Carnal?

     This week in Sunday school, we talked about three types of people.  I took a picture of the white board, and tried to clarify the details with editing.  

     In case you can't see well, there are three circles.  Inside each is a crudely-drawn chair (meant to be a throne).  In the top circle, we see a letter S on the throne (standing for the word Self), with a cross (which stands for Christ) outside the circle.  This represents a "natural" or unsaved person.  The bottom left picture is a spiritual person, with the cross not only inside the circle, but on throne.  In other words, Christ is the boss of this person's life.  The third circle, the bottom right, is a circle with self back on throne, but the cross inside, next to the throne.  This is said to represent a carnal person, or a Christian who is not yielding to Christ.  

     This was not the first time in my life I have been introduced to this idea.  My parents taught us about it when I was a child.  When I was in junior high, our youth pastor did a talk with us about it.  It is a relatively common illustration.

     I have recently heard people claim that this is an inaccurate teaching.  In their belief, there is no such thing as a carnal Christian.  Either you are fully yielded to Christ (with Him on the throne) or you are not even a Christian at all, which would put you in the natural category.  The complaint I have heard is that, if we accept the possibility of carnal Christians, we are excusing sin, giving people the option of not being Christlike.  What is the truth in this?  

     First of all, I will say that sin is never "okay" or excused.  Our sin had to be dealt with.  The only reason we receive grace and forgiveness is because Jesus perfectly lived out God's righteous law.  In His righteousness, He took on our sin when He died on the cross, and all of God's wrath at us was placed on the cross of Christ.  When we receive Him, His righteous life is transferred to us.  Therefore, when God looks at believers (regardless of how they are acting at the moment), He sees the righteousness of His Son, and He receives us in Christ.  We are in Christ's righteousness the moment we are saved.  

     After salvation, since we are in Christ's righteousness, does this mean it doesn't matter what we do or how we live?  The Apostle Paul posed this question in Romans 6:1, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?  Throughout the earlier chapters of Romans, he had been building a case for our sin and the salvation Christ offers.  Now, he is asking the question that might be in a person's mind after reading all of this:  Do we now have a free pass to sin without consequences?  Paul then answers this question in verse two: By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?  We have a new nature now, and new desires for the things of God.  We are dead to sin, and alive to righteousness.  This passage certainly doesn't sound like we have a free pass to sin, or that God condones sin in the believer's life.  

     Galatians 2:20 tells us I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  The life of Christ has been given to us, and we now live by faith, letting Him lead us.  

     Romans 8:29 tells us that we are not only called to salvation, but to become like Jesus.  Verse 30 goes on to say, And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.  We aren't just called to get saved and live however we want the rest of our earthly lives.  We are called to salvation first, then toward glory.  

     In spite of this, though, the Bible is clear that Christians still sin.  Romans 7:18 says, For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.  We are saved, but we still have the flesh, or our old, sinful nature.  There are times when we (metaphorically speaking) push Christ off the throne and do things our own way.  This can be some obvious sin, or it can be subtle, like trying to live out the Christian life in the flesh, in our own strength, instead of relying on the Holy Spirit.  

     Continuing along this line, Paul addresses the believers at Corinth as carnal: And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.  (First Corinthians 3:1, KJV).  Right here, we are shown that Christians (whom Paul calls "brethren" meaning they are saved) can be carnal.  This was not something Paul just accepted about them.  He challenged them to do better.  

     It is even clear that there are some who are saved, but, due to the way they lived their lives, will have no rewards in Heaven (First Corinthians 3:15).  This should reveal that it is possible to be a Christian and yet live in an ungodly way.  

     This tension between Carnal and Spiritual living is illustrated in Galatians 5:17: For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.  As Christians, we have Christ's righteousness.  We have the power to say "no" to sin and "yes" to holiness.  And yet, we also still have the flesh.  These two sides of us are in constant war.  There is a tension that Christians will have until the day they leave earth and enter the Presence of God.  When we sin, we are pleasing that flesh side of us, but we are grieving the Spirit, and when we please the Lord, we have that satisfaction and joy, but the flesh still wages that war against it.  

     In Amy Grant's classic song Old Man's Rubble, this reality is well explained:  Deep within you there's a spiritual battle.  There's a voice of the darkness and a voice of the light.  Just but listening you've made a decision, 'cause the voice you hear is gonna win the fight.                                        

     The pastor I sat under as a high schooler and college student used to tell this illustration a lot in trying to explain the battle between the flesh and the spirit in the life of a believer:

     The most wicked man in a small town came to a revival, and he became a Christian (much to the shock of the preacher and baffled onlookers!).  From then on, there was a complete change in him.  One day, one of the townsfolk asked him about it, and he said it this way:

"There are two dogs inside of me.  One dog hates God, hates people, loves to make trouble.  The other dog loves God, loves people, and wants to do right.  These two dogs inside me are fighting each other."  The person he was talking to asked, "Which one wins?"  His reply was, "The dog I feed the most wins."  This, of course, was meant to share that we need to be cultivating the Spirit by reading the Word, being around people who remind us of the truth, reading, watching and listening to godly things that would impact us that way.  

     To say that there are carnal Christians is not to excuse carnal behavior.  Nowhere in the epistles does Paul excuse it.  He rebukes and urges the Christians in question to grow beyond that.  I think that to make the claim that there is no such thing as a carnal Christian is to deny the teaching of the Bible, and to put a legalistic burden on believers to be perfect all the time, which, in turn, puts us into trying in our own strength to do right.  Think of this: soap commercials acknowledge people get dirty, and then show their solution to the problem.  They don't say that we should just accept being dirty.  They have to acknowledge the fact in order to provide the answer.  The same is true here.  The Bible acknowledges carnality in order to make Christians aware of the problem, and help us to move beyond it.  Carnality is not "okay" but it is a reality sometimes.  If we don't acknowledge that reality, we are unable to deal with it and move beyond it.  Let's let Jesus back on the throne!