The Real Cause Of Divisions

“THE REAL CAUSE OF DIVISIONS”

First Corinthians 3.1-2

I have spent weeks preparing our congregation for this message, but I am not convinced we are ready. I will focus on First Corinthians 3.1-2, a sermon titled “The Real Cause Of Divisions.” Please stand for the reading of God’s Word:

1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

2 I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

As your pastor, we have twice examined this New Testament letter verse-by-verse. The first time through First Corinthians took sixteen months of weekly expository messages, and the second took twenty months of expository sermons. I also prepared a study guide that I will someday upgrade for uploading to the ClassicalBaptist.Press website.

We ought to have some institutional knowledge and insight into this important letter. As we have carefully studied this book of the Bible in the past, I hope it has struck those of you who were here then how current and modern the problems were the Corinthian congregation faced by the apostle.

I say this because some of you know by unpleasant experiences in our Church’s past, though God has frequently blessed us with a beautiful and sweet spiritual unity, ὁmoqumadόn, that many Churches have never experienced. I fear we sometimes take that unity for granted. As some Churches do, and as we must steadfastly avoid doing, the Corinthian Church members slipped into a pattern of choosing up sides, forming cliques, and being more concerned with their own private lives than the cause of Christ and the salvation of the lost.

They were what I like to term “Southern California Christians,” a phrase I used to use far more frequently than I have of late. “Southern California Christians,” in my thinking, emphasize the trivial and unimportant aspects of Christian life while ignoring more significant matters. Sometimes this is seen when those in the congregation divide up and squabble instead of coming together to serve God effectively. At other times, it is seen in worship gatherings to catch up with friends and family rather than focusing on God during worship and on those who need God before and after worship. You can hang out with family and friends anytime. Church is for focusing on God and the people who need God.

In dealing with disunity, which was more damning and damaging to the cause of Christ than those shallow-thinking Corinthian Church members ever realized, Paul subjected himself and his ministry to their close examination. I have spoken to that in recent sermons.[1] In doing so, Paul established, in his own case and for thousands of other men of God since Paul’s day, that if the message of one’s ministry and if the methods of one’s ministry are proper are Biblical, disunity in the Church, divisiveness among the members, cannot be accurately fixed on the spiritual leadership of the congregation.

Only in the manipulative ministries of religious hucksters is the pretense of unity produced by leadership manipulation, functioning as cheerleaders. In the New Testament, unity, ὁmoqumadόn, is created not by spiritual leaders but by the Spirit of God working in Church members’ lives. The same principles are at work in our day. If there is no unity in the body, or if unity is under siege and undermined in the body, and both the message and the methods of God’s man are along Biblical guidelines, he has done his job.

Not that any spiritual leader is sufficient for the task. Paul was not sufficient for the task, and I am certainly not sufficient for the task of providing spiritual leadership. Thus, spiritual unity is not dependent upon the inadequacies of any God-called but conscientious Gospel minister.

If the fault does not lie with conscientious leadership, then whose fault is it when unity has been disrupted? God’s? No! If it isn’t a leadership problem, then disunity, disharmony, lack of contentment, whatever you want to call it, must be a followship problem. How so? The Spirit of God, Who produces homothumadon, is being grieved or quenched by the Church’s members.[2]

Could the Corinthians avoid their congregation’s disunity being an issue of followship rather than an issue of leadership with the Apostle Paul? Not if Paul, the best there ever was, was not sufficient. And not if the Spirit of God grants unity to those not grieving or quenching Him. Suppose two human factors affect unity, leadership, and followship, and the most qualified human leader who ever lived was insufficient for the task. In that case, the crucial human unity factor must be followship and cannot be leadership.

Let me speak directly to the issue I have been preparing you for. In a phrase, disunity in a congregation is the consequence of the carnality of the members. Though disunity can conceivably be the pastor’s fault, Paul’s analysis of the situation has concluded that such was not the case he was dealing with.

