Alright, if you haven't registered for Chafer Seminary Fall Semester, you have one more week to do that. And as of August 23rd, registration will be closed. And then Men's Prayer Breakfast, for you men who haven't been showing up, it's a good time to show up this Saturday at 7.30 Saturday morning. And then just remember to pray for Jeff Phipps as he prepares to go to Brazil the 28th. through September 3rd. And then if you're interested in just observing, learning some things about being prepared to give the gospel, the Fort Bend County Fair Evangelism event is September 27th to October 6th. And Jeff Phipps will do some Zoom training beginning September 7th. You can sign up for that out in the fellowship hall. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension shall defend your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. For the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. So before we open up God's Word this evening, let's make sure we're in right relationship with the Lord. So we'll have a few moments of silent prayer to make sure we are in fellowship, and then I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful for this time that we have to study your word, to continue to think our way through what Paul is saying that is so significant for the Philippians, and it is indeed just as significant for us today. So, Father, may we come to understand what he is saying, the significance of the warning, and what we can do about it. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Alright open your Bibles to Philippians chapter 3 verse 17. And the question we're addressing tonight you may think it's a strange one. The first time I saw this question was on a pamphlet in a bookstore at Dallas Seminary. And it may surprise you to think that there are a lot of people who do not believe that there is such a thing as a carnal Christian. And there's a little confusion over some of the terminology But they do not believe this. They think that there's no such thing as a carnal Christian, and if you think you're a carnal Christian then you're probably not saved. But the answer to the question is yes, Mr. Lordship Calvinist. Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John all believed that there was such a thing as a carnal Christian. Although that terminology comes really out of 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Now you all know because you're educated, but I don't know that everybody who listens online is as necessarily as well informed at this date. But there are basically two views of the gospel. The right one and the wrong one. The right one is based on true grace. You'll hear people use phrases like bold grace, other names like that. And it emphasizes the fact that it is by grace alone, by faith alone, through Christ alone. And that's it. And it may produce works. It may not. It depends on whether you grow. Growth is what produces fruit. If any of you have ever been a gardener and you've grown vegetable plants, or you've grown trees, that growth is not the same thing as fruit. It takes a couple of years before an oak tree can produce an acorn. Other trees, I don't know how long it takes. It takes anywhere from 60 to 70 days to 90 or 100 days for a tomato plant to produce fruit. All that happens in between is just growth. But in the ambiguous talk of evangelical speak, fruit is considered anything that other people can quantify. And I remember a professor of mine at Dallas Seminary, who since got sucked into the whole thing, but initially when MacArthur started writing about this in the late 80s, he said, well the problem with that position is it seeks to quantify fruit. That is one problem with that position. But another position is that it doesn't recognize that believers have volition and believers have not had a limitation to their sin nature. And the first time I really captured that in a paragraph that I read was a former classmate of mine in the doctoral program at Dallas Seminary had written a reviewed, written an article about the conflict or the argument that went back and forth, theological debate actually between B.B. Warfield, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield who was the head of the theology department at Princeton Seminary and he wrote a scathing book review of Louis Barry Chafer's book, He That is Spiritual. And this came out in like 1919. But there were numerous things written back and forth attacking one another's position over the years. And so this of course is a critical issue and important discussion in trying to refine your understanding of the spiritual life. And this came up recently in a email came out from the office at Chafer Seminary that somebody working on a doctoral dissertation wanted to know if anybody had any additional information on this. But in this one article that this guy wrote, in the last paragraph he made the comment that Lewis Barry Chafer pointed out many good things but one thing he he fails to really do justice to was his understanding of regeneration wasn't robust enough to deal with the sin nature. And see, that's their view, is that regeneration somehow limits your sin nature. Now you may not realize this because most of you have been pretty well taught over the course of your spiritual lives and you understand what regeneration does and does not do, but you're a minority. That there's a man who listens all the time, he'll know I'm talking about him, and he sent me a lot of his stuff, about 300 pages worth of well-researched material. on the different definitions and views of regeneration from various conservative theologians. You wouldn't know that there could be so many different views. But there are many different views, and I know people who talk about regeneration all day long, and when you ask them what do they mean by it, they don't know. It's ambiguous to a lot of pastors and a lot of theologians. So we're going to get into that a little bit. But that's what