Ron Dunn Podcast - The Cure for Carnality

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

It is important to recognize our own carnality and know that we can grow and make progress as a believer.

I'm reading tonight again from 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 5 through 17. 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 5 through 17. Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one. They are not in competition, but they are one. And every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are laborers together with God. Ye are God's husbandry, or God's field.

Ye are God's building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest. For the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try or prove every man's work of what sort it is.

If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God What if God had commissioned you to cure the carnality of Corinth? What would you have said to them? How would you go about it? What prescription could you write? What medicine could you write?

What medicine could you give? What instruction could you impart that would cure their carnality and set them on the road to spiritual recovery? How does a person go about getting out of the carnality in which he finds himself? I think one of the important things, of course, is for a person to recognize his condition, and this is what I've been laboring these past four or five services. The tragedy of this situation was that the Corinthians did not know they were carnal. They thought they were strong, but they were in reality weak.

It was exactly at the point that they thought they were strong that they were weak. They thought themselves to be spiritual because they had certain gifts and had received certain abundance and had certain experiences and had certain knowledge and doctrine. One of the interesting things that you notice as you read Paul's description of their carnality is that he never says a word about doctrine. He never says a word about error in truth or teaching. That was not their problem.

Their problem was not intellectual or doctrinal. It was moral their problem. Their problem was not intellectual or doctrinal. It was moral and ethical. And the first thing that a person has to do is to recognize his own carnality, to recognize where he is. And then after that there is the possibility that he can get on the road to recovery, begin to grow as a believer, on the road to recovery, begin to grow as a believer, and begin to make progress towards that destination of spiritual maturity, what the Bible calls the spiritual man. What would you say to a church? What would you say to a person who comes up to you and says, Listen, I realize that I am a carnal Christian. I am old enough to know better, but I don't. I have been saved long enough to know better, but I don't. I have been saved

long enough to be better, but I am not. There is no excuse. Even though I have been saved five years, ten years, twenty years, I still am living a life characterized by the flesh. What can I do? What would you say to it? You know, as you just read this casually, it's a little difficult to see Paul's train of thought and where he's going. I wonder if you and I would have said the same thing that Paul said in trying to solve this problem. The key verse is verse 9. It's a verse of transition. He says, For we are laborers

together with God. You are God's husbandry. That word means field, a field that has been plowed and worked. It points back to the preceding verses. Paul has been using the figure of a field. These folks at Corinth, like many of us, they have been gathering around personalities. They said, I follow Paul, and another says, I am of Apollos. Paul says, listen, Paul is nobody. Apollos is nobody. I simply planted, and Paul and Apollos watered the ground, but it was God that gave the harvest. He is using the figure of a field. So he says, you are God's field, and that word, that expression, that figure of speech points back to the preceding verses. Then he says, you are God's building.

Now he changes the figure. You are God's building, and this figure of speech anticipates what he's about to say. It points forward to the following verses. But the emphasis is this. In that third verse, the word God comes first three times. In that ninth verse, the word God comes first three times. Literally what Paul is saying is, you are God's fellow workers. You are God's husbandry. You are God's building.

How is Paul going to cure carnality? What is the key? What is the solution? The solution is simply this. A carnal Christian is one who has lost sight of the whole and is obsessed by the personal and the partial. A carnal Christian is one who looks upon the church as his own little private sandbox where he can play his own little games. The church is the field that he plays in, and he has his own way and his ambition and his self and his rights, and he has his little group and his little clique. He has lost sight of the whole, and he is obsessed with the personal, what I want, and he is

obsessed with the partial, with what Paul has done and with what Apollos has done. There is something about a carnal Christian that it seems that when he comes into the field of the church, he begins to look upon it, as I said, as his own little private playground. He reverts to childishness that is absent in his life in other areas. I've often thought if some men acted on the job like they act in church, they would lose their job before the day was out. Paul says, your problem, my problem is that when we become carnal we have lost the vision of the whole.

We've been obsessed, we are dwelling with the personal. What's right for me and what do I get out of it? And having my way in my little group. We've obsessed ourselves with a partial. We've lost the vision of the whole thing. The church is not our only private playing ground. He says, you are God's. That's the emphasis. Everything belongs to God.

