February 17

Read I Corinthians 3:1-3

For whereas there is among you envying, and strive, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? (I Corinthians 3:3)

What’s In A Name?

What do we learn about the nature of inherited sin from a study of the names by which it is known?

Our English words carnal and carnality come from the Latin carnis, which means “flesh.” Paul also calls this evil disposition the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). These Biblical uses of the words do not indicate physical flesh. The Bible nowhere teaches that the human body is sinful. The carnal mind is, rather, the mind of the natural man, contrasted with the mind of a man who has been filled with the Spirit of God.

The Bible also speaks of the carnal nature as sin. We must be careful to distinguish this sin from the plural term sins. Sins are our own willful transgressions of God’s law for which we are responsible and therefore guilty. Sin the other hand, is the natural tendency in us to oppose God, a tendency with — which we were born. Since we did not personally choose it we bear no guilt because of it. When the term sin is used this way in the Greek, the definite article the often appears with it. In the sixth chapter of Romans the expression the sin occurs fourteen times and is the key to the Apostle’s argument. The term sin is used to describe carnality because (1) the carnal nature came from an act sin and (2) carnality is by nature an active tendency to commit sins.

Because we are born with this tendency, theology has called it inherited sin and inbred sin. Because the tendency originated in our first parents, it is called original sin or the Adamic nature. Because it is a perversion of human nature as God first created us, we call it depravity and inherited depravity.

Thought For Today

Call it what you will — carnality, sin, inherited depravity, or just a bad attitude — if you have it, you ought to get rid of it.