TO
INTRODUCE THIS MONTH’S TOUGH TEXT, is there anything wrong
with the following scenario? A certain Christian fellow
(we’ll call him Rupert, since there aren’t many of those
around) shares this testimony of his salvation: “Well, I
asked Jesus into my heart when I was young, but backslid
and lived the sinful life of the carnal Christian for 20
years but then rededicated my life and now live for
God.”
Does such a
testimony have the ring of a person who was truly
converted, one who actually became a “new creature” (see
TOTT
#41, December 2008)? Does Rupert
sound like a guy who was truly born again at the young
age he claims? Does the term “carnal Christian” refer to
a person who “backslides” and then “rededicates” himself
later on? Is this a pure theology of salvation and
sanctification? We would submit that it is not. Sadly,
however, Rupert’s story has been told and retold many
times.
Such teaching is,
in fact, common in our day, and much of it is centered
in the term “carnal Christian,” a term which, as we’ll
see, is nowhere found in the New Testament. Yes,
“carnal” is there and “Christian” is certainly there,
but melding the two together to refer to a new
“category” of Christian is an invention.
Worse, there
are actually two problems with Rupert’s statement before
we even address the main issue of “carnal.” One is the
idea of “rededication.” Where on earth did we get even
this idea, much less the term itself? Neither the principle nor the term
appears anywhere in the New Testament, yet
“rededication” has become one of the most common
expressions in Christianity. I have heard some people
say that they have rededicated their life several times.
In the final analysis, this term is not only misleading
but ultimately meaningless.
The other
troublesome term is “backslide,” a term used exclusively
in the Old Testament and one that is extremely interesting and
enlightening.
Jeremiah 3:6—4:2
recounts Jeremiah’s second message of his book (the
first is in 2:1—3:5). He tells the story of two sisters,
Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and Judah (the Southern
Kingdom). Israel had committed spiritual adultery
against God, that is, the worship of idols,
specifically, the fertility cult of the ancient world.
God waited for her to return, but she refused to do so,
so He gave “her a bill of divorce” and sent her away (v.
8), a clear reference to the destruction of Israel and
her Assyrian captivity in 722 BC. Despite the object
lesson this provided Judah as she watched this scene,
she did not learn from it, would not turn away from
idolatry, becoming even worse than Israel, and was also
taken into captivity, this time by the Babylonians
beginning in 605 BC.
The word
“backsliding[s],” which appears seven times (vs. 6, 8,
11, 12, 14, 22 [twice]), translates two separate Hebrew
words. Most often used is meshűbâ. Coming from
the root shűb, “to return or go back, bring
back,” the literal idea is “back-turning, backsliding,”
and so figuratively speaks of disloyalty, and
faithlessness. Most of its twelve occurrences are here
in Jeremiah, but its two appearances in Hosea are most
significant, where the people were “bent to backsliding”
(11:7); that is, apostasy had become the way of
life, although it is still
possible for them to be healed
(14:4).
The other
word for “backsliding” in Jeremiah is shôbab (vs.
14, 22), which is again from the root
shűb. In this form it is an
adjective, appearing only one other place (Isa. 57:17,
“forwardly”), to picture a continual unfaithfulness to
God.
Now, while this
passage is, of course, Jewish, it certainly provides a
picture for the church to consider. Prior to the
Protestant Reformation, for example, the Church had
drifted far from God and His revelation in Scripture. It
had become thoroughly pagan in worshipping idols,
relics, and saints, and “salvation” was simply a matter
of doing certain works (called “sacraments”) to obtain
God’s grace. Disastrously, the church today is drifting
back to those days, and she desperately needs to return
to the truth.
That said,
however, the picture ends there. Backsliding is a term
used exclusively for the nation of Israel to indicate
her apostasy. It is not used, and should
not be used, for a New Testament
Christian. It must not be construed to refer to a
Christian who has “fallen away” (see TOTT
#29), one who needs to “rededicate”
their life, or any other such unbiblical
concept.
This is
further confirmed by the fact that the only place
meshűbâ is used of an
individual is an isolated appearance in Proverbs 1:32,
where it is translated “turning away,” indicating the
destruction that comes to those who turn away from the
truth.
Sadly, then, in
spite of the fact that this word appears not once in the
New Testament, rather only a few times in the Old
Testament in reference to Israel’s apostasy, and one
isolated instance of an individual, it is commonly used
today in much the same way the term “carnal Christian”
is used, as well as for one who needs to “rededicate”
his life.