undergirds the thinking in lordship salvation, is that when you're regenerate there's something that happens that minimizes or limits the robustness of your sin nature. And my question was, well you know my sin nature wasn't all that robust when I was six years old and was saved. But it got a lot more robust as the years went by so I guess I'm not saved. And so anyway, this is what this issue is. And so within that camp of what we call, refer to as Lordship Salvation, which is really the way they define the P in tulip. Calvinism is summarized by the five points of Calvinism. And the acronym is TULIP. T for total inability, which means that man can't do anything, that even volition would be meritorious, so he can't even have any positive volition toward God. And he won't have it because he's spiritually dead, and they define spiritually dead as being like a corpse, wrong analogy. Ephesians 4.18 says it's being alienated from the life of God, something different. So they start with that. Well if you start with that then the only way people are going to be saved is if God acts first. So regeneration for them will precede faith. I talked about that in the previous lesson when we went through Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 that it is by grace through faith that our salvation is by grace through faith. And so if salvation is the goal then the door you have to walk through to get to the goal must come before that. So you have to go through the door of faith to get into the room of salvation. And that's just basic grammar, but it's amazing how many people exegete on the basis of their theological presuppositions. So regeneration does not precede faith, but for them it has to. And so because you're totally unable to do anything spiritually, God will give you saving faith. And He gives saving faith only to the elect. And so you have unconditional election is the U in TULIP. And God just will select those He will save, and He gives them faith because they are of the elect. And so they will believe. And those who do not believe, God did not give them saving faith. They may believe in the gospel. MacArthur says this. He says you can have a faith in Jesus that he died for your sins and it's not saving faith because God didn't give it to you. So that's the two. And so because God already knows that the elect are limited, by unconditional election, Christ only died for them. He didn't die for the sins of anybody else, so that's limited atonement. Now there are a lot of Calvinists who will hold to a more moderate form of perseverance, but they don't hold to limited atonement. Then that would be called four-point Calvinism. and it's total inability, unconditional election, the I is irresistible grace, and the P is perseverance. Louis Perry Chaffer often is thought of as a four-point Calvinist, but he redefined perseverance of the saints to be perseverance of Christ. Christ perseveres in keeping us. So he basically changed it to eternal security. So he technically would be a three-and-a-half point Calvinist. Oh, it gets more fun than that. But I won't go into all of that. So the eye is irresistible, Grace, because God the Holy Spirit will irresistibly draw you. And they take a verse out of context in John. The next verse quotes Isaiah where what draws you is the Word of God. And so anyone who hears the word of God is drawn. But they say it's the irresistible work of the Holy Spirit, and then the P is perseverance. So the one who's truly saved and has saving faith is going to persevere. And they may have limited time periods of sinful disobedience. They won't call it carnality. because carnal in their vocabulary implies somebody who just gets saved, they walk with the Lord for a while, and then they go back like a dog to its vomit, and they live a rebellious life until they die. They would say, well, they weren't ever saved. because they did not persevere. So that's the backdrop for understanding what these issues are here. And so they just from theologically reject the idea of a carnal Christian. So that's why we're going to address that issue. It's what comes up in our passage in Ephesians 3, 17, 18, and 19. So chapter 3 looks at standing firm. Prior to that I pointed out it was looking at emphasis was on unity, now it's on standing firm against error. Two sources of error. At the beginning it's Judaizers who are adding human works to justification. And then we'll get into our section, the last part, it's the enemies of the cross, and I'm going to point out some things. It doesn't seem like the enemies of the cross he talks about are present in Philippi. But clearly the Judaizers are present in Philippi. And then when we get to the last verse in the section which is really the first verse of chapter four, they just divided it wrong. They put the therefore at the beginning of a paragraph and the beginning of a chapter instead of at the end of the chapter, and it's the conclusion of the chapter. Therefore my beloved and longed for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved. So that summarizes what chapter three is really all about. So we looked at this going back to verse 15, therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind. In other words, if you're mature you should be thinking the same thing. And if anyone thinks differently, well God will reveal it to you. In other words, as you grow spiritually you'll come to understand things you didn't understand quite as well before, even though you thought you did. If you think that's weird, I'm a pastor, I think about things all the time. And I think about things today a lot more clearly than I did 20 years ago when I came to this church. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rules. So I talked about this last time, and the key here is he's talking about the walk, the Christian life. And the Christian life he talks about is characterized by having the same rule and the same mind. So I'm going to skip the next chart, not talk about the sin nature right now, and just go on to verse 17. He then goes on, and this is what we talked about the last time, I talked about the two walks. And we have two different walks here. We have the walk that is in the pattern of Paul and his apostolic associates, and the mature believers in the congregation. And we have the walk of those who are enemies of the Christ. So you have two lifestyles, two patterns, two models here. And so the warning is to the Philippian believers is don't start making a role model out of the wrong people. Out of the people who are characterized then in verse 18 as the enemies of the cross of Christ. And I think it's fairly clear that these are unbelievers. And that is the general consensus. However, we'll go through the details of why and why there may be a little wiggle room there. But he's not talking about the believer, the ones who follow them as being whose end is destruction, but they're following unbelievers whose end game is destruction. And it's a word that 90% of the time means eternal condemnation. So his emphasis is for them to join in following his example. As he says elsewhere, his example is Christ. He's imitating Christ. And that he says you have us as a pattern. And the way this is worded in English some commentators who are very good in Greek miss a few low points as we all do. And there's a word in here that makes it pretty clear that Paul is not talking about the wrong guys as being an example, but himself as being an example. So as I pointed out in a couple of alternate translations, The English Standard Version and the Holman Christian Standard Bible both indicate that the idea here is to join in imitating Paul, keeping their eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us, or living according to the example you have in us. In other words, he's saying that they're supposed to be focusing on him. And we've looked at the words here, and the word that's translated in the New King James is note those who so walk. That's a bad translation, it's weak. It's scopeo. So the word scopeo is where we get our word scope. So you can think about a microscope, and you can think about a telescope, and you can think about the doctor that runs a Scope down your throat to take a look at your esophagus. And then endoscopy. Scope is in that word. So it means to carefully look at something. What Paul is saying is pay close attention to how mature believers live their lives, imitate what they do that is right, and don't make a habit out of imitating what they do that is wrong. So follow his example. and pay attention to those who so walk. And he's primarily thinking about Timothy's been there, Silas has been there, Epaphroditus has been there, and so he says those are the pattern. So pay close attention to us, we are the pattern. And then he is going, and he says it in such a way, uses this Greek word, which I really love this, And it's translated in this manner or in this way, and it indicates what he is saying. Who walk in this way, what is that way? They have us for a pattern. I would translate it this way by putting a colon there. They walk in this manner, colon, they have us for a pattern. that punctuation clarifies the Greek grammar for us, bringing it into English. This is the same word that you have in John 3, 16. I hear so many people misuse this. They say, when it says, for God so loved the world, the so is means in this manner. It doesn't mean so much. And you'll hear all kinds of people, God loves us so much. Well, if God loved us, it's gonna be so much. It's going to be infinite, because that's who God is. So John is not being redundant there. He is wanting to tell us that Christ is our example of God's love. But see, we have another problem here. Because back in about the 11th century, you had a guy Italian or Roman Catholic church father by the name of Abelard. And Abelard's more famous because Abelard had a love affair with a woman named Heloise and her brothers got mad and he emasculated him and so he's gone down in history because of that. But his main contribution was a heresy to interpret the atonement as an example. So it's called the exemplar theory. that Christ died to show us how much God loved us. He didn't die as our substitute. It does show how much God loved us. Romans 5.12 God demonstrated His love toward us and that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. So He is an example of God's love, but that's not the focal point of the cross. It's a substitutionary atonement, a substitutionary sacrifice. So we should be translating this, for God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. So that just gives us some basic review, introduction and review to where we are, and now we're back to what's happening in our two verses. So Paul says, So when Paul says this, for many walk, this is sort of a sort of a third person type of explanation. It's very different from what he says at the beginning of chapter 3 when he says that there are these Judaizers in their midst. And so here he says for many walk, so it's not like they're, it doesn't appear that they were present in Philippi at the time, but they're nearby. So they need to be aware that sooner or later they're going to be coming to town. And so he says, for many walk, live this way, whom I've told you often, now tell you weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. We'll deal with that in just a minute. Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their shame. So he says three things to describe them. And the shame is that they set their mind on earthly things. They're more concerned with what's happening now and the temporal than they are with eternity. Now the question that comes up, raised last time, is are these believers or unbelievers? That is, those who are walking in this way. And so I've revised it. I didn't word the first one quite right. Paul is addressing the Philippians as believers, but he uses unbelievers as an example. So they do not go back to living like an unbeliever. It's a warning. Don't look at them as your pattern. You have us for the pattern of how you should live. Model your life after us, not after these people who are the enemies of the cross. Second, He is commanding them to walk a certain way. Now that seems unnecessary if obedience is inevitable. See that's the other aspect of lordship salvation is that if you're saved you're going to produce fruit. That means that growth is inevitable in their system. That's why if they look at you and you say you trusted Christ ten years ago and you're still not going to church and you're not involved in any Bible study and you're not doing anything then you probably aren't saved because there's no fruit. They would say if God has regenerated you then you will inevitably grow. That inevitably is the key word. So when Paul commands us to walk a certain way, why does he tell us to do that if growth is inevitable? Does it make sense? Not really. Third, in other passages Paul contrasts two kinds of walking that can characterize believers. You can walk worthy or you can walk like the rest of the Gentiles walk in Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians 4 1, I beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Verse 17, this I say therefore and testify unto the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles. Well if they're inevitably going to walk worthy then why do you need to tell them not to walk like the rest of the Gentiles who are clearly unbelievers? So both in Ephesians 4.17 and in Philippians, he's using a group of unbelievers. Now, when did Paul write Ephesians? Just waking everybody up. Where was he when he wrote Ephesians? Remember he wrote four prison epistles, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. He was in Rome. So there's not a whole lot of time difference between when he wrote Ephesians and he wrote Philippians, and I've pointed this out several times, there are a lot of similarities in what he is saying. So if believers are inevitably going to grow, why do they need to constantly be told, don't live like the Gentile unbelievers? Galatians he has the contrast between those who walk in the Spirit and those who are trying to grow on the basis of the flesh, which is a reference to the sin nature. Romans 8 he contrasts living according to the flesh and living according to to the Spirit. So my fourth point was that contextually Paul is telling them to follow the example of the Apostles and their companions. And that they are, since they are not like those who are bound for eternal punishment, they should be walking like those who have been regenerated. And so he describes then who the unbelievers are. So we went through what the good news of the gospel is. It's based on belief. He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Belief is used, you ought to memorize this, I say it so much. Belief is used by itself with no qualifiers over 95 times in the gospel of John. Never says surely believe, truly believe, genuinely believe, sincerely believe, consistently believe, nothing like that. It just says believe, which means you are trusting that Christ is who He said He was and He did what He said He would do. So there's basically two types of people. Those who believe in Christ and those who do not believe in Christ. Notice there's not two types of people. Those who invite Jesus into their life, commit their life to Him, you know, all the other ways that they circumlocute the word believe. I'm just, it just drives me nuts. 1 Timothy 1.15, this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. And Luke 19.10, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. He came here to save us. So Paul is saying, we're the pattern. follow us, not them. Because they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. But there's a contrast that's coming up here. We're looking at 18 and 19 tonight. For many walk of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. What characterizes them? Well, they are bound for destruction, eternal destruction. Their God is their belly. and whose glory is in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things. So we've got to look at each one of those clauses. Then next week, for our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body, we get our resurrection body, according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself. And this, of course, we get our resurrection body, then immediately after that there's the judgment seat of Christ. So the ones we don't imitate, their end result is destruction, and the ones we do imitate, their end result is a glorified, resurrected body. So, what does he mean by the cross of Christ? That they're enemies of the cross of Christ. So this word is used in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, or excuse me, 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 18, and all through that section that gives us a good Pauline definition of what he means. The, when he says they're enemies of the cross of Christ, what he's really saying, they're enemies of the gospel. They're enemies of the work of Christ on the cross. They're enemies of the message of Christ. And so the cross stands for the gospel. It stands for the work of Christ on the cross. It stands for the message of the gospel. In 1 Corinthians 1.18, Paul says, for the message of the cross is foolishness. That is to the unbeliever, to the Greek, the Gentile. The message of the cross is foolish to those who are perishing. And the word there in the Greek is apolumi which is a cognate of the word that we find translated destruction in our passage. But with both words there are one or two places where they're used that it's not eternal destruction. It can be temporal destruction. But generally speaking when you look at how this word is used by Paul, it is talking about eternal condemnation. