1 CORINTHIANS 2:12-3:1-4
INTRODUCTION
The late Dr. Robert G. Lee, a noted Southern Baptist preacher, who preached a powerful message titled “Pay Day Some Day,” regarding Ahab and Jezebel, once preached a scathing sermon against sin. He did not pull any punches. A lady whose feathers had been ruffled met him at the door after the service and said, “I didn’t appreciate that sermon one little bit.” Dr Lee replied, “The devil didn’t either. So classify yourself.”
Classification is not always flattering, but it is always needed in spiritual matters. The Bible teaches that in the broad sense there are three categories or classes of people living on the Planet Earth. In 1 Corinthians 2-3 the Apostle Paul calls them the natural man, the carnal man, and the spiritual man.
Classification is important because it is the starting point in our understanding of the life of faith in Christ. Just as you do not really grasp your need to be saved until you realize you are lost, so you cannot get to where you ought to be in your spiritual pilgrimage until you recognize where you are. You need to know into which of Paul’s classifications you fit. Aware of this insight, you can then lay a proper foundation as you build a home in your heart for Jesus Christ. As we study the characteristics of the natural man, carnal man, and spiritual man, may God show you where your house is out of line with His blueprint and help set your spiritual house in order.
I. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NATURAL MAN V. 14
The first person we meet in Paul’s classification is the natural man. Paul states, “But the natural man does not accept the things of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised” (discerned). Why do we call the natural man by such a term? Because he is just that—natural. Let me clarify what a natural man is not. There is nothing inherently evil about the term natural man. It does not mean sinful. But it does point to the absence of spiritual discernment. It points to a person whose horizon is bounded by this life; in other words, one who lives on the purely material plane, without being touched by the Spirit of God. The natural man is the sum total of all that he has received by nature from his first birth and nothing more. The natural man is born into the natural world. The term natural man is used in a generic sense, so it incorporates men and women. The natural person may have been born well physically, receiving many admirable traits through his/her natural birth. He may be witty, charming, admirable, cultured, outwardly moral, and educated. He may even be religious! But because the natural man has had no second birth, he is dead to the spiritual world. Having been born only once, he is dead spiritually.
Someone would ask how could we know that the natural man is dead spiritually? Because the Scripture states emphatically, “In Adam all died” (1 Corinthians 15:22). What does that mean? When Adam sinned, he died. He did not die an immediate physical death, but he died spiritually at that moment. Spiritual death is the separation of the Spirit of God from the spirit of man. God moved out of Adam’s spirit; Adam became devoid of God in his spirit. God says of our Lord Jesus Christ by way of contrast, “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). So, when the Lord went out of Adam, the life went out, and the light went out as well.
Perhaps one of you is saying in your mind how does this apply to us? Every person born since that time has inherited Adam’s nature. We are born minus God in the spirit—dead, depraved, and darkened like our father Adam. Therefore, when we say that man was made in the image of God, we have to remember that we are making reference to Adam. Nevertheless, that perfect image was marred and defaced by sin. Listen to what the Bible says about Adam’s children. “Adam lived one hundred and thirty years; he became the father of a son in his own likeness according to his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5:3). We are born therefore in the image of Adam, rather than the image of God. It is sad but it is true and comforting to me. I would hate to look around humanity as it is and think that we are all in the image of God. Surely God is in better shape than that! God deserves better.
This death to spiritual things that we inherited from Adam does not mean that every person is outwardly vile or inwardly cruel. Your life may not be as corrupt as someone who is wicked. But if you have not been born of the Spirit of God, both of you are dead. When a body is dead, there may be degrees of corruption and decay, but there are no degrees of deadness. Dead is dead! All people in Adam are from the same mold. So in a nutshell, the natural man is blind to the spiritual world. Due to this deadness and blindness, the natural man has no appreciation of spiritual things. That is why some people go to church but they don’t take delight in preaching, Bible study, Sunday school, witnessing, and prayer meetings. Yes, he is a church member, but his inward being has not been transformed. He or she is a natural person. Paul says that spiritual things are “foolishness to the natural man” (v. 14). Paul uses the verb, “receives,” which means to welcome as one would welcome a houseguest. The natural man has no welcome for Christ or the things of God. Let me clarify something here. This does not mean that the natural man may not enjoy coming to a church service. He/she may delight and thrill at great music. He/she can even be stirred by the articulation and oratory skill of a gifted preacher. He/she may also enjoy great comfort from the warm handshake of friendly people who gather to worship God. However, he does not truly welcome the message of God in his spirit. He/she does not surrender to Christ. Satan knows this secret so he does not oppose religion as such. Satan would just as soon send a man or woman from the pew to hell as from the gutter. Paul amplifies the natural man’s lack of appreciation for the things of God in 1 Corinthians 1:18. The natural man does not know the real meaning of the cross. That is why the preaching and teaching of the cross do not move some people in our churches today. The reason is because they are purely natural.
Not only does the natural man have no appreciation for the things of God, he also doesn’t understand them (2:14b). What good is a television set if the tuner is broken? You cannot receive any program from such a television. The natural man does not have any spiritual apparatus. He/she may hear the words, but he/she never really gets the message. Some of you argue with people about Jesus Christ and the things of God. You don’t have to argue with a natural man/woman over spiritual things. “Why do you blame a blind man for not seeing?” Your job is to bear witness to Christ, then, pray that God in His mercy will turn the light of His revelation onto the darkened spirit of the person involved. A person in this condition is bound to this material world, which compounds the tragedy of life without God. The natural man lives a self-gratifying, and materialistic life without the miracle of the new birth from above. To those of you who are natural in your essential being there is more, there is so much more to life than you already have.
