GETTING STUCK #4 Lumping everybody together in one package

GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF JESUS:



   I think I finally found something that I disagree with Paul on in Christ.  Throughout the books of  Romans, and Corinthians Paul tends to separate people into two categories; SAVED, AND UN-SAVED.  While I agree with that I believe we may have also developed a new category of people: those who think they are saved but are not.


With this category, we find a great multitude of people who have hopped on board or plugged into a ride in a church that pretty much is doing all of their Christian commitment for them.
  They attend a service on Sunday Morning that already has the music primed to entertain them for the first 30 minutes and then a sermon that may well be inspiring for them as they prepare to leave for home, but which has not yet prepared them to actually take the word of God they have heard to heart enough to live it that coming week.  I think in part this is caused by lumping people who claim to be in Christ altogether with people who are in Christ.  The Holy Spirit has been given to us so that we might begin to grow and develop as a child of God into someone who can begin to understand the deeper spiritual truths.  It is those truths that to this point we are told that this world cannot understand because it does not have the Spirit of God to teach it.  What we are rapidly developing is a group of people within the church who have never really dealt with the Holy Spirit in their lives, and who by almost all signs do not understand anything about God that is any deeper than the world around them.  The only ways we can change this is by taking all of the things out of the way that has been the frames of reference we have clung to within this world because it is those things that have entrenched our minds in carnally minded behavior, and we are starting to bring that attitude and reference into our services in hopes of drawing others.

  The carnally minded Christian cannot understand this danger because they are still living in and are guided by the issues of this world.  I came to really begin to understand this on a deeper level when I started a personal study into the book of  1 Corinthians.  I found Paul having to deal with a very serious situation where those who were supposed to have been in Christ did not even have the spiritual maturity to handle disputes between themselves without the need to use secular courts and carnal ideas. When I took the time to look up the term CARNAL I found  it is a Greek word
 " Sarinos" which means " Fleshly", or of the idea of flesh meaning weakness.

  These carnal Christians were known as babes in Christ because they had not yet been taught or yet understood the deeper things in Christ that would allow them to understand spiritual teachings.  These people could not be given any deep teachings because of this, and in most cases when they received teaching they should have understood they miss-interpreted it.  Just like these early Christians, we have a great number of very carnally minded Christians in our churches today who have as yet not developed in Christ to the point that they can take in spiritual truths that are taught in the word. Instead of giving up on them we should be developing groups that are designed to help new Christians in understanding the word of God for their lives.

   1 Corinthians 2:6-16 speaks about becoming perfected in Christ, but that simply means we need to become mature in Christ.  Paul speaks of the "Princes of this world coming to naught" and what that means is that those who were of the carnally minded nature to follow the crowd that crucified Jesus will end up with nothing.  You see there is a pearl of hidden wisdom from this world in the teachings of the Holy Spirit.  This hidden wisdom is given to those who are in God's Kingdom, but it goes further because the truth is revealed to those whom God chose and can trust with the knowledge.  If this world had been able to understand this wisdom from God they would never have crucified Jesus because they would have known it would have set into motion the plan of Salvation of this world from sin.  So the scripture is fulfilled that says: " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither  have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for those who love Him."  We really do need to begin to reach out to our fellow believers  and make sure everyone is on the same page so we can grow in Christ properly.  May you richly bless God through your life in Him.



THE UNWORTHY SERVANT