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Obviously he's using perishing in contrast to those who are trusting in the gospel, so that's eternal condemnation. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For since He goes on, I skipped a few verses, in verse 21 he says, He goes back and forth between divine viewpoint wisdom and human viewpoint wisdom and so you can't fall asleep in between or you'll miss something. So when he's talking about foolishness here he's talking about the fact that in human viewpoint the gospel is foolishness. When he uses wisdom here, this is divine viewpoint wisdom, but then he says the world through wisdom, that's human viewpoint wisdom. The world through wisdom did not know God. It pleased God through the foolishness of the message, in terms of the human opinion, preached to those who believe. So here you have the message The message is what? The message is preached to save those who believe. So the message of the cross is the message that will save those who believe. And then he says, for Jews request a sign and Greeks seek after wisdom. Jews want a miracle. They kept asking for it. Show us a sign. Show us a sign. And Christ showed them many signs and they didn't believe him. And in verse 23 he says, but we preach Christ crucified. So crucified relates to the cross, same root word. So we proclaim Christ crucified. That's the message of the cross that's foolishness, but that's what saves people who invite Jesus into their heart. Right? Is that what it says? I just want to make sure y'all are awake. It's been a long day. So then when you get into the first part of chapter 2 Paul says, What he's saying is I did not have a well-crafted oratorical message like the people you're used to listening to. I just sat down and went through the Torah, went through the Old Testament, explained the Gospel to you, taught you the Word. I did not come with the excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God, for I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's the message. Jesus Christ's crucifixion on the cross. There have been some within the free grace camp who came along with some views about 20 years ago. Actually they had been subtly there for a while before people started understanding what exactly it was that they were saying. But they were saying that all you need to do is believe Jesus can save you. And they went to a passage in John 5. Well the problem is that John 5 is before John 19, which is when he's crucified. So they're ignoring what Paul says, and so it's been labeled the crossless gospel. And that caused a huge split in the whole free grace movement, and it exists to this day, and it's sad that that happened. Philippians 3.19 describes who these enemies of the cross are. They are three things that are said here. Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly. They're worshiping their appetites, is what that means. Their lust patterns. Their antinomian. And they glory in something that should be shameful. And what is that? It's that they have their minds set on the things of the earth. Temporal things. Things that we put our focus on every day, but you've got to get things in right proportion. And some people, they just live to find out what the latest things are that are going on on Facebook and Instagram and all of the other social media things, and are the news. And they get up in the morning and the first thing they do is they check the news. Find out what's going on. And then they're in a bad mood. And they need to be reading their Bible. And I'm talking about pastors as much as I'm talking about anybody else. We're all called sheep. God calls us all sheep. Pastors and pewsitters are all called sheep. It's not a compliment. Never forget that. It will keep us all humble. He calls us sheep, the dumbest animal on the planet. They can be one foot from water and die of thirst. So we have to deal with each other in a lot of grace because we're both sheep, right? Okay, so we come to this verse, whose end is destruction. Now the word for end is the word telos. We talk about the word for goal or direction, teleao, which means maturity or achieving your goal. whose end is destruction. Now the word for destruction is apoleia. Now this word, A-P-O-L, is the root. In John 3.16 when it says that those who don't believe will perish, it's apolumi. So it's formed on the same root. That talks about eternal punishment. So their end, these enemies of the cross, this is why I say that it views them as most likely headed to the lake of fire. Paul knew who they were so he would have a better understanding of that. This is used a couple of different ways in Scripture. In Matthew 26, 8, When the disciples see the woman who came in and she pours this expensive perfume on Jesus' feet to anoint His feet, they look at it, what a waste. Same word. Okay? So that has just a non-theological context. It has to do with wasting something. Mark reports that as well, uses the same word. John 17, 12, it's used to describe Judas. Jesus is praying in His high priestly prayer, praying to the Father. He says, while I was with them, the disciples, the eleven, in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me, I have kept. And none of them is lost except the son of perdition. So that's Apeleah. That's the word we have. So Judas is not in heaven. That's what that describes. Where'd this get out of? Something got out of order here. Okay, so I just went through on another slide 26, 8, and 17, 12, but look at 2 Thessalonians 2, 3. It says, let no one deceive you by any means for that day, it's talking about the day of the Lord coming, which is the time of the tribulation. for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first." Now there's a lot of disagreement among good dispensational scholars, but many of us believe that the word apostasia, that cognate of that word, is used for the departure of ships from the harbor. And so I believe that that is talking about not an apostasy that