Romans 8 Slide of Barren and Green LandBible World
8:7Romans 8:7
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
The unrenewed natural mind is at war with God, refusing His law and in fact unable to obey it. Humanity was first made in God's image in perfect harmony with His law, but sin broke that likeness and set the heart against its principles. God's law still demands perfect holiness in every thought and act, yet it cannot pardon, cleanse, or give power to obey, and no human effort, culture, or willpower can change the heart. Deliverance comes only through Christ, whose life and death reconcile the sinner to God, for conversion is not improvement of the old life but death to self and a wholly new life by the Holy Spirit that turns enmity into love and delight in obedience. That change requires the lower nature with its passions, appetites, and self-will to be daily subdued, mortified, and crucified until the soul loves what God loves and finds His service joyful.
Meaning of Carnal Mind
The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it does not submit to the law of God and indeed cannot do so. The holy law exposes all as sinners standing guilty under its just penalty, powerless in themselves to do good or escape ruin. Human effort, education, culture, exercise of the will and willpower may produce outward correctness but cannot change the heart, purify the soul, or give life to its lifeless faculties; change from sin to holiness requires new life from above, which Christ alone provides by giving His life to save the transgressor from ruin. Sin has alienated man from his Maker and put the heart at war with the principles of the law, and reconciliation requires conversion and sanctification by which divine grace renews the heart and brings it back into harmony with God. Those whose minds have not been renewed are lawless, clinging to sin and resisting the law's authority while professed faith remains only surface religion when indulgences are loved more than righteousness, even professing holiness while serving sin and opposing the law because it condemns wrongdoing.
The carnal mind is the unrenewed natural mind not under the direct influence of the Spirit of God, which Satan can mold as he chooses and make carnal in all the rational powers he controls. The sinner who refuses to give himself to God comes under the control of another power and listens to another voice, ruled by passion, impetuous desire, rash impulse, inclination, appetite and depraved affection, with judgment blinded, reason dethroned, every entrusted faculty demoralized, and the whole physical, mental and moral being swayed by a power he does not know. He is dead in sin, weak in moral power under Satan's control, talking of liberty and freedom of action while in abject slavery and not his own, with truth having little influence over him and unable to see the beauty of truth. Merely professing to follow Christ does not remove that hostility while the heart is unchanged, for men who with all their powers war against the law of God and break that holy law remain carnal until, like Paul, they are thoroughly converted.
The enmity is selfishness in the heart, taken away only when the heart is emptied of all selfishness and cleansed by the Spirit of Christ to become a vessel fit for the Master's use. It is self in all that is done, with little faith, continual whining, murmuring, complaining, gloom and dejection, serving God without delight and only at will, shirking taxing burdens and responsibilities, seeking to be praised and esteemed, and failing to manifest the love of Christ and accept trials and afflictions joyfully. Such a murmuring mind must be put away forever, not for a week, by laying hold on faith, seizing the promises of God, training thoughts and feelings in the right channel, studying the Word, earnest prayer, faithful labor and useful physical work, and forgetting self in caring for others. Then the person becomes a cheerful and happy Christian whose cheerfulness flows from inward peace, whose countenance attests that the Sun of Righteousness shines on the heart, who serves with delight and makes melody to God in the heart, accepts affliction joyfully, looks up and trusts in God, and carries sunshine everywhere rather than insulting the cause of God and repelling angels by misrepresenting Christ.
The enmity means tastes, views, preferences, likes and dislikes, and choice of things and pursuits directly opposed to God, standing in determined opposition to His thoughts, words and corrections and refusing to listen to His words by pen or voice. It has no relish for what God loves or approves but delights in what He despises, with affections set not on pure, holy, ennobling themes but on self, maintaining a course offensive to Him. It cannot bear God's presence, enjoys having less of God, hates God and hates His servants, and brings controversy with those trying to walk in the way of the Lord. It calls light darkness and darkness light, good evil and evil good, truth falsehood and falsehood truth, and cherishing the spirit of the world expresses this hostility in defiance and faultfinding against bearers of truth, using God-given abilities against His work and rejecting light because it condemns wrongdoing.
