Not only the unregenerate but every converted person has the carnal mind. This is fully attested by the testimony of thousands of converted people. After the new birth, and the forgiveness of their sins, they have felt the stirrings of the carnal mind. When a person comes with a penitent heart, confesses his sins, and puts his trust in Jesus, he will find himself suddenly freed from his sins. The sense of guilt and condemnation will vanish, and the burden will roll away. Now he is born of God. But as he walks in the light and reads the Bible, he soon finds that sin's disease is far more deadly than he had thought, and that back of and beneath his own sins are the works of the devil. He will find a stirring of something that does not want to be patient; something that wants to become angry; a something that is touchy and sensitive, and at times wants to find fault and grumble. He finds in his heart something that is proud and wants to shun the shame of the Cross, a something that wants its own way, a something that wants to get even with that person who has mistreated him. This something is the carnal mind. The apostle Paul also calls it "the old man."
There are those who say the carnal mind is gotten rid of in conversion, but we never saw any people who really found it so.
The disciples of Jesus manifested that they possessed the carnal mind before the Day of Pentecost, yet none can question their conversion or regeneration. Jesus had told them that their names were written in the book of life. In His prayer He told the Father that they were not of the world; that if they were of the world, the world would love its own. But we find that they were self-seeking, had also the spirit of retaliation, and disputings were found among them.
In writing to the Corinthian church the apostle Paul tells them that they are babes in Christ, but in the same breath tells them that they are yet carnal. This affirms that they are carnal and never had been otherwise. They had been carnal from the beginning and were carnal at that time. Nevertheless, Paul recognizes them as brethren in the Lord.
Wesley says: "Here the apostle speaks unto those who were unquestionably believers, whom in the same breath he styles brethren in Christ, as being still in a measure carnal. He affirms that there was envying, an evil temper, occasioning strife among them, and yet does not give the least intimation that they had lost their faith. Nay, he manifestly declares they had not; for then they would have ceased to be babes in Christ. And what is most remarkable of all, he speaks of being carnal, and babes in Christ, as one and the same thing, plainly showing that every believer is in a degree carnal, while he is only a babe in Christ" (Sermons, Vol. I, p. 109).
"By being in a degree carnal, are but babes. Were they wholly carnal, they would not even be babes, but unregenerate ... And throughout this epistle the class so severely reprehended and even menaced by St. Paul are held by him as Christians, but faulty Christians, who needed to ascend to a higher level of holiness. From this it follows that there may be sin in believers" (Whedon).
In writing to the Ephesians the apostle Paul affirms, in unquestionable terms, that they were in Christ, and in the same epistle exhorts them to "put off the old man, which is corrupt." We find here that these people, although they were converted, possessed the "old man," which is the carnal mind.
In writing to the Thessalonian church, St. Paul tells them that they are in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they have turned from idols to serve the true and living God; and to make clear that he is not trying to get them reclaimed from a backslidden state, he tells them in the third chapter of his first letter to them that they are not backslidden. Then he tells them that it is God's will that they should be sanctified, and closes this letter with a prayer for God to sanctify them. They evidently were not sanctified, for Paul would not pray for something they already possessed. These Thessalonians needed the sanctifying power of God to deliver them from the carnal mind.
Sin's disease is deep-seated, and its blighting and destructive effects have permeated the whole race, leaving sorrow, misery, woe, heartache, gloom, and shadows in its wake.
"If one speak and teach rightly of sin, it is necessary to consider sin more deeply, and to discover out of what root it, and every ungodly thing, proceeds, and not simply to stand at sins already committed" (Luther).
"That the corruption of nature does still remain even in those who are the children of God by faith; that they still have in them the seeds of pride and vanity, of anger, lust, and evil desires; yea, sin of every kind; is too plain to be denied, being a matter of daily experience" (Wesley).
"We have a corrupt inner system, a depraved hidden man within the outer man, and all its members, eye, hand and foot, in which resides our appetency for sin. And yet it is ourself, and cannot be cast into perdition without taking the whole being. Now if this corrupt eye seduce us to adultery, if the itching palm contract theft, if the foot tend to blood, let spiritual amputation be performed" (Whedon).
"How false and how deceptive it would be to deny that the true convert ever has such a conflict! It may become the most tragic conflict in the annals of eternity. For unless the Christian crucify, and crucify to the death, these inward foes; they, pirates against his immortal soul, will at last cast him soul and body into an everlasting hell" (Campbell, in A Cloud of Witnesses).
"Only let it be remembered, that the heart of the believer is not wholly purified when it is justified; sin is then overcome, but it is not rooted out; experience shows him first that the root of sin, self-will, pride, and idolatry remain in his heart. But as long as he watch and pray, none of them can prevail against him" (Wesley).
"In order to be successful in the Christian race course. the Christian is exhorted to lay aside, or put off, as a cast-off garment, the inner sin which doth so easily beset him" (L. M. Campbell).
"Conversion has cut down the tree of sin; but that is not enough: we are now to follow, or seek, the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord, and which uproots the hidden root, or inward inclination to sin, from the ground of the heart" (L. M. Campbell).
No comments:
Post a Comment