The Spiritual Man

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The Fleshly or Carnal Believer
All believers could, like Paul, be filled with the Holy
Spirit at the moment of belief and baptism (cf. Acts
9.17-18). Unfortunately many still are controlled by the
flesh as though not dead and raised up again. These
have not truly believed in the accomplished fact of
Christ’s death and resurrection for them, nor have they sincerely
acted upon the call of the Holy Spirit to follow the principle of death
and resurrection. According to the finished work of Christ they have
died and have been resurrected already; according to their
responsibility as believers they should die to self and live to God; but
in actual practice they do not do so. These believers may be
considered abnormal. This abnormality is not to be understood as
being limited only to our day, however. Long, long ago just such a
condition among believers had confronted the Apostle Paul. The
Christians at Corinth were one example. Listen to what he said of
them:
But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as
men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid
food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not
ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy
and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like
ordinary men? (1 Cor. 3.1-3)
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.