If we may
interject here, it should deeply grieve all Christians,
especially pastors,
expositors, and all other leaders who desire to be
discerning, that terms having no biblical foundation
whatsoever continue to be added to our “Christian
vocabulary.” We could almost fill a whole issue of
TOTT
just listing them. Words mean
things, and our words must be exact. We need to take
great care to not add to, subtract from, or simply
misapply Scripture (cf. Rev.
22:18–19)?
That brings us to
our “tough text” and our main issue. First Corinthians
3:1–4 declares:
And I, brethren, could
not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto
carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you
with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not
able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are
yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and
strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as
men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I
am of Apollos; are ye not
carnal?
As if this
issue does not raise enough questions, the very first
problem we encounter is actually with the Greek text
itself. The Textus Receptus, as well as the more
modern Majority Text, uses a single Greek word for
carnal four times in these verses.
The word is sarkikos, an
adjective meaning “fleshly, pertaining to the flesh or
body, having the nature of flesh, i.e. under the control
of the animal appetites.”
In stark
contrast, based on only five so-called “older
manuscripts” (instead of hundreds in the Majority), the
Critical Text, on which is based almost all modern
English translations, uses another adjective,
sarkinos, instead of sarkikos for
carnal in verse 1 (rendered
“men of flesh” in NASB). So what’s the difference?
Generally, Greek words ending in –inos mean
“consisting of,” while words ending in -ikos mean
“characterized by.” That is, while sarkinos
speaks of being made of flesh (“fleshy”),
sarkikos speaks of something having the
nature of flesh
(“fleshly”).
But how does
all that help? Why would Paul make the point that they
are made of flesh? Why change terms in the middle
of his argument? In fact, the only occurrence of
sarkinos in the Textus Receptus and
Majority Text is in 2 Corinthians 3:3, where Paul
declares that God not only wrote His law on “tables of
stone” but also on “fleshly tables of the heart.” To
further confuse the issue, the NIV renders both
sarkinos and sarkikos as “worldly,” with
which no lexicon agrees; “worldly” would demand the
Greek kosmikos (e.g.,
“worldly lusts” in Titus
2:12).
Making the
muddy water even thicker, the Critical Text uses neither
of these words for carnal in
verse 4. Instead, it has anthropos, a generic term for “man” which the NASB, for
example, here renders “are you not mere men?”
In fact, a
headache begins to develop when one reads expositors and
exegetes who, because they defend this reading, go on
for several paragraphs trying to sort it all out and
then apply it.
While it is not
our intent here to open up the whole textual/translation
“can of worms” (and we know that some readers might
disagree), we would humbly ask, Does not the Critical
Text actually confuse more than clarify? Does it not
make far more sense that Paul uses one word consistently
to get across his point?[i]
We would
also submit, as we’ll see in a moment, the use of the
adjective form psuchikos for the “natural” man in
2:14 and then pneumatikos in 2:15 further
supports the use of sarkikos alone in our text.
The repetition of the ending –ikos in all three
terms seems to us to clearly indicate that
sarkinos is out of place and
incorrect.
So what
is Paul’s point? Let us now turn to an exposition
of the passage. In a sense, the “chapter break” at 3:1
is unfortunate, for the thoughts here continue those of
2:14–16. As stated a moment ago, verse 14 speaks of the
“natural man,” which is psuchikos anthropos. The
adjective psuchikos is derived from the noun
pseuche, meaning “soul, that
immaterial part of man held in common with
animals.”[ii] This is the
sensual, unregenerate man. Because he is driven solely
by his senses, he simply cannot in any way understand or
accept the things of God. No one has put it better than
the beloved Vance Havner:
The wise Christian
wastes no time trying to explain God’s program to
unregenerate men; it would be casting pearls before
swine. He might as well try to describe a sunset to a
blind man or discuss nuclear physics with a monument in
the city park. The natural man cannot receive such
things. One might as well try to catch sunbeams with a
fishhook as to lay hold of God’s revelation unassisted
by the Holy Spirit. Unless one is born of the Spirit and
taught by Him, all this is utterly foreign to him. Being
a Ph.D. does not help, for in this realm it could mean
“Phenomenal Dud!”[iii]
In contrast,
there is then the one who is “spiritual” in verse 15.
