that has just been presented. And what we have is a description of immature Christians. First he says that they are carnal. He is not say ing that they are worthless. He is not saying that they are not mem bers of the body of Christ, but he does start off with an unusually strong phrase. The Creeks could take a word say for “ stone." That is the word “ lithos" from which we get lith ography, the marking, if you will, of a stone or a metal that has been arranged upon a piece of paper and so you have an image there. But the Greek word for "stone" is lithos. If you change that and put a special suffix on the ending, you get "lithanos" and that means that a thing is of stone or it is made of stone. Elsewhere in the Word of Cod certain people were told that they would have a heart of stone. It would tell you what kind of material was made of it, the nature of it. Paul is suggesting to the people at Corinth that their body is of flesh, they are fleshly Christians. The word carnal actually comes from the Latin "carnalus" which simply means flesh or of flesh. Paul has made a clean, succinct distinction between the spiritual Christian that he talked about in the last two verses of I Corinthians, chapter two, and this carnal or fleshly Christian that he is speak ing about here in the first verse of chapter three. But he clarifies. They might say, "Well, what do you mean, Paul? Why are you calling us fleshly? Why are you saying that we are simply of gristle and bone and blood?" Well, he clarifies it. He say, "You are babes. You are babes in Christ. You are imma
ture." A baby is not considerate of others. He is concerned only with his own comfort. He is not careful either in how he operates and the decisions he makes and how they will effect others. Paul says to the Corinthians, "I have given you liq uid, and not meat." In essence, Paul is making contrast in the Greek language between the pro cess of drinking or merely swal lowing and the process of chewing. In short, it seems to me that Paul is saying, "You people at Corinth are lazy. You want to minimize personal involvement—just drink ing but no chewing — just the simple message that is enticing and pleasant and sweet to taste but no personal effort involved to under stand, apply the deeper things of Cod in your life." There is a very popular prac tice today that I think is a good one. Perhaps a man is shaving or driving to work or perhaps while a student is doing some other things and the tape will play and slowly he will begin to absorb some of the message that is going on. Now that is excellent. But that basically will aid primarily the process of memorization. Unless that person turns that tape off now and then to reflect and to mull these things over in his mind, to search out additional ideas and concepts if it is in the secular realm or to search out additional verses of Scripture to apply to the particular ideas that are presented on that tape, it is merely the process of memori zation. I would consider that similar to the process of drinking and that is for babes, not for mature people. Now do not misunderstand me. I Page 49
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