). Because a carnal believer is under the control of the flesh, he is operating under the same power as the unbeliever. The sinner has no new nature and so can only act from his flesh by human good or evil. After a period of time in evil, he feels guilty and tries to cover up his evil with human good. He attends church for a while, gives offerings and believes this will make up for his evil. He then becomes bored with being good and returns to evil. Both the evil he has committed and the good he is using to cover the evil come from his flesh. Sadly, “in the flesh nothing good dwells (divine good)” (Romans 7:18). A carnal believer has the new nature, the Holy Spirit dwelling in his human spirit, but is not under its control. So, even though the believer has the new nature, he is under the control of the old nature, the flesh, and thus imitates the unbeliever.

Where did the nature of the flesh begin? We know Adam and Eve were not created with it. It entered with their disobedience and sin toward God.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

The reason God warned Adam and Eve of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was because it was the only test of their free will. There were millions of yes trees and only one no tree. If they ate of the no tree, it would become part of their physical makeup, enter into their very being. God’s warning was stern, “in the day you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). The word “surely” was added for the double use of the word die. The Lord told Adam, if he ate of the tree, he would die twice. A better translation would be, “dying, you will die”. Dying, present tense, you will die, future tense. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree, they died spiritually first and then hundreds of years later, they died physically. The first thing to enter into their bodies was the nature of the flesh, sin. Then spiritual death hit their spirit. Death began from the outside in. This is why Jesus, the last Adam, brought about the reverse of the curse.  Redemption moves from the inside out.  First in our spirit at salvation, secondly in our souls in daily maturity and finally into our body in resurrection. The tree entered into both Adam and Eve’s body. The nature of the flesh IS the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Human Good vs. Divine Good

We often think that Adam and Eve already knew good and their sin revealed evil for the first time. This is not true. The tree revealed both good and evil to each one of them. All they had ever known until that day was divine good. It was the display of God’s grace and unmerited goodness to them from the heart of God. The good that the tree revealed was human good, man’s self-effort trying to please God. When they sinned, they clothed themselves in fig leaves. This is a great example of human good. It would decay in a few days and must be replaced. God clothed them with a symbol of His divine good, a coat of animal skins which would last for years. All human good comes from the nature of the flesh. It is an imitation of divine good. The human good side of the flesh is where all religions, brotherhoods, sororities, fraternities and charities come from. The other side of the flesh is evil, where all sin comes from, murders, hatred, adultery, torture and abuse.

The nature of the flesh, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is still present in us as Christians. It is in our members, our body, which has yet to be redeemed (Romans 6:6,12,13,19,7:5,23,24, James 4:1). It came over through the new birth and remains in our body until the day it dies or is redeemed at the resurrection of the Church. But, unlike an unbeliever, we have a second and stronger nature, the Holy Spirit, living in our human spirit. If we yield to the Holy Spirit, we do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). Victory over the flesh comes from a renewed mind, filled with the word of God and acted on (Romans 12:2).

As a Believer, There are Two Yous

There are two yous, the spiritual you and the fleshly you. Other titles include the old man, the flesh, the new man, the recreated human spirit, which is indwelled by the Holy Spirit. When we are under the control of the Holy Spirit, we are called spiritual. When we are under the control of the flesh, we are called carnal.

Analogies of the Spiritual You and the Carnal You

“And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1). 

1.      A carnal believer is referred to as a baby in Christ.  Notice they are a baby, born into the family, but still “in Christ.” They may be carnal, but still a family member. It is said in the following verses they can only drink milk and cannot eat solid food as a mature child or adult. In the case of the Corinthians, they never grew up, but remained babies from their spiritual birth. The Hebrew Christians, on the other hand, did grow up, but regressed, becoming carnal, did not repent, and regressed to the point of again being babies (Hebrews 5:12,13).

2.      A carnal believer is seen as asleep among dead people.  If you found fifty dead people, but unknowingly, one was only asleep, you would have to do some work to discover if the person was truly alive.  The carnal believer lives and fellowships among sinners, i.e. the prodigal son.  He looks and acts like a dead person, because, like the dead, he is under the control of the flesh.  You would have to check the pulse and the breathing to determine if they were truly alive.  Once determined, you would then proceed to wake up the sleeping person to rejoin the living.  “That you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:22-24).

3.      The power to move from carnality to spirituality is not difficult and it is up to you.  Paul compares the move from being a carnal believer to becoming a spiritual believer to taking off old clothes and putting on other clothes. How hard is it to take off clothes and put on new ones? God will not do it for you, you have to do it yourself. It is your choice to confess your sins and receive cleansing of them. This is the means of moving from the power of the flesh to the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (1 John 1:7-10).

4.      By our choice to confess our sins, we move from walking in spiritual darkness to walking in the light.  We also move from being out of fellowship with God to being in fellowship with Him.  The new man is more powerful than the old.  The new man can change the old man, but the old man cannot change the new man (James 4:6).

5.      More grace is for the old man, our flesh, our infirmities.  The first grace is for our inward man, the real you.  More grace is for the physical you, the part which is proud.  God gives us added grace to help bring our flesh into line, walking in holiness.  In other words, the grace spoken of in Ephesians 2:8,9, the grace that brings salvation, is for our inward man.  1 John 1:9 is the grace for the outward man, to bring him inline by the power of confession of sins and cleansing of the blood of Jesus.