Granting that I am not sufficient for the task of spiritual leadership in this congregation, let us recognize that God’s plan was never for a Church to be led by the spiritually sufficient. The Apostle Paul repeatedly admitted he was not spiritually sufficient.[3] There is no such thing as a sufficient pastor.

Therefore, if the pastor is called by God, committed to serving God, and conscientious to study and pray and preach God’s Word despite his many deficiencies, Church members are advised to look in the mirror for the sources of disunity in the congregation. This is because the Spirit of God brings unity unless He is grieved or quenched by you.

After a reasonable examination of the pastor’s ministry, disunity can only result from carnality in the lives of the members of the Church that interferes with the Spirit’s work in their lives. Yet it is rarely the case for a Church member to accept responsibility for an issue related to disunity being his own conduct and practice. It is almost universally true that blame is fixed on the pastor, despite the Apostle Paul’s inspired explanation.

That being the case, two comments made by Paul in our text can conceivably bring an understanding of the situation that God will use to provide genuine healing, real repentance of sin on the part of Church members for the spiritual state of our congregation, an end to grieving and quenching the Spirit of God. How likely is that correction, spiritual repair, and fixing of blame on the wrong person to be remedied if the Church member leaves the Church? Especially if the reason for leaving is because he placed the blame in the wrong place, on the wrong person, instead of assuming responsibility for disunity.

That would suggest that, rather than leaving a problem behind, departing individuals might be the problem and have taken it with them, for it to resurface in another situation and cause harm elsewhere. The mercy of God is evident in our responsibility because we cannot address issues for which we are not responsible. But there is always the hope of conquering any issue we must address.

Thank the good Lord we are here since issues are never resolved by fleeing from them. Let us, by God’s grace, listen, learn, and love each other enough to address Paul’s two comments about carnality:

COMMENT #1 DEALS WITH THE PARALLEL OF CARNALITY (3.1)

“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.”

Let’s first examine the meanings of some of these words.

First, there is the word “carnal.” Translated from the Greek word, sάrkikos, “fleshly, made of flesh, having the characteristics of flesh, associated with flesh.”[4] It’s Paul’s favorite word for that part of the Christian that is not new, that has not been recreated at the instant of salvation. Paul used the term to describe people who act as though there is no spiritual aspect of their lives at all, but only the physical, only the appetite, only the sensual. Next, the word “babe.” The word nurios does not refer to an attractive adolescent female, a babe. Paul is not dealing with that kind of babe. Rather, it is a word describing, in this context, an infantile Christian. A babe is a spiritual baby.[5] Paul is inspired of the Holy Spirit of God to draw a parallel between the spiritual and the physical realms. The Christian who is temporarily unspiritual or carnal, though he may have been converted for some time, is presently a spiritual baby. The person might be a Christian aged fifty. But when he is not spiritual, he reflects the spiritual maturity of a newborn.

It might be beneficial to identify some marks of both spiritual and carnal behavior, to set them alongside each other for comparison. Some marks identifying carnality in a Christian, spiritual immaturity, and spiritual infantilism, are as follows. Here are the lives of those while grieving and quenching the Spirit:

#1 A period of perpetual conflict and repeated defeat.

#2 A period of protracted infancy and retarded spiritual growth.

#3 A period of fruitlessness and worldliness.

#4 A period of dullness and an unwillingness to receive the truths of God’s Word.

Have you ever had periods in your life when these marks identified you? If so, then you’ve had some times in your Christian walk characterized by spiritual stagnation and carnality resulting from grieving and quenching the Spirit of God. And let us not forget Hebrews 5.11-14, showing the correlation between spiritual immaturity and ignorance of God’s Word. Now let me list for you some of the marks which identify spirituality. This is how those who are led by the Spirit’s promptings and reined in by the Spirit’s cautions live:

#1 A life of perpetual conflict and repeated victory. The Christian life is a life of spiritual conflict. The spiritual Christian is the one who realizes that whimpering does little good, so they face the battles head on and they fight the good fight of faith.

#2 A life of progressive growth and Christ-likeness. There is only one reason why folks experience times without a significant amount of spiritual growth and maturation. That reason is sin. Christianity is an overcoming lifestyle. Only sin stunts our growth.

