The Carnal Corruption of the Church (1 Corinthians 3.1-4)

The Church at Corinth was probably the most troubled of the congregations started by the Apostle Paul. After having such a good start by the most significant Apostle of the Lord, you would think that this Church should have been a stellar example of what the Church ought to be. But Corinth was a mess. Corinth is the example in the New Testament of a corrupt Church. The Bible is filled with bad examples as well as good ones so that we can learn not only what we should do but what we should also avoid. Every Church should make it their goal to avoid becoming like Corinth.

We can see an inventory of Corinth’s internal issues and problems just by reading through Paul’s first letter to this Church. The main issue seems to be that the Church was deeply divided. This issues comes up more than once and it also comes up first, so I am concluding that this was perhaps the most serious issue Paul wants to address. They had neglected the Gospel and accepted worldly wisdom, which was probably the source of all their problems. They were carnal and unspiritual, yet also proud. In this condition they were unable to grasp spiritual truth and had therefore remained infantile in their understanding. Sexual sin had broken out in the Church and they also seemed ignorant about the Lord’s will for marriage. They were taking each other to court and disputing with each other over trivial matters in front of unbelievers. Some of them had questions about idolatry and apparently did not know that there was only one God. Their divisions were especially apparent when they attempted to have the Lord’s Supper. They were trying to exercise spiritual gifts, but their assemblies were chaotic and probably competitive. And some of them did not believe in the resurrection of the body.

So it is important to notice when you read this epistle that Paul is writing to correct all of these issues. Paul is not writing to give advanced, doctrinal instruction to stable believers. He is writing to correct carnal, immature people. Unfortunately, what happened at Corinth can easily happen in any Church. It is always possible for the Flesh to creep into any Church and Corinth was certainly not the only Church to experience an outbreak of carnality. What corrupted the Church at Corinth is still with us today in spite of all of our cultural differences and technological advancements. Human nature has not changed.

When Paul uses the term “flesh” or “carnal” he is really talking about human nature. This is something that does not disappear from Christian people and remains a liability until we are separated from our bodies and this world in death. The Flesh is always a weakness, a liability, and a constant struggle for Christians. It is something that we must all continually fight to keep in subjection or it will begin again to dominate our individual lives and even our Church fellowship, as was the case in Corinth.

If the Flesh is dominating the Church this condition is always inappropriate and unacceptable. The manifestation of the Flesh must be recognized, clearly identified, and corrected immediately. It might even mean that certain members of the Church must be disciplined so that they repent, which is a course of action Paul outlines for the Church at Corinth. Those who are spiritual must recognize and identify the intrusion of the Flesh. Those who are in the Flesh must be humbled and accept correction. But what we must understand is that Paul is in no way giving the Church a license to be carnal or to tolerate the Flesh in any way. Something must be done and something can be done so that the Flesh does not continue to dominate the Church.

While there are certainly individual applications here we are primarily speaking of the Body. Each individual member adds something to the Body as a whole and we must take care to add something beneficial and not harmful to the Body of Christ. All Christians are members of the Body and we do not have the option of separating ourselves from the rest of the Body. So when there is trouble in the Body, everyone is potentially harmed by it and that makes this a serious matter.

Keeping the Flesh in check is a challenge for every believer and for every Church. All Church problems can be traced back to an outbreak of Flesh. I believe that Paul was summarizing all of the problems in the Church at Corinth when he said “for you are still of the flesh.” It is usually a mistake to try to address all of the symptoms of the Flesh without tracing these things back to the source. You cannot treat the symptoms only or you may make everything worse by ignoring the source of the problem.

When you go to the doctor you want him to find and treat the source of your illness or injury, you don’t simply want him to medicate you into a half-conscious state and then send you home declaring you to be healed. Yet this is exactly what many religious professionals do with the problems in the Church. Keeping with this medical metaphor, we must first recognize that we have an illness before we will seek healing. One of the most disturbing aspects of the Flesh is that many people seem to be unable or unwilling to come to terms with it and recognize what it is.

I have noticed that people will often put off seeking medical treatment because they do not want to face the reality of a serious illness. We are the same way with our spiritual sickness – actually even more so.

