How, or by Whom, Can the Carnal Mind Be Destroyed? Part 1

How, or by Whom, Can the Carnal Mind Be Destroyed?

The Scriptures plainly teach, and almost all creeds admit, that the carnal mind remains in the believer's heart after conversion. The Scriptures also teach, and almost all creeds admit, that it must be gotten rid of before we can be admitted to heaven. Many have devised plans by which to get rid of the troublesome thing, but all human efforts have been fruitless and have led to defeat. Some have tried to reason it out of the soul. They would tell us that sin exists only as we think of its existence, and that if we would cease thinking that it exists it would disappear. Others have tried other forms of reasoning, but it cannot be gotten rid of by reason. Neither is the question solved by denying its existence. Some have tried culture. Vainly have they tried to educate and train it out of the heart.

While the carnal mind is often made to act like a refined gentleman by the process of culture. it is only the more deadly as it lurks in the bosom of the deceived soul, rising up and doing its deadly deed at the least-expected moment. The carnal mind cannot be gotten rid of by refinement, nor by or through suffering.

"Where shall we look for a provision to make men holy? No preparation of chemistry will remove the stain of sin. Redemption is not latent in the human will; we might form the strongest of human resolutions, and exercise the vigilance of a guardian angel; yet the corruption of our hearts will be manifest, and we would be humiliated by an incessant failure to be holy. Early training and good raising are invaluable, but they have never in themselves produced a holy man. Education, good as it is, cannot produce saintliness, because it operates upon a different department in the man" (John Paul).

Then how are we to get rid of this deadly disease, and where are we to look for hope? It must be gotten rid of somehow.

We read much in the Scriptures about being holy, sanctification, being freed from the law of sin, etc. To sanctify means "to make holy," and to be made holy certainly means to have the carnal mind and all unholy tempers destroyed. Then if we can find who it is that sanctifies we shall find who it is that can destroy the carnal mind. Jude says, "To them that are sanctified by God the Father." The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, "Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate." Paul tells us that Jesus so loved the Church that He "gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it." In the fifteenth chapter of Romans he gives the Holy Ghost the credit: "That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost."

Thus we see that God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost are all involved in this great work. Someone has said, "The Father thought it, Christ bought it, and the Holy Ghost wrought it." Jesus made the atonement on the cross that He might make our complete redemption possible. "That he might sanctify the people" -- not only the apostles, as some would have us believe, and not only the preachers, but the people. He gave Himself for the Church for this very purpose.

The Holy Ghost is the Executive of the heavenly Kingdom. All law proceeds from the Father; Jesus Christ performs all judiciary functions, granting pardon to all who sue for it in His name and through the merits of His blood, and pronouncing the doom of woe upon all who remain impenitent; the Holy Ghost is the Executive, executing the will of the Father, bringing guilty souls to the bar, and bearing the message of pardon to those who have found mercy at the court. He also applies the Blood of the Covenant to the hearts of those who would make themselves ready to meet the Bridegroom at His coming.

Romans 7:23, 24 gives us another very significant truth. "But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Then in the second verse of the eighth chapter Paul exultantly cries out, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Here we see that we are not to work this deadly monster out by spiritual exercise, or by reasoning, but we must be made free. It also absolutely refutes the idea held by some that Paul had reference to his physical body when he cried, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" They would tell us that he here had reference to being delivered from his physical body, because his physical body would someday have to die, and that he here speaks of a dying body. But in the eighth chapter he tells us that he had gotten delivered from it, and he was still residing in his physical body.