must come first, but it's talking about the rapture that should come first. So, but it says the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed. Now who's that? That's the Antichrist. And he is then said to be the son of perdition. What does the Antichrist and Judas Iscariot have in common? they were both indwelt by Satan. Well, Judas was indwelt by Satan, the Antichrist will be indwelt by Satan. Now, let me go back to this slide, Romans 9.22. What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? This is akin to eternal condemnation. Philippians 1.28, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries which is to them a proof of perdition. Their adversaries were unbelievers. So proof of perdition is proof that they're lost. So here in Philippians it's used in Philippians 1 to refer to eternal condemnation. So since Paul's already used it that way once I think that's the way he's using it again in Philippians 3. But there's There's a little wiggle room there because of what we see in 1 Timothy 6-9. Now this could apply to believers or unbelievers. So there he's using apoleia, and it could just be destruction in this life, you're just going to self-destruct in your life. So it doesn't necessarily mean eternal condemnation, but it's used to refer to eternal condemnation 90% of the time, and since it's used in Philippians 128 to refer to eternal condemnation, I think that's how Paul's using it in that passage. Now this gets us to this question, so what Paul is warning them is don't live like unbelievers. Now living like an unbeliever is what is meant by being a carnal Christian. Now we can be carnal in some sense if we sin, because we're no longer walking by the Holy Spirit, we're walking according to the flesh. So that would make us carnal to some degree. But if we confess our sin, we're not staying there. And so most often the word carnal refers to someone who is just living in rebellion to God. They're being a prodigal son, and they're out there in party time in the world enjoying their life apart from God. And they're not even thinking about God. So that's usually the idea of a carnal Christian. Now where do we get this term? Well we get this in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. This is where it's introduced. Of course the word that we often see in the Greek is the word sarx which is the word for flesh and it can refer to the physical bodily body or the flesh. or it can refer to that which empowers all of our being, which is the sin nature. And so often Paul is using it that way. So in this first verse we actually see that there are three types of believers that are mentioned here. The first has to do with those who are spiritual men, The second is those who are men of flesh are their carnal. See carnal was an old, just an old English word that they used in King James. So you'll look in some of your modern translations and they'll use the word fleshly. And this is the new King James version so that's an update. I remember, I never forgot this, you know sometimes a good illustration sticks with you. And I remember like a third or fourth grade Sunday school teacher saying, we eat chili. You eat meat in your chili, chili con carne. Carne is the Latin word or Spanish word for meat or flesh. And that's where we get the word carnal, you're living according to the flesh. So now maybe you won't ever forget it. And then you have babes in Christ. So the spiritual are those who are consistently walking and growing to maturity. The men of flesh, or the carnal ones, are living, as it says in the next verse, like mere men. And what that means is like they don't have the Holy Spirit, like they're not growing spiritually at all. They're just living out of fellowship, on the basis of the sin nature. And then you have spiritual babes. A spiritual babe is saved and they are secure in their salvation, but they're just trying to figure out how to suck on that nipple. They haven't figured out how to get any milk of the Word into them, and eventually they will, and eventually they will grow. But if they don't get any nourishment, then they won't grow. If you have a newborn baby and you don't feed or water the baby, the baby's going to die. If you are a newborn believer, it's not that you're going to die, but you're going to have that carnal death experience. where you're not living like you've been born again, you're just living like the spiritually dead people around you. That's what Paul's warning people about. You don't want to be like that. And so if you continue in your spiritual life and there's no change, there's no growth, then you're going to have some real some real problems. And this is what Paul's getting at here, is he said he thought, well first of all let's look at the words. These are important words to understand. The word for spiritual is the word pneumatikos which has the idea of just basically spiritual. It's built on the word pneuma, the Greek word for spirit. Sarkinos is built on the word sark, so it's talking about someone who's fleshly, sinful, or carnal. Now we have to understand a little bit about this word spiritual. Spiritual is contrasted in the context with the word psychikos. Psyche is the word for soul. Numa is the word for spirit. So there's this contrast between the soulish person and the spiritual person. The soulish person, we have to understand what that means. There's a lot of controversy over that. And so I'll walk us through this so you get, you understand it correctly. Paul writes, the way it's translated, the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned." Now that word discerned has the idea that they are able to learn it and then apply it as they grow eventually. But what does it mean the natural man? The Greek word here is psychikos from soul. It's the soulish man. Now what does that mean? There's a lot of disagreement over this. To me it's very simple. The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. The word