Who Has the Carnal Mind? Part 1

Who Has the Carnal Mind?

The carnal mind or "original sin is the corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually." This is the teaching of Methodism.

The carnal mind is an awful disease, loathsome in its nature, fatal in its effect, certain to end in death sooner or later. The entirety of Adam's race has been exposed to it and is affected with it. "The orthodox view is that this native corruption is derived from a sinful ancestry, in whose loss of purity their whole posterity is involved. This view represents the depravity of human nature as coming from the laws of natural descent, the child inheriting from the parent a corrupt nature, prone to evil, in consequence of which he runs easily into open sin" (The Methodist Armor).

God created man holy, and the Psalmist tells us that man was made a little lower than the angels, and that he was crowned with glory and honor. Surely we do not find man today as he is pictured as having been on the beginning.

Oh, the depths to which the race has fallen! As we judge the greatness of ancient cities by their ruins, we look upon man today and wonder what a heaven this world would be if man had not fallen.

After that awful and fateful day on which man fell, we read, "Adam begat a son in his own likeness." Adam had now lost the divine likeness. The apostle Paul tells us, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." And again he tells us, "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." In Genesis 6:5 we read, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." All this dates back to the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve listened to Satan, disobeyed God, they plunged the whole race into wreck and ruin. It was the fail that depraved man and brought him into possession of the carnal mind. The Psalmist says, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity: and in sin did my mother conceive me." Some have explained this to mean that David's mother was not a virtuous woman. They have endeavored to explain that David did not here mean that he was born with a depraved nature. But if one will read from the first verse of this fifty-first psalm, it is very evident that he is not slandering his mother, but that he is deploring his own state and condition. He is not trying to cover up any of the facts. "A genuine penitent will hide nothing of his state; he sees and bewails, not only the acts of sin which he has committed, but the disposition that led to those acts. He deplores, not only the transgression, but the carnal mind, which is enmity against God. The light that shines into his soul shows him the very source whence transgression proceeds; he sees his fallen nature, as well as his sinful life; he asks pardon for his transgression, and he asks washing and cleansing for his inward defilement." So says Adam Clarke.

Jesus said, "From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness." Evidently Jesus believed that man's heart was wrong. The very seat of life and affection is warped and diseased. The apostle Paul based his entire Epistle on the Romans upon the fall of man, and evidently he did not think that man fell upward, as our evolutionist friends would have us think. It was in the fall that man became depraved, and soon after "God saw that the wickedness of man was great." Some time ago a daily newspaper carried the report of two married couples, the four individuals composing same having mutually agreed that if they could secure divorces each would marry the other's companion. Evidently their hearts were corrupt. Evidence is on every hand that man is corrupt and his heart is defiled. Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things." "Above all things"! That leaves us to infer that even the devil himself is not so deceitful as the heart of man while in its uncleansed condition. The apostle Paul says, "By nature the children of wrath," and Isaiah mourns over the fact that the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment."

Thus we have an awful picture of man. Certainly sin is in his heart defiling the whole nature, and causing him to be turned decidedly toward sin and evil. This is not the picture of a few, but of all in all ages and all countries.