man. It may be that in your home you have a television set. Now that tel evision set can bring in both sound and the picture. A radio will bring in only the sound. It will not bring in a picture. The radio, in one sense, is one-dimensional. Your tel evision, using this analogy, is two- dimensional, both sound and pic ture. The spiritual Christian is two- dimensional, compared to perhaps the television set, again, with sound and picture, whereas the natural man can bring in the sound very adequately as a radio can, but he cannot bring in the added dimen sion of the picture itself. The latter portion of verse 14 says that even if he could accept the message, even if he could bring it in, he could not properly interpret it. "They are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Now I think it is human nature, not spiritual nature, to reject and even to ridicule what we do not un derstand. I would not be too harsh on a person who does not know the Lord who pokes fun at the things of the Lord, who makes fun of a Chris tian's stand, who makes fun of Christian organizations and Chris tian churches. Why? Well, he is doing what everyone does if you do not understand something, you simply poke fun at it or you turn your back to it and walk away. It is not that these people under stand all that God is attempting to do in this world and that they are opposed to it. It is foolishness to them. They simply do not un derstand it. If you have had occasion to trav el in a foreign country you may have laughed at some of the cus
toms you have seen. Well, now those customs are not wrong — perhaps they were very fine cus toms, but they were strange to you. We are totally off-base when we do that. Perhaps if we could understand the culture, their way of life, we might see that there is a great deal of meaning in their particular pattern of life. Let us pray that we will be spiritual Chris tians, that that link will not be broken and that as God speaks through His servant, the Apostle Paul, and the other writers of Holy Scripture, that we will receive that message and apply it to our lives. There is something dreary about theory and something exciting about application. Most college students realize that it is necessary to get some basic principles but most of them are also quite an xious to put those principles into operation and to see how the ap plication works. In the Christian life, too, I think it is frustrating to simply look at theory without seeing a practical application or a vivid illustration that ties the truth down. Paul comes to the application in I Corinthians 3:1-4: "And I, breth ren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. 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. For ye are yet carnal; for whereas there is among you envy ing, 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 ?" Paul measures the life of the people of Corinth with the theory
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