The Greek adjective pneumatikos derives from
pneuma, “breath or spirit,” and therefore refers
to that which pertains to or is dominated by the Holy
Spirit. Here, in fact, is a person who can “judge” and
“discern” truth from error, while the natural man
cannot. Both “discerned” in verse 14 and “judged” in
verse 15 translate the same Greek word,
anakrino. From about 400 BC
onwards, it expressed “the questioning process which
leads to a judgment: to examine, cross-examine,
interrogate, enquire, and investigate.” Other concepts
in the word are “scrutinize” and
“sift.”[iv]
True
spirituality, then, along with discernment and maturity
(as noted in TOTT
#10, “Where Has Our Discernment
Gone? [3]”), mean that we examine everything, that we
investigate, question, scrutinize, and sift through
every aspect of what is being taught and practiced, not
from the perspective of natural inclination, but by the
domination of the Holy Spirit and God’s Word. Most
people are, just like the Corinthians, anything but
spiritual; they are, in fact,
the very opposite, looking at everything from a sensual
perspective. The truly spiritual person does not accept
everything that comes along; rather he or she first
examines it biblically to see if it’s right or
wrong.
It is this
backdrop that sets the stage for 3:1–4. It is here that
Paul adds the third term, sarkikos, one who is
fleshly, one who is characterized by fleshly
behavior (again, not sarkinos, one who is
made of flesh). The chief misunderstanding about
carnal (sarkikos), then, is the false notion that it refers to a
supposed separate category of Christian and can refer to
any sin that indicates “carnality.” Those ideas,
however, are not in the text.
In his
wonderful book, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of
Grace? (a highly recommended
read), James Montgomery Boice writes one of the best
statements I have ever read on this
issue:
“Carnal” is not a
biblical category for weak Christians. Where the term
appears in Paul’s writings, it means an unregenerate
person, an unbeliever (see Rom. 8:5–11). Even in 1
Corinthians 3, where Christians are said to be acting in
a “worldly” (carnal) way, the point is only that they
are acting as if they were not Christians, which must
not be. They need to stop that and begin to behave as
what they really are.[v]
What makes
Boice’s statement doubly important is the modern trend
he outlines before that
statement. He mentions the Bible teachers who insist
that repentance, commitment of life, obedience, and
behavioral change are involved in salvation. “In fact,”
Boice writes, “one of the reasons this teaching
eliminates obedience from the essence of saving faith is
to include as Christians professing believers whose
lives are filled with sin.”[vi] He goes on to
quote one such a teacher who insists, “If only committed
people are saved people, then where is there room for
carnal Christians?”[vii] How sad it is
that much of today’s church no longer knows what being a
Christian means!
While such
teaching was not widely popularized until the
20th Century, it is not without earlier
precedent. Some 200 years before, Scottish nonconformist
theologian Robert Sandeman (1718–1771) rejected the
doctrine of imputed righteousness and taught that only
the barest assent to the work of Christ was necessary
for salvation, a view now known as Sandemanianism. Not
surprisingly, like our own day, many churches sprang up,
undoubtedly populated by many
unbelievers.
Such
teaching is a wholesale denial of the most basic truths
of salvation, namely, a deliverance from sin that
results in a change of life. As we have studied before
in this publication, in fact, the Greek pisteuo (“faith”) implicitly and indisputably carries
the idea “to obey” (see TOTT
#41 again). How we need to review
the statement of doctrine in Chapter 18, Section 1 of
both the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646)
and the London Baptist Confession (1689):
Although
hypocrites, and other unregenerate men, may vainly
deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal
presumptions: of being in the favor of God and estate of
salvation; which hope of theirs shall perish: yet such
as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in
sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience
before him, may in this life be certainly assured that
they are in a state of grace, and may rejoice in the
hope of the glory of God: which hope shall never make
them ashamed.
So, as Boice
observes, it is essential to recognize that “carnal” is
actually used in Scripture to refer to an unregenerate
person. The phrase “to be carnally minded is death” in
Romans 8:6 clearly speaks of the lost person under God’s
wrath, while the words “to be spiritually minded is life
and peace” refer to the true believer. Further, “the
carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject
to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (v. 7).
We must
conclude, therefore, that “carnal” is not a
category of Christian, rather it is a
characteristic of the non-Christian. It does not refer to a “new convert,”
“the backslidden Christian,” or any other such category.
It refers to a Christian who is acting like a
non-Christian in some very specific ways and who needs
to stop such behavior and who will, in fact, do so if a
true believer.
That
immediately brings us to the question: what kind of
non-Christian behavior is characteristic of such
carnality? Some teachers insist that it can be anything,
but again, the text does not say that. The text clearly
shows that carnality is not a moral problem. In other words, in this context the
Corinthians were not guilty of habitual drunkenness,
fornication, or other moral sin, things that unarguably
demonstrate an unregenerate life. In fact, to say that
the “carnal Christian” is one who can continue to live
immorally like an unregenerate person is to violate the
very thing that Paul also wrote to the same group of
believers, namely, that a Christian is a “new creature”
(2 Cor. 5:17; again, TOTT #41).