All of it comes from God. It is God's. He's the only thing that matters. You don't matter. Paul doesn't matter. Apollos doesn't matter. He says, Paul planted. But who's Paul?

He's nothing. Well, you and I wouldn't say that. How many times you said, man, I wish I could have sat at the feet of Paul. Man, I wish I could live a life like Paul lived. Or if I could have had the Paul says, I am nothing, nothing. Who's Apollos? He is nothing. We were simply ministers by which you believe even as God gives to every man.

He says, you have lost the vision. This is God's work, not yours, not Paul's, not Apollos''. You are God's field. This isn't your private playground. This isn't your field. You are God's building. You see, a carnal Christian has lost the vision of the purpose of God. What God is up to is taking your life and building for himself a dwelling place, a temple of

God in which he can dwell and be glorified. The carnal Christian has lost sight of that. He has lost the vision that the whole purpose of his life is to be simply a showcase for the glory of God. He has been more concerned with his own wants, his own ambitions. He has been more concerned with personalities. He has lost the vision. Paul says, Apollos is nothing God. You are God's fellow laborers. You are God's field. You are God's house. Emphatically three times he says, you need to get your eyes off yourself and off of men

and get them back on God. And if you ever come to the place, he's saying, where you catch the vision of God's purpose, you are God's building. You are God's temple. That's the cure. And he says the same thing over in chapter 6. In chapter 6, Paul is again dealing with some of the glaring, gross characteristics of carnality. How does he solve it in chapter 6?

By the same method. Verse 19, he says, what? Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Glorify God in your body. You are not your own. Your body is the dwelling place of God. Now in chapter 3 he's using a plural. He's referring to the church as

a whole being the temple of God. In chapter 6 he is referring to the individual Christian being the temple of God. Both are true. God indwells me individually, but all of us together as a corporate group of believers, this church is the temple of God. And the cure for personal carnality in my life, and he's dealing with a moral problem in chapter 6, the cure for that is to recognize that my individual body is the temple of God and I belong to him, I do not belong to myself, therefore I have only one purpose in life, that is to glorify God in my body. Chapter 3, the cure for carnality in a church is to recognize that this church is not my

private little playground, my little sandbox where I build my little sandcastles, but it is the temple of God, the dwelling place of God, and if I defile this place, if I corrupt this place by my carnality, God will punish me for it. So Paul is simply saying that your carnality is to recognize, see the vision, get the big picture, see the whole thing, that the purpose of God is to take your individual life and this church as a whole and erect for himself a dwelling place where he can glorify himself in your lives. When you come to the place where you recognize that and you yield yourself to it, you will be on the road to spiritual recovery.

You will be making progress toward spiritual maturity. I want us to examine in a little greater detail this third chapter, and to see just exactly what are the things, what are the steps that Paul outlines in order to effect this cure. I want to mention three. First of all, Paul says that we need to see that we have a responsibility in this building. What's God up to? What is the purpose of God? He says, you are God's building.

And what God is up to is making out of the church a temple in which he can dwell, a temple through which he can minister, a temple with which he can glorify himself. And he says, you have a responsibility in the building up of this temple. Let's read verse 9. Paul says, according to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation. Now, Paul means by this. He said, I came to Corinth.

I started the church at Corinth. I preached the gospel. I laid the foundation. Now, the foundation has been laid. but other people build upon that foundation. Now here is where we get the personal responsibility, but let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. And the verb take heed is in the present tense, which means you continually be watching out how you build. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if any man build upon this foundation, you see, there it is.

Paul says the foundation has been laid. What is that foundation? Jesus Christ. Man, you can't have any other foundation but that. And if anything goes wrong in your building, it's not the foundation's fault, because you've got the best foundation you can have. And Paul underlines that. He said, now the foundation is this.

It's Jesus Christ. Now if things go wrong in your life, friend, it's your fault, not the foundation's fault. He said, you've got the right beginning. You've got the greatest opportunity. Everything is going for you. I've laid the foundation. Here it is, Jesus Christ. Now your responsibility is to take that foundation of Jesus Christ in your life and upon that to erect a superstructure of Christian living which will glorify God in every aspect of it. But you better watch out. Better take

heed how you build. You have a responsibility. You have a responsibility. All the growth comes from God. Paul has already made that clear. Therefore, he gets all the glory. You see, one of the problems with these carnal Corinthians is they were giving Paul the glory and giving Apollos the glory and giving Cephas the glory, giving him the credit for what he had done. Now listen, God uses men, but they're nothing. God uses programs, but they're nothing. God uses organization, but they're nothing.