We must come to terms with the fact that Flesh is unacceptable to God. There is NOTHING good in our Flesh and God is not in any way tolerant of it. The Flesh profits nothing! But most people continue to believe that God will accept or tolerate Flesh because He is so loving and gracious. Doesn’t God forgive sins? So He will forgive us for being in the Flesh, right?

The modern Church has come to tolerate the Flesh and justify its continued expression and dominance. This means that many Church people are basically like everyone else in the world. To keep the Church institution together they try to mitigate the symptoms of the Flesh – much like the United Nations attempts to do with the nations of the world so they will not destroy each other. So some semblance of peace is kept. But the Flesh remains the same. And so the Churches today are filled with people who are in the Flesh but who have simply added religion to a life they deem is already acceptable to God.

And if the Flesh does break out in the Church, as in Corinth, people today will simply say, “well we are only human after all.” But that state of being “only human” is the fatal flaw. Those who are only human aren’t acceptable to God. We must be born again or we cannot enter the Kingdom.

A Church that is dominated by the Flesh and by people in the Flesh is a complete misrepresentation of what God is doing in salvation.

The Flesh is human nature. Human nature is corrupted because of sin. Flesh can be traced back to Adam and to Adam’s sin. We know that everything that can be traced back to Adam has been rejected by God and cannot enter into the Kingdom. Anyone who does not understand this has missed what is perhaps the central teaching of the Bible regarding sin and salvation.

If what is connected to Adam is somehow acceptable to God, then there is no need for salvation at all and the whole Biblical record falls to the ground and becomes meaningless.

From what is Jesus saving us? That is the crucial question. If God loves us just as we are then why did Jesus have to come into the world? I believe that I am touching on one of the biggest false doctrines that is being taught everywhere in the Church today. The false Gospel that is being preached is that you are basically acceptable to God as you are and that Jesus coming into the world and dying was simply to show you or to prove to you that God really does love you so very much. All that remains is for people to simply accept the fact that God loves them.

In this model of salvation there is really no change required in us at all. If there is anything objectionable in us, then God simply forgives and wipes the slate clean again. Of course an infinitely loving God would be willing to do that. Perhaps we underestimate what a radical departure this is from the teaching of the Bible about human nature, the nature of God, and the nature of salvation. Those who believe and propagate this teaching have an unbiblical view of humanity, of God, and of salvation. And those three doctrines are the very essence of the message of the Bible. Get those things wrong and you are completely out in left field!

C.S. Lewis said that theology is like a roadmap to get us to the right destination. If you have the wrong map or no map at all you will get lost. No one reads a map for its own sake. No one should study theology or teach doctrine just to be intellectual or to be right. The whole point is to get to the right destination. A person who does not understand the basics of the nature of man, the nature of God, and the purpose of salvation through Christ is off the edges of the map and wondering in the wilderness!

Jesus did not come into the world to prove that we were already acceptable to God. Jesus came to make a way for us to BE acceptable to God because in our natural state in the Flesh we were not acceptable. Jesus came to be the second Adam – the progenitor of a race of people who are acceptable to God. I remember Brother Seth Wilson saying that in order to become Christians we must first resign from the human race!

Christians are people no longer dominated by the Flesh. This does not mean that Christians can’t have relapses. But to make excuses for the continued expression of the Flesh and to justify its dominion over our lives and our Church is to oppose everything God is doing in salvation.

Paul’s letter to Corinth is an inspired assessment of that particular congregation. We understand that Scripture is never just the thoughts and opinions of a man. This Divine assessment of the Corinthian Church is coming through the Apostle Paul, but what we are really reading in this epistle is the Divine perspective. Paul was not pleased with Corinth because the Lord was not pleased with Corinth. We must become familiar with the fact that God can be displeased even with His own people, or at least with those who claim to be His people.

Most of the Old Testament Scriptures chronicle God’s displeasure with the people of Israel. Simply being the descendants of Abraham in no way shielded the nation of Israel from Divine scrutiny and wrath. Simply wearing the name of Christ or calling ourselves a Church in no way provides us with an automatic shield from the watchful eyes of the Lord. In fact, in identifying ourselves with the Lord we are actually inviting His scrutiny. A relationship with the living God is never something to be taken casually.