#3 A life of fruit-bearing and separation. This is making disciples. Laboring to see folks saved, then baptized, and then finally helping them observe what Christ has commanded. It’s moving from worldly things and toward the Lord God.

#4 A hunger, an appetite for the truths of God’s Word, and an affinity for the spiritual.

COMMENT #2 DEALS WITH THE PROBLEM OF CARNALITY

Lest you think that carnality is without consequences in the life of the believer, take note of what Paul wrote in verse 2:

“I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.”

Consider the kinds of problems carnality causes, from Paul’s use of the metaphors of milk and meat to illustrate how the Bible must be delivered when teaching and preaching to carnal versus spiritual believers.

Carnality first causes a problem for the preacher. One cannot pass through a season of carnality in his Christian life without it directly impacting the pastor’s life and ministry. Never mind the physical and emotional consequences for the pastor when a member is sinful when someone is unresponsive to the truth when the member is lukewarm at home. The feelings of frustration and sometimes despair from wondering whether or not some problems might be his fault are ongoing with pastors. Some people make a pastor’s life very hard, not by what they do but by what they do not do. Do pastors care? Most care deeply. Some care so deeply and are heartbroken so frequently that they harden themselves over time. Like I sometimes do, pastors wrestle with the temptation to become angry, resentful, and we fight to resist the temptation to slip into bitterness. Of course, such matters are usually set aside. But what cannot be set aside is that dealing with carnal Christians takes extra time, requires extra prayers, and (more than anyone realizes) robs pastors of sleep over concern about them. Related to all this is that you can’t feed carnal Christians the standard menu diet of spiritual meat. Oh no. You have to prepare milk for them. Why? Because they are so sensitive to being offended. And because they are so insensitive to spiritual illumination, they take longer to teach things that spiritual Christians grasp quickly. And what about personal accountability to Christ? I read Hebrews 13.17:

“Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.”

According to the verse I just read, the carnal Christian is a threat to the Gospel minister’s joy and placing the grief that always comes with ministry in its proper place.

So, can the carnal Christian justifiably maintain that his spiritually childish behavior, refusing to faithfully attend Church, refusing to give to the cause of Christ for some reason, refusing to allow the Holy Spirit to work even when he is in Church, does not affect me? Not! If the Word of God is considered, that carnal believer must admit that he has a considerable effect on any pastor’s ministry, and none of it is good! And you know what else? The carnal Christian frequently continues in that selfish sin even though he has no right to affect other people’s lives that way. But then, the carnal do not much care about other people. This sometimes extends to the carnal withholding from Gospel ministries of the encouragement and support that they need, that is due to them, and that is helpful for the congregation’s well-being.

Carnality always causes a problem for the one who is carnal, as well. Sin hinders the intake of spiritual nutrition if it does not entirely block. As I have mentioned, when a person does not receive truth from that person God chooses and has called to be the conduit through which such truth is conveyed, which is to say, when a Christian is not spiritual enough to listen to God’s man and learn from God’s man, he is going to be malnourished. Consider James 1.21:

“Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.”

According to this verse, a carnal person’s spiritual ears are plugged, and we know that he becomes spiritually cold, apathetic, and self-centered over time. As Christians, we must be taught, trained, and encouraged to dwell together in unity. But the carnal Christian is a very unreceptive listener, which is no listener at all. So, does carnality cause problems for the carnal Christian? As we have seen, it certainly does. And we haven’t even mentioned the consequences carnal Christians face at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

Thanks be to God for assigning us personal responsibility. Without personal responsibility, we would have no hope of maintaining Church unity. Everyone would constantly be shifting the blame to others instead of each of us shouldering personal responsibility and yielding to God’s indwelling Spirit. Do you think the Church is not friendly enough? Be friendlier. Do you see an absence of personal sacrifice? Then sacrifice. And if you see a brother or sister overtaken in a fault, the Bible teaches that you are the one to address the problem, Galatians 6.1.

