I was reading a very good book on thursday - A. W. Tozer's The Christ Centred Church. One passage really leaped out at me - the carnal Christian.
The example is from 1 Corinthians chapter 3 - "And I brethren could not speak to you as spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able." (NKJ)
A. W. Tozer used the example of a baby to illustrate the idea of a carnal Christian and I looked at my own three month old son and saw the same picture. A baby lives in the now, is a slave to his feelings and emotions and doesn't have any concept of anything but himself. For a baby, this is perfectly normal and I love him to bits, I certainly don't resent him for being what he is - a small child.
Picture it as a Christian life, when we make that first step toward God, when we are first filled with his spirit, we are the same, everything is new and we are like babies in our faith. We are cosseted, fed on easily digestible milk and have very little depth to our understanding.
My son will grow up, he will be weaned onto solid food, he will get bigger and stronger and grow into a man. It would be very wrong of me to fight this, to try and keep him as a tiny baby. As Christians, we must not stay as babies either, we must not live our lives in the shallow emotional way, we must crave more of God, we must go deeper. It is easy, and believe me I am as guilty of it as anyone, just to sit there on a Sunday, listen and thing "How nice!" and then go home and do nothing. This is not the way to a strong Christian life, it is the way to banality.
Later in the same chapter of Corinthians, the example of a building is used. A foundation has been laid and it is up to us to build. We can follow Christ wholeheartedly and build in gold, silver and precious stones or we can build with wood, hay and straw. It will be tested by fire, and some will suffer loss. They will be saved, but saved through fire. How many of us sit back and thing we're all right, we've given our heart to God, we've been baptised and we turn up on most Sunday mornings. We've got our "ticket to heaven" and that's as far as we ever go. We've been given the foundation and aren't bothering to build anything on it at all! We are babies, incapable of anything more than crying loudly when things get a little difficult.
This has been a strong wake up call to me; I have been severely neglecting my spiritual life. As hard as I know I will find it, I must put some effort in. I must read my Bible more, remember to pray with regularity and trust in Him more. It's not being saved by works, it's getting to know him better. If I want to get to know my neighbour I must make the effort to talk to him more and I think the same applies here.
