The Carnal Christian

Having a right understanding of this will help you to better understand the New Birth, Eternal Security and Perseverance of the Saints. Most Christians don’t get this far in their studies because they’re in a rush to prove Calvinism wrong. I’m presenting these excerpts and links for you to look into and study on your own.

Taken from: “Can I Lose My Salvation?” by R.C. Sproul,

A related development is the emergence of an innovative doctrine in popular Christianity: the idea of the “carnal Christian.” Historically, this idea was linked to the theology of dispensationalism. It erupted in the 1980s into the Lordship Salvation Controversy, an intramural debate among dispensationalists. One side insisted that it is faith alone—not faith plus repentance—that saves; therefore, it is possible to receive Christ as Savior but not as Lord. The other side argued that faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin.

Both sides agreed that everyone who comes to faith [should] put their trust in Christ as both Savior and Lord, and every believer [should] bring forth the fruit of conversion and works of obedience to Christ. The issue turned on whether it is possible to be saved without embracing Christ as Lord and therefore exhibiting works of obedience. The one who is saved without embracing Christ as Lord is one we might call a “carnal Christian.”
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Where does this idea come from biblically? The biblical justification for this is that the New Testament does speak about carnal Christians. In 1 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul is rebuking the Corinthian Christians, and he says:

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? (1 Cor. 3:1–4)

Paul is clearly talking about people whom he regards as believers. He calls them “brothers,” and yet he also describes them as being “of the flesh,” that is, carnal. So, what’s wrong with the idea of talking about “carnal Christians”? Not only does Paul describe the Corinthian believers as carnal in this case, but he also refers to himself as “of the flesh” in Romans 7 when he is talking about his own struggles in sanctification: “I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (v. 14). All of this seems to suggest that “carnal Christian” might be a useful, and biblically sound, way of talking about a certain kind of Christian.

The descriptor “carnal” or “fleshly” also recurs in the New Testament. Earlier, we saw that Paul speaks of the struggle of the Christian life as warfare between the flesh and the spirit. And we also know that that same metaphor of [flesh] is used repeatedly in the New Testament to describe the condition of the unbeliever. The unbeliever is pure flesh. That’s why Jesus says you have to be born again in order to see the kingdom of God, because what is born of the flesh is flesh, and we are by nature fleshly or fallen. The unregenerate person is not engaged in warfare between the spirit in the flesh; he is totally in the flesh, totally carnal.

Based on these distinctions, we might assume that in the image from the booklet, the idea is not that the person is still purely in the flesh, because Christ is in his life. Rather, it is meant to communicate that there are three kinds of people: unbelievers, baby believers, and mature believers. That’s a perfectly legitimate distinction, because that’s what Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians 3 when he calls the Corinthian Christians “of the flesh.” He’s calling them “of the flesh” because they are still babies and because their behavior is showing more of the ongoing manifestation of the flesh than of the maturity that comes from the fruit of the Spirit.

But the idea in the New Testament is that no person in this life is totally spiritual and no Christian in this world is totally carnal. So when we speak of carnal Christians, if by that term we mean baby Christians, everything is well and good. But if we mean people who have received Christ as their Savior but not as their Lord, where the self still dominates and rules the life, who are we describing? We’re describing the unconverted person, the person who’s in the church and around the fellowship of Christ, the person who is professing Jesus Christ, but is really not a Christian at all. The idea of a carnal Christian in the sense of one who is totally carnal is an oxymoron. There is no totally carnal Christian, just as there is no totally spiritual Christian.

Taken from, “Finally Alive” by John Piper,

I want to say loud and clear that when the Barna Group uses the term born again to describe American church-goers whose lives are indistinguishable from the world, and who sin as much as the world, and sacrifice for others as little as the world, and embrace injustice as readily as the world, and covet things as greedily as the world, and enjoy God-ignoring entertainment as enthusiastically as the world－when the term born again is used to describe these professing Christians, the Barna Group is making a profound mistake. It is using the biblical term born again in a way that would make it unrecognizable by Jesus and the biblical writers.
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In other words, in this research the term born again refers to people who say things. They say, “I have a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It’s important to me.” They say, “I believe that I will go to Heaven when I die. I have confessed my sins and accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.” Then the Barna Group takes them at their word, ascribes to them the infinitely important reality of the new birth, and then slanders that precious biblical reality by saying that regenerate hearts have no more victory over sin than unregenerate hearts.

I’m not saying their research is wrong. It appears to be appallingly right. I am not saying that the church is not as worldly as they say it is. I am saying that the writers of the New Testament think in exactly the opposite direction about being born again. Instead of moving from a profession of faith, to the label born again, to the worldliness of these so-called born again people, to the conclusion that the new birth does not radically change people, the New Testament moves in the other direction.

It moves from the absolute certainty that the new birth radically changes people, to the observation that many professing Christians are indeed (as the Barna Group says) not radically changed, to the conclusion that they are not born again. The New Testament, unlike the Barna Group, does not defile the new birth with the worldliness of unregenerate, professing Christians.

For example, one of the main points of the First Epistle of John is to drive home this very truth:

• 1 John 2:29: “If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”

• 1 John 3:9: “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.”

• 1 John 4:7: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”

• 1 John 5:4: “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world－our faith.”

• 1 John 5:18: “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.”

See also: Examining 1 John 5:1 and Saving-Faith