Body, Soul and Spirit # 3

The Lord said to me…”I will test my people with a Plumbline, Amos 7:8 (TLB)

The Plumbline is a blog to encourage the Body of Christ.

Body, Soul and Spirit # 3

The State of the Mind at Conversion

The Carnal Believer: 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 (NKJV) 1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 2 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; 3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal andbehaving like mere men?

Here the Apostle divides all Christians into two classes: the spiritual and the fleshly or carnal. The spiritual Christians are not at all extraordinary; they are simply normal. It is the fleshly who are out of the ordinary, because they are abnormal. Those at Corinth were indeed Christians, but they were fleshly, not spiritual. Three times in this chapter Paul declares they were men of the flesh. Through the wisdom given him by the Holy Spirit the Apostle was made to realize that he first must identify them before he could offer them the message they needed. .

Biblical regeneration is a birth by which the innermost part of man's being, the deeply hidden spirit, is renewed and indwelt by the Spirit of God. It requires time for the power of this new life to reach the outside: that is, to be extended from the center to the circumference. Hence we cannot expect to find the strength of "the young men" nor the experience of "the fathers" manifested in the life of a child in Christ. Although a newly born believer may proceed faith- fully, loving the Lord best and distinguishing himself in zeal, he still needs time for opportunities to know more of the wickedness of sin and self and occasions to know more of the will of God and the way of the spirit. However much he may love the Lord or love the truth, this new believer still walks in the realm of feelings and thoughts, not yet having been tested and refined by fire. A newly born Christian cannot help being fleshly. Though filled with the Holy Spirit, he nevertheless does not know the flesh. How can one be liberated from the works of the flesh if he does not recognize that such works spring from the flesh? In assessing their actual condition, therefore, newly born babes are generally of the flesh.

The Bible does not expect new Christians to be spiritual instantaneously; if they should remain as babes after many years, however, then their situation is indeed most pitiful. Paul himself points out to the Corinthians that he had treated them as men of the flesh earlier because they were new born babes in Christ, and that by now-at the moment of his writing them-they certainly should be growing into manhood. They had instead frittered away their lives, remained as babes, and were thus still fleshly. It does not necessitate as much time as we think today for one to be transformed from the fleshly into the spiritual.

·      I love how the Message puts Paul’s remarks in Romans 8:5 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God!  The New King James Version says, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.”  

The carnal mind of the believer at his new birth is neutral, it’s empty, purged and cleansed of the world influence. However, the new believer must adjust the inflow of information into his mind. So much goes into our minds that is not of God and therefore detrimental to the spiritual life.  Many believers spend too much time feeding the neutral (cleansed) mind on the things of the world, this contaminates it an causes it to go negative and become carnal. The carnal mind is offended by the Word of God. Hear what Paul says in

·      Romans 8:6-7 (NKJV) 6 For to be carnally minded is death…7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

·      Galatians 5:17 (KJV) 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.

·      1 Corinthians 2:9 (KJV) But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

The believer needs a renewed mind. We’ll discuss that next time.