God uses machinery, but it's nothing. It is God that gives the increase. All growth comes from God, therefore all the glory belongs to God. And Paul says, I according to the grace of God given to me, God gives us enabling grace to build, but we have responsibility. God says, all right, he says, I'm going to give you grace, enabling grace, where you can build upon this foundation. You can plant and you can water, I promise you I will give the increase.

But he says, you have a responsibility, and your responsibility is to be careful concerning the materials that you use in building your life. He describes these materials in verse 12. Now, if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble, he has outlined here two categories of building materials. First of all, that which is gold, silver, and precious stone. The second is wood, hay, and stubble. These are contrasted.

You will see in a moment why it is that Paul uses these two types of material. I think there are basically two reasons. Number one, gold, silver, and precious stones cost you something to build with it. A lot of Christians are building their Christian life out of wood, hay, and stubble, out of things which cost them little or nothing. In other words, it involves very little sacrifice to build their lives. I want to say honestly to you tonight that if your Christian living consists in just coming to church on Sunday and giving your offering and coming on Sunday night, and if

you think that's the way you're building your life, I want to say you're building with wood, hay, and stubble. To build and live your Christian life is costing you little or nothing. But to build with gold, silver, and precious stone involves sacrifice. It involves giving up something so that you can have it. It reminds me of Jesus giving a description of the kingdom of God. He said the kingdom of God is like a man who is walking along and in a field he discovers a pearl of great price.

He goes and he sells all that he has so that he can buy this field so he can acquire that treasure hidden in the field. The other illustration is of a pearl buyer who has bought many pearls and suddenly he finds the great pearl, the pearl of great price, and he's willing to sell all the other pearls he has to acquire that one. He said, that's what the kingdom of God is like. I think this is what Paul, the idea of Paul is trying to get across, that if I am going to live up to the responsibility that God

has given me in building my Christian life, I must be willing to sell everything I have in order to build with gold, silver, and precious stone. David said, I will not sacrifice to God that which costs me nothing. When somebody offered to give him a free offering to sacrifice to the Lord. Tremendous words, I will offer to the Lord, I will sacrifice to the Lord that which costs me nothing. The second reason he uses this kind of material is because one is inflammable and the other is non-inflammable. That brings us to the second point. First point in curing my own carnality is to recognize that God holds me responsible.

I have a responsibility in this building. It is my responsibility to take the foundation that God has laid in my own life and in this church and build upon it, and I'd better watch out how I build. Because the second thing is I must recognize that there will be a time of reckoning, that I will have to face a day of reckoning on how I have built. The trouble with a carnal Christian is that he never sees beyond today. He never sees beyond the present. This is why he is involved in junk business.

This is why his life is taken up with things. This is why he is obsessed with the personal and with the partial. This is how he fails to see the whole scheme of what God is doing, because he fails to reckon the fact that someday he must personally, individually give an account of what he has done with the foundation that God has given to him. This is what Paul is saying. If any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, haystubble, every man's work. Notice how God singles us out.

The idea in that phrase, every man's work, means that every man's work separately. In other words, when we all as Christians stand at that beema and God judges not our salvation to see whether or not we're saved, but he judges the life that we have lived, our faithfulness, our stewardship. He tests and proves our work. He's not going to do it collectively. All right, MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church, stand up here. Well, man, you know, I could get by on that and kind of lose myself in the crowd. But over and over again, you'll notice in verse 10 he says, every man take heed.

And verse 11, verse 12, now if any man, verse 13, every man's work. Verse 14, if any man's work. Verse 15, if any man's work. You see the singular, he's talking about the church as a whole. But he says at this day of reckoning it will not be the church as a whole, it he says, at this day of reckoning, it will not be the church as a whole, it will be Christians as individuals, your work separately. God will single me out, God will single you out, and say, all right, now I want to test your work, your contribution to the building up of this temple of God.

