By Heny Albert Erdmann

Chapter 5

Who Has the Carnal Mind?

The carnal mind or "original sin is the corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually." This is the teaching of Methodism.

The carnal mind is an awful disease, loathsome in its nature, fatal in its effect, certain to end in death sooner or later. The entirety of Adam's race has been exposed to it and is affected with it. "The orthodox view is that this native corruption is derived from a sinful ancestry, in whose loss of purity their whole posterity is involved. This view represents the depravity of human nature as coming from the laws of natural descent, the child inheriting from the parent a corrupt nature, prone to evil, in consequence of which he runs easily into open sin" (The Methodist Armor).

God created man holy, and the Psalmist tells us that man was made a little lower than the angels, and that he was crowned with glory and honor. Surely we do not find man today as he is pictured as having been on the beginning.

Oh, the depths to which the race has fallen! As we judge the greatness of ancient cities by their ruins, we look upon man today and wonder what a heaven this world would be if man had not fallen.

After that awful and fateful day on which man fell, we read, "Adam begat a son in his own likeness." Adam had now lost the divine likeness. The apostle Paul tells us, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." And again he tells us, "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." In Genesis 6:5 we read, "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." All this dates back to the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve listened to Satan, disobeyed God, they plunged the whole race into wreck and ruin. It was the fail that depraved man and brought him into possession of the carnal mind. The Psalmist says, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity: and in sin did my mother conceive me." Some have explained this to mean that David's mother was not a virtuous woman. They have endeavored to explain that David did not here mean that he was born with a depraved nature. But if one will read from the first verse of this fifty-first psalm, it is very evident that he is not slandering his mother, but that he is deploring his own state and condition. He is not trying to cover up any of the facts. "A genuine penitent will hide nothing of his state; he sees and bewails, not only the acts of sin which he has committed, but the disposition that led to those acts. He deplores, not only the transgression, but the carnal mind, which is enmity against God. The light that shines into his soul shows him the very source whence transgression proceeds; he sees his fallen nature, as well as his sinful life; he asks pardon for his transgression, and he asks washing and cleansing for his inward defilement." So says Adam Clarke.

Jesus said, "From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness." Evidently Jesus believed that man's heart was wrong. The very seat of life and affection is warped and diseased. The apostle Paul based his entire Epistle on the Romans upon the fall of man, and evidently he did not think that man fell upward, as our evolutionist friends would have us think. It was in the fall that man became depraved, and soon after "God saw that the wickedness of man was great." Some time ago a daily newspaper carried the report of two married couples, the four individuals composing same having mutually agreed that if they could secure divorces each would marry the other's companion. Evidently their hearts were corrupt. Evidence is on every hand that man is corrupt and his heart is defiled. Jeremiah says, "The heart is deceitful above all things." "Above all things"! That leaves us to infer that even the devil himself is not so deceitful as the heart of man while in its uncleansed condition. The apostle Paul says, "By nature the children of wrath," and Isaiah mourns over the fact that the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment."

Thus we have an awful picture of man. Certainly sin is in his heart defiling the whole nature, and causing him to be turned decidedly toward sin and evil. This is not the picture of a few, but of all in all ages and all countries.

Not only the unregenerate but every converted person has the carnal mind. This is fully attested by the testimony of thousands of converted people. After the new birth, and the forgiveness of their sins, they have felt the stirrings of the carnal mind. When a person comes with a penitent heart, confesses his sins, and puts his trust in Jesus, he will find himself suddenly freed from his sins. The sense of guilt and condemnation will vanish, and the burden will roll away. Now he is born of God. But as he walks in the light and reads the Bible, he soon finds that sin's disease is far more deadly than he had thought, and that back of and beneath his own sins are the works of the devil. He will find a stirring of something that does not want to be patient; something that wants to become angry; a something that is touchy and sensitive, and at times wants to find fault and grumble. He finds in his heart something that is proud and wants to shun the shame of the Cross, a something that wants its own way, a something that wants to get even with that person who has mistreated him. This something is the carnal mind. The apostle Paul also calls it "the old man."

There are those who say the carnal mind is gotten rid of in conversion, but we never saw any people who really found it so.