there, the phrase there is tanuma tuthe'u which in 1 Corinthians 2 is used from verse 9 all the way through except for one time and it refers always to the Spirit who is from God, the Holy Spirit. So the things of the Spirit of God are what? Well, contextually, you have to go back to verse 9, which is a summary quote from Isaiah, that things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, neither has entered into the mind of man, but God has revealed them to us, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. So this is a very important word. Eye has not seen, what eye has not seen, that's empiricism. What ear has not heard, it's empiricism. It's what we experience. What eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, that's rationalism, what man thinks. The things which God has prepared for those who love Him. What are the things that God has prepared for those who love Him? It's the revelation of God. It's God's Word. The whole context preceding this was that whole debate between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint. Where do you get divine viewpoint? You go eat a fortune cookie, right? You get your Bible. The things which God has revealed to us. The things which God, so you have to follow that word things. You can circle it in verse 9. And verse 10 says, but God has revealed them to us. What's the them? The things. through His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things. Again, that's got to refer to what it's referred to all the way through here, and that's that which God reveals. Yes, the deep things of God, all this is talking about God's revelation. For what man knows the things of a man, or what's in a man's soul, except the spirit of the man which is in him. Even so, no one knows the things of God, that is the thinking of God, what He reveals in Scripture, except the spirit of God. Now we have received, we being believers, have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God. That's the one place that this differs. And I've talked this over with two or three pastors who agree with me, and I didn't know they did before I did this, but I've taught this for about 20 years. When I had this up here, this phrase, There are two ways that this is expressed in the Greek. One is, it's going to be, that's one way to say it, Spirit of God. Or it's going to be, every place in the scripture, it's one or the other. But in this verse, in verse 12 says that we have not received the spirit of the world but the spirit who is from God. Paul puts the preposition ek in there. It's the only place in the Bible where the Spirit of God is not, and you go all through this passage, it's tanuma tuteu, tanuma tuteu, tanuma tuteu, tanuma ek tuteu, tanuma tuteu, tanuma tuteu. Why does he put the ek in there? A genitive tuteu means from God. Why does he emphasize the ek? Because he's not talking about the Holy Spirit here. He's talking about receiving the human spirit in regeneration. That is the spirit which is from God. And people who believe in verbal plenary inspiration theoretically believe that every word makes a difference and if it's unusual and it stands out you better explain it. But I've talked to some people and say, oh you're just reading that into it. Well do you really believe in verbal plenary inspiration that every single syllable is important? And you act like, well that's just a stylistic difference. Well, you're denying your view on inerrancy and infallibility if you do that. Every syllable has to be understood. Jesus based doctrine on whether a word was a plural or a singular. So, I think that's regeneration because that's where it's going to go. Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, regeneration, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. As an unregenerate person, remember the initial quotation in verse 9 is from Isaiah. Can't be the Holy Spirit. Because at Isaiah's time they didn't receive the Holy Spirit when they were saved. But they did get the Spirit from God in regeneration. So, and that is going to contrast with what we see in this verse. A natural man doesn't have the Spirit, but a spiritual man does. So how do we know that? In this slide. A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. What are the things? What God has revealed. For they, that is the things, the things God has revealed are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, that is the things that God has revealed. Because they, that is the things, are spiritually appraised. They're appraised by the Spirit. What Spirit? Well it started with an Old Testament passage So it's got to be something that applies to an Old Testament person as well as a New Testament person so it can't be the Holy Spirit. Because they didn't get the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Now this terminology is used one other place that is horribly mistranslated. Every time that word tsukikos is botched. Jude 19, talking about unbelievers, false teachers. These are the ones who cause divisions. Then it says worldly-minded. That's not what it says in the Greek. It's psuchikos. Literally, it's soulish. And then there's this appositional phrase that comes next, and the appositional phrase literally means not having a spirit. Everybody wants to translate it. It's in the New Testament, and it's Pneuma. Let's put a capital on it. It's the Holy Spirit. But it's not talking about that. Sukikos compared to 1 Corinthians 2.14 means soulish, not having a spirit, not regenerate, not born again. So this comes back to this question of is man composed of what the dichotomy or trichotomy? Dichotomy, as it is taught theologically for centuries, means that man just has an immaterial part and all of these terms, heart, mind, soul, spirit, are all basically synonyms of each other. And then he has a physical component. There's only two parts, the immaterial part and the material part. That's how it's been taught for centuries in theology. But Hebrews 