There'll be no losing ourselves in the crowd. Of course, the easy thing about belonging to a church of this size and even larger is that if you don't serve, it's not going to really mean the end of this church, because as has been said, 80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the people. There's a lot of truth in that in the average church. We can get a free ride and enjoy the fruit of everybody else's labors, but on that day God will single you out. And did you know that will be the only time some of us ever in our Christian life have

ever been singled out? Can you imagine what a traumatic effect that's going to be for a great many people who all of their Christian lives have hidden behind the post in the back of the auditorium so the pastor couldn't see them when he preached? Or they have hidden behind everybody else's work and they've just gotten a free ride, they've never really contributed much outside of just a warm body there on Sunday morning and an offering once in a while, and suddenly all of a sudden their Christian life having never been singled out, and they'd leave this church if we tried

to single them out and say, hey, I want to stand you up before the church and examine your work and your service, your contribution to this work. They would be gone in a flash and join a bigger church, so it would be easier to lose themselves. Now, I've had people tell me, I joined so-and-so church just so I could lose myself in it. Let somebody else do it for a while. Let somebody else carry the load for a while. But what a traumatic effect it's going to have for what I believe is to be the majority of Christians, that 80 percent, who for the first time in their Christian experience,

God singles them out to go, right, now let's see the life that you've lived. He goes on, he says, ever man's work shall be made manifest. The word manifest means it will be made clear, it will be made visible. For the day shall declare it, the word declare means shall show its true character, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall prove every man's work of what size it is. Wait, excuse me, I read that wrong. It's not of what size.

Well, I'll be. I sure thought that the Lord was going to judge us as to what size our work was. It's not what size, it's what sort. Do you catch that? It's not the size of a man's work that God's going to be interested in. It's going to be the sort, not quantity, but quality. Not going to be how much you've done, but the character, the sort, the quality of what you have done. You see, a fellow may do an awful lot for the Lord, but he may do it all in the energy of the

flesh. He may do it all for selfish ambition. I think the sad truth is that a great many of our churches being built are nothing more than big old haystacks that are monuments to the glory of man. Sometimes when I attend a convention, I hear, as Vance Havner said, a lot more chest thumping than I hear heart humbling. The theme that we sing over and over again, it seems, is, look what we have done, look what we have accomplished.

God is not going to judge us as to the amount that we have done. He is not interested in how much we have accomplished, but He is interested in the quality of what we have accomplished. It matters not how much we have done. If we have done that in a state of carnality, if we have done that in the energy of the flesh, if we have done that for selfish ambition, if we have done that as an ego trip, he says, what, it will be tried by fire of what sort it is, of the quality. And very simply, Paul paints the picture.

Someday your pastor will stand at that judgment seat, and the Lord will single me out, and he will take my work. Every sermon I preached, every prayer I prayed, every act of service I have done, it will all be piled up together, and the Lord will use, as he describes it here, a fire test. And he will prove, he will test, he will determine whether or not it has been wood, hay, and stubble, that which cost me little or nothing. I haven't sacrificed for it.

It's been done for selfishness. It's been done for ambition's sake. It's been done for wrong and impure motives. He puts the fire to it. Do you know what happens when you set fire to wood, hay, and stubble? It burns. All that's left is ashes. The frightening thing, the frightening possibility tonight, is that a great many lives of Christians will go up

and smoke on that day, because all of their lives as they have lived in the Church, they have lived a life of carnality, they have never gotten beyond the first principles of Christian living, they have always lived for themselves in selfishness and pettiness, they have never known what it was to be characterized by the Holy Spirit, and their entire lives of Christian service will be grown up in smoke." Who will lose their reward? Notice he doesn't say that they will lose their salvation, but he says their salvation will be reduced to a minimum. He says, ìHe himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.î The King James says by fire, but literally, ìit is so as through fire.î The picture is a fellow

who has run through fire, and he has been saved. He escaped, but he had to run through the fire. He comes out, and I wrote in the margin of my Bible, ìHe is saved, but singed.î It is the picture of a fellow who is awakened at night to discover that his house is on fire. And he's sleeping in a raging inferno and he jumps out of bed, wraps the sheet around him and runs to the fire and he gets out and he stands on the outside of that house with that sheet wrapped around him and he watches as his entire life's work and possessions go up in smoke. He's saved, but that's all. That's the picture that Paul is saying is going to be on that day of reckoning. That encourages me to go on with the Lord and get out of this