What hope would there be of raising your children properly, parents, without you assuming personal responsibility for raising your kids? You could always blame this, that, or the other person, but would that help your son or daughter? No. You are personally responsible for raising your children. And that is a good thing, is it not? It is a good thing when you shoulder your responsibility.

Let me rehearse an observation I made as one not raised in Church. Have you noticed how many Churchgoing families are socialists? Church people often pretend to be conservatives and are determined to vote Republican because of their opposition to abortion and government handouts. But the reality is that so many Church people are socialists without realizing it when raising children. How so? Granted, they are vehemently opposed to the government raising their children. Admittedly, they become angry when the government does things they don’t agree with in public schools, like when Clifton Middle School let Planned Parenthood set up a display table to groom middle school girls a few years ago.

But those same parents frequently turn the rearing of their children over to a Church’s youth group headed by a youth pastor. I have seen, again and again, that parents are encouraged to dump their middle school and high school kids on a Church ministry that allows them to wash their hands of child-rearing for at least a few hours each week.

They are not consciously turning their youngsters over to a young guy with little experience raising his own children. And they are oblivious that most of his theological training in youth studies was devoted to pizza and Pepsi. Yet it happens all over the country in Church after Church.

We once had one of the largest and most active youth groups in Southern California, with our young Summer Servants fanning out across the Western United States to conduct soul-winning courses for teens, bus ministry seminars for young people, and all kinds of things during the summer months.

Guess what? I made a list several years ago of all the teens who used to be in our Summer Servants. Of all those committed young people involved in that ministry, I know of only two who have attended Church in years. Want to know at least one reason a number of those teens were so committed to our Church youth ministry? They hated being home.

They could not stand being around their stepdads and moms. The whole youth program was a way for those unsaved teens to get away from their parents for hours each week and days at a time in the summer. The involved adults were unwitting accomplices. And how many Churches have such an approach to ministry, to a greater or lesser degree, letting parents off the hook of raising their own children?

I have no interest in Calvary Road Baptist Church raising your children. I am committed to seeing you come to Christ and being trained to raise your own children. Ministry to children? Of course, but in collaboration with parents rather in providing a dumping ground for parents to unload their children by providing babysitting services for middle and high school kids, pretending that it is all for Christ.

You are responsible for more than the children you bring into the world. In like manner are you, individually, held accountable by God for unity within your Church. As parents of teens in most Churches offload child-rearing responsibility on youth workers, so do most Church members try to offload their unity responsibilities on pastors.

It is always easier to shift the blame to someone else for this and to someone over there for that, but does it really help anything to shift responsibility? Is it not reasonable for people to object to being held responsible for those things they have no power to control or correct? And have we not seen that Paul has established that the Gospel minister is not responsible for congregational unity?

To recapitulate, some considered the Apostle Paul to be the reason the Corinthian Church was not experiencing unity. In fact, as we have seen, Paul’s ministry was not divisive and did not contribute to the divisions they were experiencing. Rather, the members themselves were the sources of the problems because they were carnal and resistant to the truth, not yielding to the Spirit of God.

The lesson? It is when Church members admit that disunity results from individual carnality, from personal immaturity, and that their spirituality helps or hinders personal growth and nourishment, then and only then is there hope for unity in that Church.

Christian? Are you carnal? I mean, really? Are you the cause of difficulties instead of being the solution, the unifying force? Are you a spiritual baby when you ought to be more mature? In what ways are you enhancing our Church’s spirituality and outreach effectiveness? Can people tell that you are Christ’s disciple by your love for other believers, John 13.35? Will they see that love tonight at 6:00 PM?

If you are carnal you need to admit it. Admit it to God and begin to strive for growth and maturity diligently. Second Peter 1.5-11 guides along that line, with diligence in living your Christian life being the key to enjoying great success.

Do you want Calvary Road Baptist Church to be a very happy family and harmonious congregation, no matter the spiritual opposition or persecution? Then do what the Corinthian Church didn’t do ... at first. They were a divided congregation because of what they didn’t do ... at first They didn’t pay close attention to the preacher, expecting God to bless and feed them through his ministry ... at first.

