In Romans 8 Paul really begins to focus on the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer after salvation. He has explained the gospel well (that is an understatement), or perfectly, really, and now focuses on the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit within the believer. The rest of the epistle is incredibly fascinating and worth intense study in order to comprehend things like election, God’s sovereign will in forming vessels of honor and vessels of wrath, and the importance of remaining in the apostles’ doctrine.
Paul ends Romans with an admonition to his brethren to avoid doctrine that is contrary to what has been taught. He describes who he is talking about, the ones to avoid. He says they are those who deviate from the original simple doctrine, they serve their bellies and not Christ (that is what tickles the ear rather than what is right and good and true). Paul says they deceive the simple with good words and fair speeches. Not that God doesn’t always speak good and fair things, He does, but Paul was referring to gravitating towards the pleasing light things and leaving the harder, meatier things.
Well, Paul spills this teaching over into 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. The timing of the two letters are very close, maybe in the same year, during Paul’s 2 and 3 missionary journeys. We can clearly see the Spirit of God building truth upon truth, (here a little, there a little) edifying them that believe.
The church at Corinth was smack dab in the center of the worldliest of cities and that fact was causing some trouble in the church. Paul was sending encouragement and strong exhortation to the church in order to first address some waywardness that had slipped in and then to lift them up higher in Spiritual things.
We see that some of the things that needed correction in this particular church were serious immaturity, misuse of spiritual gifts, sexual immorality not even seen among the heathen and a general rebellion towards the authority of the word of God, world likeness and the lack of true Godly love toward the brethren.
Paul is severe with the church here and he foretells of that at the end of Romans when he says, behold therefore the goodness and severity of God. Paul gives them a choice: he says that they can either submit and hear what he has to say or they can resist and he will come with a rod to correct. Paul was generally not well liked. He laments this truth through out both letters. He states that he and the rest of the apostles are treated as refuse…this is their lot. They are despised and rejected and considered the least of all because of the task given to them by God. Paul later expresses this when he expresses what it means to take up in his flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Waywardness in a believer afflicts Christ. So this affliction, we are told by the Holy Spirit, presents itself not only in them that don’t believe but them that do and are resistant to the word of truth AND to all them that bring it. The afflictions of Christ then fall on them that are addressing those who are afflicting Him. Jesus warned that if we preach Him then we will receive the hate of the world because the world hates Him…it continues to afflict Him. This is what is meant by taking up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.
The remedy then to the waywardness Paul was facing was to explain to these very brethren whom he deeply loved, that they needed to grow in Christ and then they would stop all the sinful behavior. But this growth is done by allowing the Spirit of God to form in us the Mind of Christ.
Romans 12 began the thought that we need a mind transformation in order to please God. NOT to be saved. We come AS WE ARE into the Gate…with filth and all self will. It is here now in the first 3 chapters of 1 Corinthians that Paul unloads a bombshell. I would love to point out just a few critical concepts that he leaves here for us if I may.
Like Romans 7, these three chapters concerning the carnal Christian and the mature Christian are terribly mistaught today. The way it is taught is so contrary to the rest of the Word that almost every teacher glazes over it and does not delve into it because they don’t undertand it. They drop it as a big matzo ball and then run away! hahaha!
But it is very easily understood, and reconciles many seeming contradictions, if we will just pause and ask the Holy Spirit to come in and esplain…
We see that Paul is addressing this letter to the mature. He says he is speaking wisdom to”them that are perfect”. This is a critical word to understand because in the word for word translation of oldest agreeing texts, it is used through out the entire Word and means exactly the same thing in every case. It is not referring to human ideas of perfection. It is referring to single minded (which is the Mind of Christ) submission to the perfect will of God. Self rule has been dethroned; also, entire sanctification expressed in 2 Thess. and elsewhere.
He is also speaking to the immature who are the cause for the letter in the first place. But he says that even though he is speaking to them, they cannot understand him. He says they can only ingest milk and not meat. But the rebuke is to them. They are the ones involved in all the sinfulness. So Paul is speaking to the mature in this church about the immature. He is also speaking to the immature who he is speaking about and to, but in a later sense (because they will only understand what he is writing after they have received through obedience the spiritual capacity to understand).
When Paul says the natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God he is not talking about the lost. He is talking about the carnal believer (of course the lost can’t either, but that is beside the point, he is addressing all believers here). If we really read through ch 3 we will see this. If we look to the Greek word used here for natural it renders “soulish”. Look up the meaning in the Greek for that and we get this: the one who is ruled by the soul…the emotions, the intellect, the will. This is also a believer and not just an unbeliever.