carnality. The third thing, and I think really this ought to be the knockout punch that Paul delivers to these Corinthians, this is the apex of everything that Paul is saying. There ought to be a reverence on our part, a deep abiding reverence, a sense of holiness for God's building. He says in the 16th verse, ìKnow ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?î If any man defileóthe word � the word defile means to profane or to corrupt, to taint it. If any man profanes, corrupts, ruins the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. A better translation of that last

phrase, a more emphatic, says this, God's temple is sacred to him, and you are that temple. There is nothing more sacred to God than his is sacred to him, and you are that temple.î Thereís nothing more sacred to God than his temple, and he says, ìYou are that temple.î God does not dwell in a temple made with hands today. Some day, if they destroy that mosque thatís sitting on the side of the old temple, and the Jews rebuild a new temple, God still won't dwell in it. God does not dwell in temples any longer made with hands. He dwells in this church, in this people. He dwells in me. I am the temple of God. There are two Greek words translated, temple. One means the temple, the whole shebang, the whole shooting match, the courtyard, every

part of it. The other means the holy place, the holy of holies where God dwells. When Jesus, the Bible says Jesus drove money changes out of the temple, he uses that other word for temple that means just the whole part of the temple, the courtyard, every part of it. But when he comes to talk about my body and this church, this people being a temple of God, he uses the Greek word that means the holy place, the holy of holies, the sacred shrine where God dwells. You know who could go into the holy of holies?

Not all the priests could. All of the family of Aaron out of the tribe of Levi. The Levites were the priests, but only those priests, the high priests that would come from the family of Aaron, only they were permitted to go into the holy place, the Holy of Holies, where God's glory dwelt. But all of those people and all of those other priests, even though they could never go inside where that unseen presence of God dwelt. Their whole conduct was regulated and their faith was animated. Everything they did was controlled and regulated by the thought that

inside that place dwells the presence of God. It was a holy place, a holy accordingly. In that outer courtyard any old dog could run through it but that holy place that was sacred to God and Paul comes and says, don't you know, don't you know you who've been fighting in the church and you who've been looking into the church to Satisfy your own little pity and personal desires and wishes and ambitions Don't you know that that church that the body? It's your human body your individual body in that body of believers. Don't you know that's the holy of holies Don't you know that's where God himself wills. Don't you know you ought to live in fear and reverence and respect? Because if you profane, if you profane the temple of God, and how do you profane the temple of God? You profane the

temple of God by bringing in anything into it that is prohibited. What were they bringing into the temple of God? How were they profaning it? Well, they were bringing in their strife. They were bringing in their jealousy. They were bringing in their party spirit. They were bringing all of these things into the holy place, into the temple of God. Thus they were profaning the temple of God. They were corrupting the temple of God. God said, This is his holy place, and you had better not defile it by bringing in those things that are prohibited. You know, if you were to have come here this afternoon, this evening, to this evening's

service, vandals had gotten inside this building, and they had ripped up the carpet and poured paint all over the walls and chopped the organ and piano to pieces and torn all the hymn books. You know what you would have said? You would have stood there aghast to say, doesn't anybody any longer have any respect

for what the house of God? That's what you'd have said. You wouldn't be so upset if they did it to Safeway Grocery Store. You wouldn't be so upset if they did it to the mobile station down here, but you're reading a paper where they go to some church in Dallas and they pour paint all over everything and tear up the organs and tear up the song books and break out the stained glass windows and we say, man, that's terrible. They have what? They have defiled what? The house of God.

No, they haven't. The temple of God, the house of God, is your body. I tell you something, this church is not profaned by pouring oil on the carpet or flinging black paint on the walls. It is profaned by strife and jealousy and pettiness party spirit, and partisanship. That's what profanes the temple of God, bringing into it those things that ought not to be there. Oh, I tell you, if we ever touch the glimpse, he possesses us completely, his presence indwells us, and therefore you conduct yourself accordingly. Paul offers this as the cure for our carnal life. A person confronted, I mean really confronted with this truth, where it is not simply an intellectual grasp of a doctrine, but it has become a heart

conviction at his body. This body is the dwelling place of the Most Holy God. in his carnal, indifferent, sluggish state, who must move on to spiritual maturity.