Hindrances to Christian Maturity

“For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?  For while one saith, I am of Paul: and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?  I Corinthians 3:3-4

In the last blog, we saw how Paul was rebuking the believers in Corinth because they were stagnant in their Christian growth.  He had refused to go deeper into Christian doctrine with them because they were still feeding on the milk of the word, the basic tenets of the gospel and had not been actively involved in discipleship in order to mature in their faith.  While it is true that salvation is all of Christ and none of us for it was His work on the cross that made it possible to be forgiven of sin, believers have a responsibility to grow in faith and in the knowledge of God and His purposes for believers as they traverse this earth.  Jesus is not going to open up our brains and pour in all the knowledge that we have available to us about Him and His plan for our lives.  I suppose that an eager desire to study God’s word and become a mature Christian is one proof of one’s commitment to Christ.

Paul reasoned that it was carnality, the way of life which follows the way of the original sin nature, that contributed to the lack of maturity among the Corinthian believers.  Rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to work through them directing them onto the path of love, unselfishness, and unity, they were allowing Satan to bring envy, strife, and divisions among the church members.  Rather than walking in the Spirit, they were walking in the flesh, as carnal men and women.  However, Corinth was not the only church with this problem.  Paul wrote to the church at Galatia in Asia Minor to warn them of the consequences of carnality among believers, how that it hinders believers from doing the good works and sharing the gospel (Galatians 5:16-17).  Why be like the world when one can be like Christ?

Cliques had formed in the church at Corinth causing people to take sides against one another as Paul had already mentioned near the beginning of his letter.  This still goes on today, even among the most dedicated of God’s people.  It requires a supernatural power and an extreme desire on the part of true believers to overcome bias, prejudice, and envy.  These are traits of the unbelieving world, and they shouldn’t be found among God’s people.  I suppose carnality among church folks is why Peter wrote in I Peter 4:17, “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?  And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?”  When Peter used the word “scarcely” (“barely” in some translations), it just points out how closely we all were to spending eternity in hell except for Christ’s sacrifice.  Just barely making it across the finish line is still making it across to the other side.

The differing factions in the church at Corinth with competing followers of Paul, Apollos, and others, were a good indication that these groups were more about “religion” than a relationship with Christ.  Had they all been focused on Him in worship and in serving, these contentions with one another would have been nonexistent.  However, after the initial experience with Christ in which the believers found joy and peace, and then when the “new” began to wear off and the dust of the spiritual high began to settle, the old sin nature rose to the top.  In some respects, it would be good to remain “on the mountaintop”, the place of spiritual high where nothing seems to be able to penetrate the believer’s focus on what is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8), but without some valleys of real life with its hardships, suffering, and disappointments, the believer would never grow into maturity.

The spiritual life is a battle with the forces of evil.  Without learning how to fight against these forces, the believer would fall by the wayside of indifference and/or surrender, unable to take his or her stand to defend truth and justice.  As they say, “No pain, no gain”.