4.12 says, The Word of God is alive and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. So that means it pierces the truth and makes divisions, precise divisions like a surgical scalpel. And the Word of God is able to draw a distinction between the soul and the spirit. Based on this verse, the Bible tells us soul and spirit are not the same thing. But I will tell you that you will find few and far between any pastors and teachers that recognize that's what this is saying. But this is saying the Word of God can make this distinction. In 1 Thessalonians 5.23, in his closing in his benediction, Paul says, now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body, three parts, trichotomy, be preserved complete without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. So back to Jude 19, these are the ones who cause divisions, psychikos, soulish, and literally it's not having spirit. and it should be lower case, not having a spirit. They're not regenerated yet. That defines it. So here we are. We have a human body. God created us with a soul. And all of these intersect with each other. That's why I put this together. We break it out to talk about these elements academically, but the soul is, they all interact with each other. Self-consciousness, mentality, conscious, and volition. When Adam died, he looked like this. There was no human spirit. Because the human spirit was what he was originally created with that enabled the soul to orient to God. But when he died spiritually, the soul is independent of God. isolated from God, not oriented to God. So at regeneration we receive the human spirit, which enables us to orient to God and understand the things of God. Another place Psukikas is used is in James 3, 14, and 15. If you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth." This wisdom, what wisdom? That wisdom in the previous verse of being envious and self-absorbed and boasting and lying against the truth, those values do not descend from above. Three words are used to describe it. The first two are important for what we're learning tonight. Earthly. It's tied to the earth. And I never thought about this before until I was working through this today. Who are the unbelievers, how are the unbelievers described in the tribulation period in the book of Revelation? Earth dwellers. They're earth dwellers. They're not heavenly citizens. That's an important, and the same word is used here as is used in our passage in Philippians 4.19. So Paul says, going back to 1 Corinthians 3, verse 1, he says, I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual pneumatikos, but as to carnal sarkikos, sarkinos, as to babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink so that you could grow, not solid food, for you are not yet able to receive it." Even now, it's been three years, you still can't take in anything but milk. For you are still fleshly. You're still carnal. You're still operating on sin most of the time. And if you go through Corinthians, he says a number of things about them. In 1 Corinthians 3, he says they're fleshly and full of jealousy and strife. In 1 Corinthians 5, one person is practicing incest and they think it's okay, they don't care. They're dragging each other into secular courts to settle disputes. Some of them are participating in temple prostitution in 1 Corinthians 6, 15 to 16. Some are causing weaker brothers to stumble because of their arrogance and their self-absorption in 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10. They're not acting like regenerate, but like carnal Israel. That's what 1 Corinthians 10, 4 is all about, all the way from 10, 1 to 11. They are desecrating the Lord's table by getting drunk and gluttonous at the Lord's Supper. They were not a good bunch of people. They were party people. If you want to party hardy, they were the people to go to. That was the church to go to. But they weren't growing anywhere in the spiritual life. So that's why Paul says, for since there's jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly? Aren't you carnal? and are you not walking like mere men? You're walking like somebody who isn't regenerated. That's what he's talking about. So we get back to our passage in Philippians 3.19 describing these enemies of the cross, their end is destruction. Probably the meaning here is eternal condemnation. Their God is their belly. and their glory is in their shame, and they set their mind on earthly things." So, let me go back to something here. Their God is their belly. Coelia. Romans 16, 18 defines that. For those who are such, that is carnal believers in the context, do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple. So that correlates it. They're serving their own lusts. Worshipping their belly is just another way of talking about worshipping their own lustful appetites. So koilea has the literal meaning of the stomach or womb, but it's figuratively used for their lustful appetites. So their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame, which is defined in the next phrase. And James 3.15, which I mentioned a minute ago, because it uses the word psychikos here, translated sensual, wrongly, says, they set their mind on earthly things. And the contrast is coming up in the next verse, because it says, our citizenship is in heaven. So why do we focus on all the earthly things? we need to develop a long-range perspective, living today in light of eternity. So the next couple of verses focus on that and the orientation towards the end game at the judgment seat of Christ. Father, thank you for this opportunity to study these things and may we be challenged to continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And not to just settle for reaching some spiritual plateau, but keep pressing on to the very end. Never satisfied with where we have arrived, but pushing on to spiritual maturity and spiritual growth. Always seizing it, as Paul says. So we pray this in Christ's name, amen.