God is holy. This was perhaps the most important theological revelation of the Old Covenant dispensation. The Law was nothing more than an extended lesson about the holiness of God. But the lesson was not just theoretical or philosophical. There was a practical concern. God’s desire was to dwell among His people. But how can a holy God dwell among unholy people? This was the central problem or question addressed under the Law. If God is going to dwell with His people that means God’s people must be holy. God’s people must be like God. God will not compromise His holiness and dwell in the midst of unholy people. If the people are not holy, then God’s presence will depart. If the people are not like God then the holiness of God will break out against them – which is what is called wrath.

There came a certain point in the history of Israel where the presence of God departed from the Temple – something the people had thought could never happen. Jeremiah the prophet warned the people not to think that having the Temple there in Jerusalem would shield them from God’s wrath. “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” (Jeremiah 7:1-4). Later it was the prophet Ezekiel who actually saw a vision of the glory of the Lord departing from the Temple (See Ezekiel 10). Unfortunately, religious people tend to think that their religious exercises will protect them from the wrath of God and guarantee His blessing and presence.

God is not interested only in religious ceremony but in spiritual worshipers (See John 4.21-24). God’s people must be in harmony with His nature. God is spirit. God’s people must worship God spiritually. God does not receive carnal religion. Worship that is not spiritual and that is offered by carnal people is just mechanical and amounts to nothing at all! Flesh is willing to be religious. But carnal religion only furthers our alienation from God.

God does not change. He will not compromise His nature in order to accommodate us and our Flesh. We must change in order to be in agreement with Him and His holiness. Salvation is all about God making us fit for His presence, not about God somehow learning to tolerate our Flesh. There is no change in God now that we live in New Testament times. God’s intolerance for the Flesh is just as strong as it was. That’s why this outbreak of Flesh in the Church at Corinth was so serious.

The Church is the Temple of God. This Temple has to be holy just as the Tabernacle and then the Temple had to be holy for God’s presence to dwell there. If the Church is not holy God’s presence cannot dwell there and the Church will be subject to the wrath of God just like Israel.

This principle is vividly illustrated for us in the letters to the seven Churches of Asia in the book of Revelation. The Lord Jesus Himself addressed those congregations. Most of them had to be rebuked and the Lord promised them that He would fight against them and even take away their lamp stand – or shut down their church – unless they repented. The modern Church has failed to take these warnings seriously, just as Israel failed to listen to the prophets God sent them to warn them about His wrath. There persists a sense of false security among religious people. They just don’t believe that God will be displeased with them. They believe that their religion covers their carnality.

But we know that those who are in the Flesh, even the religious, cannot please God (Romans 8.8). There seems to be this widespread belief that because of Jesus God can now tolerate things He could not previously tolerate. In the Old Testament God was always getting angry. But now that Jesus has come God is only loving and merciful, which most people interpret as tolerant.

But this reasoning is deeply flawed. God does not change. And if Jesus has revealed even more to us about the nature of God then that means there is even less of an excuse for our carnality! In other words, instead of concluding that God is now more tolerant of the Flesh than He was before Jesus came, we should reason that He would be even less tolerant and more sensitive to the expression of the Flesh among His people because so much more has been given to us than to Israel. “To whom much is given, much will be required.” To be a carnal Church we must sin against a lot of light!

The Corinthians were being carnal and the apostle Paul rebukes them for it. This has to mean that they did not have to be carnal. They were acting out of character. Yet, this letter to the Corinthians is used today to justify carnality in the Church. We have heard about people who are called “carnal Christians” and the Church has recently even been described as a “beautiful mess.” The implication is that these contradictions are somehow acceptable, perhaps even normal. We might as well talk about a righteous sin or a good demon! If the people claiming to be Christians are carnal, and no different from anyone else in the world, then how do we even know who the real Christians are? Is there even any difference between a Christian and a non-Christian? If not, then what is salvation good for? If Christians can be carnal with impunity then the grace of God is a license to sin. So let us sin so that grace may increase! This carnal Christianity is built on a cheap and powerless grace that is a reproach to the true grace of God.

But Paul said that the Corinthians were behaving in a human way. Well, what’s wrong with that? Were the Corinthians not human? Were they members of an alien race? Actually, yes! In Christ we become more than human. This is because in Christ we are made new creatures who are born of the Spirit of God. So while normal people can say “well, we are only human,” a Christian cannot say that.

