The Carnal Christian (pp. 29-39)
The soul is the seat of self-consciousness - the personality, the will, and the intellect. It lies between the spirit, the seat of the God-consciousness, and the body, the seat of the sense- or world-consciousness. ... The soul drives its life, or animating power, from either the spirit (the higher part) or the animal (the lower part).
There are only two classes of men: saved and unsaved, unregenerate and regenerate.
The Scriptures clearly refer to three types of Christians:
1) The spiritual Christian - dominated by the Spirit of God, who indwells and energizes his renewed human spirit.
2) the soulish Christian - dominated by his soul, that is, his intellect or emotions.
3) The Carnal Christian - dominated by his flesh or by fleshly habits: the power or "the desires of the flesh" (Ephesians 2:3)
1 Corinthians 3:1, Fausset's paraphrase states: "And I [as the natural man - "man of soul," Greek - cannot receive, so I, also] could not speak unto you the deep things of God, as I would to the spiritual; but I was compelled to speak to you, as I would to men of flesh." Although the Corinthians were truly regenerate and belonged to Christ, they were dominated by the flesh to such an extent that Paul could only describe them as still "carnal," or fleshly. This was proven by the fact that the works of the flesh were clearly evident among them in "envying" and strife" (1 Corinthians 3:3.
Those who are new in Christ are generally under the domination of the flesh at the initial stage of their spiritual lives. These babes in Christ, who are alive in Him by a living faith have not yet comprehended all that the Cross severed them from when they were baptized into His death (Romans 6:3) and made alive by His life (v. 11).
Babes in Christ who are still carnal need a fuller understanding of the meaning of the Cross.
A person may be a babe in Christ even though he may have been regret for many years. If this is the case, he must obtain deliverance so that he may walk according to the spirit and "not after the flesh" (Romans 8:4) In this way, he will become spiritual in due time, a full-grown man in Christ.
Only by understanding what it means to have died with Christ (Romans 6:3-8), and what it means to put to death the "deeds of the body" (Romans 8:13), can the believer live and walk and act through the Spirit, an in this way become a spiritual man.
Once a believer fully comprehends that God's own Son hung upon the tree in the likeness of sinful flesh, and once he knows that he died to sin through Christ's sacrifice, from that point on he lives in the flesh as far as his physical body is concerned, but he does not walk any longer according to the flesh. In other words, he no longer lives according to the demands and desires of his body, but he lives according to the Spirit (Romans 8:5), according to his renewed spirit that is indwelt by the Spirit of God (v. 9).