Before we conclude, let me take a few moments to run you through a consideration of the events that are commonly misinterpreted to conclude that Christians can be almost perpetually carnal, which state of perpetual carnality I do not think is supported in the Bible.

Most people who buy into the C. I. Scofield Reference Bible view of sanctification and who agree with Scofield’s notes on First Corinthians 3.1-2, unconsciously make some assumptions that are both unwarranted and that tend to support the faulty notion that most Christians are carnal and are carnal for a long time.

I don’t think the Bible supports such a position. The only portion of God’s Word that refers explicitly to “carnal Christians” is First Corinthians 3. But for how long were the Corinthians carnal? We know the Corinthians were a carnal and divided congregation.

But over what were they divided, and for how long were they carnal? I think they were mainly divided over the issue of the fornicating Church member, who I can establish to have been lost when looking at First Corinthians 5. However, they were divided about other matters, as well.

The young man committed fornication with his father’s wife on day one. How long would it take for the Church members to know about it in the city of Corinth, whose members had been taught by Paul to take a strong stand against sexual sins? Let’s say it took a week for the entire congregation to discover that this young man was sinning with his daddy’s young wife.

Those of the house of Cloe had attempted to resolve the matter but without success. The problem became so well known that Paul heard about it in Ephesus, about a week’s journey to the East. How would Paul have heard so far away? Bad news travels fast.

Christians stood out as those who took a stand for clean living and personal holiness. So when the sailors who traveled back and forth between port cities heard about the Christians living like hypocrites and committing fornication of a particularly scandalous and odious type, they spread the word, and Paul found out.

So, a week to spread around town and a week for the news to be carried by sailors to Ephesus, Paul knew about the heinous sin and the congregation’s carnality easily within two weeks. But let’s say it took three weeks for Paul to find out, just to be conservative.

How long would it take Paul to write First Corinthians and send it with Timothy back to Corinth? Let’s give it a week. And we know from Second Corinthians that the Corinthian congregation’s response to Paul’s letter was profound. Deep repentance and regret for their carnality and sinfulness.

We have this instance in the Bible of carnality in a congregation, which almost certainly lasted only four weeks or less, but which many use as the basis for justifying the wicked behavior of so-called Christians who claim to be carnal for years!

Excuse me, but I don’t buy it. Am I advocating sinless perfectionism? Absolutely not. I believe the Christian life is a life of perpetual struggle against the flesh, against temptations, and the devil. And I believe that all Christians have bruised and scraped spiritual shins and knees from falling down and then getting up, falling down and then getting up, and falling down again.

But this business of a so-called Christian zeroing out for months and months at a time, no worship, prayer, service, Scripture, Church, personal holiness, wallowing in the muck and mire of sin for extended periods? Nonsense! That is nothing short of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.

A final remark. Walk out of the auditorium, understanding our Church’s unity as an issue for which you are personally responsible. You are the preserver of unity by God’s grace. You cannot offload that responsibility on any other member than the one you see when you look in the mirror. But as you seek to preserve and cultivate unity in your Church, anticipate what kind of Christian the Spirit of God, the ultimate Author of unity, will bring you to become over time.

On the other hand, what seems to be the verdict about those who leave? It is not a good verdict, by any measure. At the least, it is a catastrophic personal failing. At the worst, it is the declaration of a lost condition, First John 2.19.[6]

__________

[1] See https://www.calvaryroadbaptist.church/sermon.php?sermonDate=20230709a and https://www.calvaryroadbaptist.church/sermon.php?sermonDate=20230716a

[2] 1 Thessalonians 5.19; Ephesians 4.30

[3] 2 Corinthians 2.16; 3.5; 12.9

[4] Rogers, Jr., Cleon L. and Rogers III, Cleon L., The New Linguistic and Exegetical Key To The Greek New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: ZondervanPublishingHouse, 1998), page 352.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Footnote on First John 2.19, John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1997), page 1967.

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