The babe in Christ, and even the growing and nearly mature in Christ are still to differing degrees ruled by the soul until the Spirit gets through to the soul and then to the body…and he is then a spiritual man. The soul determines what the body does. The body is simply a vehicle to do the soul’s bidding…whether that be godly or ungodly things. For the believer, the indwelt spirit only rules the body when the soul has bowed down to the spirit and walks in the spirit. John 17 remember shows us that Jesus longs for believers to be one (spirit, soul and body) in Him…sanctified. This means that the believer is no longer ruled by what he thinks or feels or wills contrary to God. His spirit rules him completely and always…self has been dethroned; the Holy Spirit sits on the throne in the heart and no one can dethrone God. Double mindedness is gone. But this is only accomplished (in the believer) by an act of my will. I determine to dethrone myself and come up under the yolk of Christ, of God. It is very painful. The more resistant we are the more painful it can be. God is pulling something base up into holiness…tedious work. Jesus pleads with us to come up under His yolk. He says it is easy and light. Dwelling in the freedom of being under this yolk is easy and very light but getting there can be very hard. This is the echo of His voice to the Israelites in the dessert when He says to them in a longing voice that His word is easy to keep; it is in us and very near us to both will it and to do it.
Now the natural man, the soulsih man Paul speaks of, has the Holy Spirit in full. He is fully indwelt and may have been Spirit baptized even, but, he has not the fullness of the Spirit in the form of the Mind of Christ yet. This is why we see that these believers were even using the gifts of the Spirit, but wrongly. We see it today. Paul explains that only the Spirit knows what is in the Mind of God (same as the Mind of Christ). And only those who have received the full Mind of Christ, know fully what is in His Mind (all that He reveals to man here, anyway).
Remember that obedience lights the Mind of Christ, and continued obedience lights more of the Mind of Christ, and then the scripture which says that the one who obeys will know doctrine, if it is of God, makes sense. The problem with the Corinthians who were still immature in Christ is that they were disobedient, like the world and therefore could not discern doctrine, the word of God.
Now I’ll end this thought with this wonderful picture of eating that Paul uses. We know that we are to ingest the Word…Jesus is the Word, and Paul shows us as does the rest of the Word that He is also the Spirit! “and Christ is that Spirit”. God is Three yet remains One. A fascinating topic. This is why Paul uses consumption analogies. He begins the letter saying that it is addressed to the perfect (the mature), and in ch 3 says that these, the perfect, have the Mind of Christ. He is not saying that the babes do yet. In fact he clarifies that by saying…the spiritual man, the perfect, has the Mind of Christ, but the babes in Christ are still on milk and cannot yet comprehend what is in the Mind of Christ. They choke on meat…they don’t know how to chew and savor; they gulp. He says, even now you are stuck on milk and cannot bear (understand ) what I am saying. Become spiritual (sanctified) and you can bear it! They will later, because God sanctifies every believer…”He will do it” (2 Thess.) Even as he addresses them they do not understand but the Spirit will reveal it in time.
It is critical to note here that the perfect are not those who have “attained” or “apprehended” yet. Paul says it. By apprehended, he means reached full glory that only comes in Heaven. This perfection refers to the very beginnings of usefulness to God. Remember that only those who abide (these are the perfect, or mature, or fully submitted) in Christ can produce fruit for the Kingdom. It is a beginning point.
Think of the Lamb of Passover. One of the instructions to the Israelites was that the Lamb had to be consumed by daylight! What a visceral picture. Jesus is to be consumed completely for us to walk in that light fully. Remember that the believer who follows false things because he hasn’t discerned God’s mind, thinks that darkness is light. “How great is that darkness!” So the Corinthians, a lot of them, were in a darkness of sorts; meaning unrevealed light and not damnation.
“Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood you have no part in Me!” Now remember that Jesus completes the good work He begins, so every believer will eventually consume Christ. For some however, it will be at death…when God forcibly frees him from his flesh. But it doesn’t have to be this way, having sent nothing ahead of us. We can resist sin to the point of bloodshed here (and actually be crucified with Him now) and mortify the flesh here (dying to sin, receiving the stripes on my back and body) or become the wheat that dies and falls to the ground here (producing many more seeds, bringing others with us, fruit) if we so desire.
One of the glaring and saddest pictures of the church as the day for His return draws near, we learn in Paul’s letters to Timothy, is that many won’t stand for sound doctrine. They only want their ears tickled. This is what the Corinthians were guilty of Paul says. It takes discipline and time and effort and longing to know God more, to sit still and hear the Spirit of God speak. Jesus warned that some will be too busy with life to do that. We see it today. God is speaking today like crazy, but how many are sitting still to listen? When we are obedient to His will, dying to our own that comes against Him, we hear very easily and very clearly. And there is nothing more glorious than that.
There is a beautiful picture of the Mind of Christ depicted in the tabernacle and all it’s instruments and furniture that we can talk about next time. We’ll look at how the lamp represents the Mind of Christ and how it is placed just outside of the Holy of Holies, perpetually lit, unable to be quenched, shining the only light there is into the Holy of Holies, revealing what is there!!!
Thanks for listening and have a blessed day in Him!
Love,
C