What we must remember, however, is that the human nature is not obliterated when we are born again. This is why it is still possible for Christians to sin and to lapse back into the Flesh, which is exactly what happened at Corinth and still happens in the Church today. But the point Paul is making is that this does not have to happen and it should not happen.

Paul gives them no justification for this condition. We should never justify our carnality. The Flesh must be ruthlessly crucified over and over again. An old Puritan theologian named John Owens said “be killing sin or it will be killing you.” The good news is that believers actually have the ability to do this!

It is not done by law, disciple, or willpower, but through the power of the indwelling Spirit. The Holy Spirit is stronger than the Flesh. If we live under the control of the Holy Spirit then we will not be dominated by the Flesh. “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). This is a promise! You cannot be in the Flesh if you are in the Spirit – these two principles are opposed to one another.

Now if you find that you are operating in the Flesh the thing to do is to be honest about this and confess your sins. We need honest confession, not excuses, for the expression of the Flesh.

So if a Christian is operating in the Flesh it is because he or she is not walking in the Spirit. We need to acknowledge this fact instead of running to the counselor or a recovery program. No Christian should have a defeatist attitude toward the Flesh and give up or give in to the Flesh. To just allow the Flesh to dominate is to deny the work of the Holy Spirit, which is really quenching or even grieving the Holy Spirit.

If the key to keeping the Flesh in check is walking according to the Holy Spirit, or being under the control of the Spirit, then we must conclude that sin cannot be dislodged from our lives or from the Church by a principle of law, discipline, or willpower. This is why all man-made recovery programs can never really work. At best a recovery program can only deal with the symptoms. Most Churches attempt to deal with the expression of the Flesh through either a recovery program with a series of steps or disciplines or the Church may employ a principle of law.

A principle of law seems more Biblical because the commandments are there in Scripture. If we threaten people with the wrath of the Almighty and hold them over the fires of Hell then this will surely curtail the expression of the Flesh, right? The fear of the Lord IS the beginning of wisdom and we should certainly cultivate an awareness of God. But we should also remember that Israel made a golden calf at the very foot of Mount Sinai! Flesh will find a way to break through even when the commandments have thundered forth from the mountain of God. Please understand that I am not saying that the Law of God should be ignored. The Flesh needs to hear the commandments. But even after the Flesh has heard the commandments it will still be the Flesh. Flesh cannot be changed, even by a commandment. “The Flesh gives birth to Flesh.” Our escape from the dominance of the Flesh cannot come through discipline that we impose on ourselves or even through the knowledge of a Divine law.

The Law will actually stir up the Flesh and its desires – a principle illustrated by John Bunyan with a woman sweeping a dirty room and filling the air with dust. What is needed to really clean the room, as Bunyan continues his wonderful metaphor, is to apply the water of grace. To put this principle in Scriptural terms, it is grace that teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts (Titus 2.11-14).

Grace must be applied to the Flesh. The only thing that can dislodge the Flesh is a more powerful principle. Perhaps the term principle is too impersonal. What we need to dislodge the dominance of the Flesh is a more powerful affection or desire. Only the grace of Christ in the Gospel can dislodge our love of self, sin, and the World.

This is why a false Gospel always leads in some way to the expression or justification of the Flesh. The Corinthians were carnal and spiritual infants because they had neglected the Gospel and listened to the World’s wisdom. If the Gospel is not being preached in the Church, we can be sure that the World’s wisdom will be preached. The World is constantly preaching at the Church. Paul had to preach the Gospel all over again to the Corinthians. Their carnality had made them spiritual infants. You cannot grow if you are in the Flesh.

Christians never outgrow the Gospel. The Gospel is actually the environment or the soil in which we grow into Christlikeness. If the Gospel is neglected and not preached then carnality and immaturity will dominate. But do not mistake the mortification of the Flesh for spiritual growth itself. Crucifying the Flesh is not what makes you a spiritual giant. Overthrowing the dominion of the Flesh just brings you back to zero and puts you in the race – the prize being the eternal glory of being like Jesus. So if we have kept the Flesh in check we should not boast in that. Now the real work of being conformed to the image of Christ can begin!