“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #22
“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ” (1 Cor. 3:1).
The apostle Paul has already told us that the Corinthian church was a spiritually gifted church. He said that they came “behind in no gift” (1 Cor. 1:7). They had all the gifts that the Holy Spirit could give, as will become even more evident in his discussion of those gifts later in this book. They had it all—prophecy, tongues, knowledge, the lot. They also had sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.
Here Paul says that they had every gift, and that they were not spiritual, but rather carnal. Spirituality is maturity, not giftedness. Spirituality is measured by the fruit of the Spirit, and not by the gifts of the Spirit. Love, joy, and peace trump teaching, prophesying, and knowledge.
There are two important lessons here. Sometimes our strict brethren say that such carnal Christians cannot be Christians at all. They say that there are only two possible conditions—spiritual and carnal, and if you are born again you are spiritual, and if you are not you are carnal. Then they brush their hands together. That was simple. The problem with that idea is that in this passage, Paul gives “carnal” the appositive of “babes in Christ.” Carnality here is certainly sinful (1 Cor. 3:3-4), but here it is a sinful immaturity in Christ. Baby Christians do squabble in the church nursery in unbecoming ways. Christians who are true Christians may be characterized by envying, strife, divisions, party spirit, walking around in the church as though it was supposed to be populated by mere men.
But this leads to the other important lesson. Being a babe in Christ is no compliment. Those who vaunt their gifts, their preacher, their liturgy, their knowledge, their brass and their cymbals, are the red-faced babies in the church nursery, shaking their crib, and throwing toys at the badly instructed infant in the next crib over. Now there are those in the church who have not known true conversion. But the presence of stinky diapers is quite possible without that.