II. THE MARKS OF THE SPIRITUAL PERSON
The second category of humanity that Paul describes is the spiritual man. What are the characteristics of the spiritual man, the person who is living a supernatural life? First as the name implies, the spiritual man lives by the Spirit (2:12). The spiritual man is simply a person who has received the Spirit of God. Because he has received the Spirit of God, he has also received life. He/she has been born from above. He is not a natural man who has been improved. He is not a person who has had a makeover. Rather the spiritual man has been transformed into a prince by the kiss of God’s grace. Christians are not merely nice people. We are new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17).
You have to remember that salvation is a matter of receiving Christ through the Holy Spirit into your heart. It is not merely having your sins forgiven. Forgiveness is necessary, but it is a stage setter for salvation—the entrance of Christ into your life. Salvation also does not mean merely going to heaven when you die. That is wonderful but heaven is the by-product of salvation. Salvation begins with getting Christ, the life, and the light back into your deadened spirit.
Second, the spiritual man learns from the Holy Spirit. The spiritual man is given supernatural insight into the things that have been freely given by God (2:13). There are things that can be known only by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. That is why some of you read the Bible but you don’t understand what it means. To the spiritual, the human spirit becomes the organ of spiritual knowledge. The Lord reveals spiritual truth to the human spirit. Of course, this includes the mind and emotions, but they depend on the revelation that the human spirit has received from the Lord. The Holy Spirit is the Person who reveals God’s truth to your human spirit. That is why it is important to pray, teach, preach, witness, and minister in song in total dependence upon Him. For while I can preach truth to you Sunday by Sunday; it is the Holy Spirit who imparts truth. An intellectual pursuit of the Bible is important. But remember that the mind can only help you to understand what God has revealed to you by His Spirit. So when God wants to illumine you, the lamp He uses is your human spirit. Therefore, it would be wise of you to burn the oil of divine illumination rather than the wick of human intuition, which quickly burns out and leaves only so much smoke.
Third, the spiritual man is liberated through the Holy Spirit (2:15-16). The spiritual man is no longer chained in the prison of this world’s system. He sees right through it. He judges, or discerns, all things. The word "judges" is a legal term that implies an examination made upon the basis of illuminated insight and knowledge. Because of the Holy Spirit the value system of the spiritual man is operating correctly. He is set free from the bondage that enslaves the thinking pattern of the natural man. This truth sets the spiritual man free. The things that motivate the natural man do not motivate the spiritual man. The Spiritual man marches to the beat of a different drummer (1 Peter 4:4). The truth is that the spiritual man is not weird or an oddity. He/she is not odd but just different. If a spiritual person displays some weird or odd characteristics, it is an indication that he/she was odd or weird before he/she was saved. However, there is a marked distinction in the life of the spiritual man.
III. THE TRAITS OF THE CARNAL PERSON
The third kind of person that the Apostle Paul mentions is the carnal man. This person was once spiritual but is now known as carnal or fleshly. The carnal man is unnatural. He is unnatural because he is a strange mixture. He is neither fish nor fowl. He has truly been saved, for Paul calls the carnal believers in Corinth his brethren. But this strange creature looks and acts much like an unsaved person. What are the traits of a carnal Christian? The carnal Christian is deformed (1 Cor. 3:1). Paul says that the carnal Christian is like a baby who has never grown up. When you give birth to a baby boy or girl you delight in him or her. Who does not love a baby? But later on when this little baby gets to eight or ten years and the only syllable that he can say is “dada” then, something has gone bad. In the physical realm when something goes bad and the baby fails to develop, the parents don’t condemn the child. They care and love that baby.
But it is quite different when for no reason at all you do not develop and grow spiritually in the Christian life. How sad and tragic when you have all that you need to grow and yet, because of stubbornness, ignorance, laziness, or sin, you are a spiritual midget or pigmy. That means you are spiritually deformed. It is one thing to be childlike; it is quite another thing to be childish. The carnal Christian is not only deformed but also dependent (3:2). There is nothing wrong in feeding a little baby with milk, but there are so many good things to taste and enjoy for the adult! Technically, milk is a predigested food. Carnal Christians expect a pastor to bottle-feed them on Sundays and then burp them on their way out of the sanctuary. Because of his weak digestion and his spiritual dependence, the carnal Christian never grows in his theology much beyond “Hell is hot, heaven is sweet, and Jesus saves.” Thank God that these things are true, but there is so much more to know and enjoy about the Lord Jesus Christ. While the spiritual man is sitting down to a juicy, spiritual steak with all the trimmings, the carnal Christian never gets beyond his milk. And he even needs someone to get the bottle and feed him. The carnal Christian is also divisive (3:3). Like a spoiled child, the carnal Christian is the center of division and controversy in the church. The carnal Christian does not want peace in the body of Christ. He/she is always the center of controversy and division (3:21-23). He/she is not interested in the spiritual life of the church. He/she forms a clique in the church to ruin the spiritual life of the church. Such people are not happy. They have no joy. They have no peace in their heart. They have no contentment in the Christian life. And if they died in such a condition, they would stand before the judgment seat of Christ empty-handed because they would receive no reward. Who are you? Natural, spiritual, or carnal?
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