Read:
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
1 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4 For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?
5 What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9 For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.
In our Christian walk we are going to face challenging times as a believer. None of us our exempt from trials and proper growth in the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 3 we see that Paul was talking to Christians who had strife and other things in the church. He exhorts them to repent and to be the temple of God. In the last part of the chapter He talks about the judgment seat of Christ and how God is going to judge us according to our motives and things we have done in our body while here on earth. The judgment seat of Christ is for believers, and the Great White Throne judgment is for unbelievers. The judgment seat of Christ has nothing to do with heaven or hell like the Great White Throne judgment will be about, but it is about what we as Christians have built upon the foundation of Christ, and what we built that was not pure. We are all going to have bad and good motives judged. The Greek word for carnal here in verse one is adelphos, and the definition is a fellow believer, united to another by the bond of affection, an associate in employment or office; Christians, as those who are exalted to the same heavenly place. I have heard minister's teach that a carnal Christian is an unbeliever, but this is not scriptural. I'm not teaching in this devotion that you can sin and do anything you want to without any repentance, I'm just saying that we all have things we deal with, and if we don't let the Holy Spirit shine down upon that sin, we will not be fit for the Kingdom of God here on earth. It also says in verse one that carnal Christians are babes in Christ. I don't know how more relevant that can be to let us know that we can walk in the flesh and not be walking in the Spirit by His Grace. We will fall from God's grace when we start looking to the law to be made right. To fall from God's grace is to start looking to the law and our own self works to be made right with Christ, and when we fall from grace we will be a carnal Christian condemned and not free in His truth. It will make us feel unworthy and our joy will go down the tubes. This tells us that we can be a babe in Christ, but God wants us to grow in love towards fellow believers. God wants us to allow His Spirit to sanctify us and make His name attractive by walking in holiness. If we continue to have a mixture of carnality in our walk with the Lord, the Lord will discipline and chasten us to produce fruit, and those spankings from the Lord doesn't feel good at all. He has a way of dealing with us as His children. I want to encourage us as the temple of God to walk in the spirit and put aside our carnal ways. Lets grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and lets be a reflection of the one who saved us by His grace.
Prayer:
Lord, heal us today by your mercy and grace to put aside every weight and sin that so easily weighs us down, causing us to walk in carnality and not producing fruit as a true believer. We repent Lord for not walking in the Spirit as your disciples. Give us a fresh revelation that we are your temple, and that we need to shine the light for those in darkness, Amen.
by Keith Edwards
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