If carnality
is not a moral problem, then what is it? We would
submit that it is rather a maturity problem, for
Paul goes on to specify exactly what he means. He
doesn’t list moral issues rather
maturity issues.
To illustrate, the
third most wonderful day of my life (my conversion being
the first and my marriage the second) was the birth of
my son Paul. What utter joy it was to hear his first
infant sounds and then the laughter that came to his mom
and me when he mispronounced various words as he grew
and began to talk. We even wrote down a list of them as
a keepsake (although I would be in deep trouble if I
shared any here). At almost 21, however, if he still
made the same sounds and mispronounced the same words,
it would no longer be cute or humorous. It would, of
course, be cause for great alarm. It would indicate
arrested development, perhaps even mental
deficiency.
That was the
situation, in a spiritual way, among the Corinthian
believers. Instead of acting like spiritual adults, they
were acting like fleshly children. How? Through
envying . . . strife, and divisions.
Envying is zelos (English “zeal”
and “zealous”) is derived from the verb
zeo, “to be hot.” It can be
used positively (e.g., Rom. 10:2; Col. 4:13), but here
it is clearly negative, meaning jealousy, envy and anger
(Act 5:17, “indignation”; 13:45; Rom. 13:13; Gal. 5:20;
Phil. 3:6; Heb. 10:27, “fiery indignation”; Jas. 3:14,
16).
Strife is eris,
meaning strife, contention, and wrangling (Rom. 13:13; 1
Cor. 1:11; 2 Cor. 12:20, “debates”; Gal. 5:20,
“variance”; 1 Tim. 6:4; Titus
3:9).
Finally,
divisions, is
dichostasia, which speaks of
dissension and separation into factions (Rom. 16:17;
Gal. 5:20, “seditions”), which Paul goes on to detail in
verses 4–8.
All three of those
words underscore the childish behavior every parent has
observed. From fights over a toy, to sibling rivalry, to
schoolyard jealousies, such is the behavior of those
driven by fleshly impulse. Likewise, pettiness,
partiality, and prejudice ruled in
Corinth.
As if all this
were not bad enough, they were also characterized by
another sign of an infant, namely, choking on solid
food. Unlike the spirituality, maturity, and discernment
that characterize “he that is spiritual,” one who can
feast on meat, these childish, juvenile
Christians could merely feed on milk. Instead of
being able to chew and swallow the deeper things of
Christian truth, they could only drink the simplest,
most elementary doctrines of the faith.
So appropriate was
this metaphor that Paul used it again in Hebrews
5:12–14.[viii] If there is one
thing that is true of the church today, it is
shallowness and even outright ignorance of much biblical
truth. We need to examine our churches carefully to
discern whether this is a temporary state of carnality
or the permanent state of the natural
man.
NOTES
[i]
For the technical reader, what is described here is
actually a prime example of the modern, rationalistic
textual criticism that follows one of the seven
arbitrary “rules” of choosing the “correct” reading of
any given text. Starting with Johann A. Bengel
(1687–1752) and continuing to our day, second only to
the first “rule” that “the older reading is to be
preferred,” another chief rule is that “the more
difficult reading is to be preferred.” In other words,
when there is a choice between a reading that is hard to
understand and a reading that is easy to understand, the
hard reading must be the genuine one because orthodox
scribes always changed the hard readings to make them
easy. Such an approach is not only totally arbitrary—and
this can easily be proved historically—but it is also
thoroughly rationalistic, discounts the sovereignty of
God in preserving the text, and even accuses orthodox
Christians of lying by deliberately corrupted their own
New Testament text by making readings easier.
[ii] Spiros Zodhiates, The
Complete Word Study Dictionary (AMG Publishers,
1993),
electronic edition,
#5590.
[iii] Pepper and Salt
(reprinted by Baker Book House, 1983) , p.
27.
[iv] Colin Brown, The New
International Dictionary of New Testament Theology
(Zondervan, 1971), Vol. 2, p.
362.
[v] James Montgomery Boice,
Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace?
(Crossway Books, 2001), p.
143.
[vii] Ibid, quoting Charles
Ryrie, Balancing the Christian Life (Moody Press,
1969), p. 170.
[viii] See TOTT
11 & 12 for a discussion of Pauline
authorship of
Hebrews.