The disciples of Jesus manifested that they possessed the carnal mind before the Day of Pentecost, yet none can question their conversion or regeneration. Jesus had told them that their names were written in the book of life. In His prayer He told the Father that they were not of the world; that if they were of the world, the world would love its own. But we find that they were self-seeking, had also the spirit of retaliation, and disputings were found among them.

In writing to the Corinthian church the apostle Paul tells them that they are babes in Christ, but in the same breath tells them that they are yet carnal. This affirms that they are carnal and never had been otherwise. They had been carnal from the beginning and were carnal at that time. Nevertheless, Paul recognizes them as brethren in the Lord.

Wesley says: "Here the apostle speaks unto those who were unquestionably believers, whom in the same breath he styles brethren in Christ, as being still in a measure carnal. He affirms that there was envying, an evil temper, occasioning strife among them, and yet does not give the least intimation that they had lost their faith. Nay, he manifestly declares they had not; for then they would have ceased to be babes in Christ. And what is most remarkable of all, he speaks of being carnal, and babes in Christ, as one and the same thing, plainly showing that every believer is in a degree carnal, while he is only a babe in Christ" (Sermons, Vol. I, p. 109).

"By being in a degree carnal, are but babes. Were they wholly carnal, they would not even be babes, but unregenerate ... And throughout this epistle the class so severely reprehended and even menaced by St. Paul are held by him as Christians, but faulty Christians, who needed to ascend to a higher level of holiness. From this it follows that there may be sin in believers" (Whedon).

In writing to the Ephesians the apostle Paul affirms, in unquestionable terms, that they were in Christ, and in the same epistle exhorts them to "put off the old man, which is corrupt." We find here that these people, although they were converted, possessed the "old man," which is the carnal mind.

In writing to the Thessalonian church, St. Paul tells them that they are in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they have turned from idols to serve the true and living God; and to make clear that he is not trying to get them reclaimed from a backslidden state, he tells them in the third chapter of his first letter to them that they are not backslidden. Then he tells them that it is God's will that they should be sanctified, and closes this letter with a prayer for God to sanctify them. They evidently were not sanctified, for Paul would not pray for something they already possessed. These Thessalonians needed the sanctifying power of God to deliver them from the carnal mind.

Sin's disease is deep-seated, and its blighting and destructive effects have permeated the whole race, leaving sorrow, misery, woe, heartache, gloom, and shadows in its wake.

"If one speak and teach rightly of sin, it is necessary to consider sin more deeply, and to discover out of what root it, and every ungodly thing, proceeds, and not simply to stand at sins already committed" (Luther).

"That the corruption of nature does still remain even in those who are the children of God by faith; that they still have in them the seeds of pride and vanity, of anger, lust, and evil desires; yea, sin of every kind; is too plain to be denied, being a matter of daily experience" (Wesley).

"We have a corrupt inner system, a depraved hidden man within the outer man, and all its members, eye, hand and foot, in which resides our appetency for sin. And yet it is ourself, and cannot be cast into perdition without taking the whole being. Now if this corrupt eye seduce us to adultery, if the itching palm contract theft, if the foot tend to blood, let spiritual amputation be performed" (Whedon).

"How false and how deceptive it would be to deny that the true convert ever has such a conflict! It may become the most tragic conflict in the annals of eternity. For unless the Christian crucify, and crucify to the death, these inward foes; they, pirates against his immortal soul, will at last cast him soul and body into an everlasting hell" (Campbell, in A Cloud of Witnesses).

"Only let it be remembered, that the heart of the believer is not wholly purified when it is justified; sin is then overcome, but it is not rooted out; experience shows him first that the root of sin, self-will, pride, and idolatry remain in his heart. But as long as he watch and pray, none of them can prevail against him" (Wesley).

"In order to be successful in the Christian race course. the Christian is exhorted to lay aside, or put off, as a cast-off garment, the inner sin which doth so easily beset him" (L. M. Campbell).

"Conversion has cut down the tree of sin; but that is not enough: we are now to follow, or seek, the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord, and which uproots the hidden root, or inward inclination to sin, from the ground of the heart" (L. M. Campbell).