Corinthians A.3.1 - Aw, Grow Up!

Chapter 3.1

Paul opens a new comparison in verse 1: the difference between spiritual Christians and carnal Christians. My Bible notes on verses 1-4 state "Although the Corinthians were Christians, they were not fully spiritual (v. 1); they did not live in full obedience to the Spirit." I do not believe that is the sense in which Paul is using pneumatikois ("spiritual people"). Just as in 2:14 where he used psuchikos to describe the person who is motivated primarily by their intellect or some other facet of their soul, i.e. the soul-driven person, so now he uses pneumatikois to describe the person who is motivated primarily by their spirit, i.e. the spirit-driven or spirit-ruled person. And yet, here in v. 1, Paul tells the Corinthians he could not speak to them as spirit-driven or spirit-ruled people, but as carnal (sarkikois), i.e. body-driven or body-ruled. It was not even their intellect that was driving them but rather their desire for physical experience. I can't even say "pleasures," because the physical experience is not always pleasant: it sometimes involves pain, anger, envy, jealousy, discord, and strife. And yet these are as much a part of the physical experience as the pleasurable sensations. True, they are transmitted to and processed by the soul, but they are centered in the body.

Because of this tendency on their part to focus in this area, Paul calls them "babes" (nepiois) or infants in Christ. Now, Paul had spent considerable time among them (about 18 months) and then had gone on to other endeavors, and yet, in his absence, things had not progressed but rather had gone downhill, as he proceeds to detail. Thus, he says, he was not able to and still is not able to give them solid food (spiritually) but must feed them milk; nutritious, nonetheless, but lacking substance. He is still having to address issues that are usually in the arena of dealing with brand-new Christians, those who don't know any better, those who are striving to overcome old habits of their heathen ways and become more mature in Christ, able to crawl, some to walk, not an infant who must be carried everywhere by an adult. And the symptoms of their infancy? Personality cults (vs. 4).

Within the body at Corinth, they had splintered into clubs or cliques built around different teachings and teachers. Some aligned themselves with Paul, the original source of their introduction to the Gospel. Others had found new ideas and fresh "fire" in the teachings of Apollos, the fireball preacher from Alexandria. When he first came to Corinth, he really stirred the people up, but Aquilla and Priscilla had to take him under their tutelage to straighten out some of his theology. Still, a following developed around him. Others had taken their allegiance even further back and decided they wanted to associate with the original apostle, Peter.

Does this sound like anything today? What about the different denominations? Weren't they built around some person and their personality? True, it often coincided with their reception of revelation; for example, Martin Luther's revelation of salvation by grace; the Wesley's rescission of Anglican abuses; Calvin's concepts of predestination. Even more contemporaneously, what are the megachurches except personality cults around an individual, e.g. Jakes, Hinn, et al? True, they afford the opportunity to accomplish much more on a much larger scale, but having been part of such an effort, I can attest that there is lots of baggage that goes along with that kind of effort, and not much of it is positive. It becomes difficult to discern, after a while, what is gold, silver, and precious stones as opposed to wood, hay, and straw (v. 12).