The carnal mind cannot understand spiritual mysteries or receive the saving force of vital truth. Separated from the Source of truth, with judgment blinded under passion and sin, God's wisdom appears foolish to it, and intellect cannot discern truth independently of God. Human philosophy that pleases the carnal heart leads people to trust their own reasoning, turn from God's wisdom, and reject divine truth. When people persist in doubt and follow Satan's deception, impressions of God's Spirit diminish and Satan's influence grows until their minds submit to his control. Pride, love of the world and ease, selfishness, covetousness, envy, jealousy, lust, hatred and other evils keep people from understanding vital truth, and distrust of God naturally grows from hostility toward Him; overcoming these evils by acting on the plain teachings of God's word in humble obedience sanctifies, forms Christian character, and makes people partakers of the divine nature.
The carnal mind is the lower nature with all its inclinations, affections and impulses, including the natural heart with its corrupt passions, perverse temper, anger and natural appetites, and a stubborn self-willed course reflecting a will hostile to God. It is an unhappy, fretful, dissatisfied spirit with an impure fountain within, showing itself in a disagreeable countenance and proving God is not with the man while the old life of sin, disobedience and transgression in willing ignorance of guilt and danger has not been given up, even in one professedly keeping the commandments while continually violating them. Giving way to it and getting angry when one pleases cannot keep a clear conscience and the approval of God, does not make a person happier or better nor add to enjoyment, but casts a shadow in the household and a pall over happiness, injures the constitution and tears the system to pieces. For that reason God lays restrictions upon it and requires restriction of appetite, control of the passions, and holding the entire man in subjection, promising strength to do this work, and Christ in requiring self-denial does not deprive of any real good. It must therefore be subdued, mortified and crucified, with the body kept under and brought into subjection and every affection and impulse contrary to God's will uprooted, by getting the fountain pure and letting the image of God shine into the heart to make all pure and peaceful and glorious within, becoming a converted man with a pure, lowly, loving, obedient heart that abhors evil and seeks and practices the good because it loves the right. Until this new birth takes place God cannot use the man in His cause, and the cure is to forget self in caring for others and doing others good, with plain temperate eating and taxing physical powers in work to weariness rather than preaching with an uncleansed, unpurified, unsanctified heart. The food eaten helps or hinders this work, so a plain, simple but liberal diet of fruits, vegetables and grains is best for those preparing for God's work, while gratifying appetite, especially by eating meat, and food that strengthens feelings which war against holiness, happiness and purity, stimulates unholy passions, corrupts taste and judgment, clouds spiritual eyesight, and brings disregard for the precepts of God's law.
Fall From Original Harmony
Humanity was first created in the image of God in perfect harmony with His nature and law, with righteousness written upon the heart. Sin alienated man from his Maker, broke that likeness, and put the heart at war with the principles of God's law. The carnal mind therefore neither submits to God's law nor indeed can submit to it, and reconciliation requires being brought back into accord with God and His law.
In the fall humanity has sunk very low and is thoroughly bad and desperately opposed to God. Separated from God and not under the direct influence of His Spirit, the mind can be molded as Satan chooses, so that every faculty entrusted for wise improvement is demoralized, judgment is blinded, and reason is dethroned. The sinner comes under another power and listens to another voice, ruled by passion, impetuous desire, rash impulse, inclination, appetite, and depraved affection, dead in sin and weak in moral power under Satan's control. He talks of liberty and freedom of action while in abject slavery and not his own, with truth having little influence over him, unable to see the beauty of truth, calling light darkness and darkness light, good evil and evil good, truth falsehood and falsehood truth.
Sin made the whole human race at enmity with God, and the world at war with the law of Jehovah. The plan of redemption was formed to bring unity and peace to men and to end that war and enmity, bringing everlasting righteousness to all who believe. To meet that enmity Christ at infinite cost and by a painful process mysterious to angels and men assumed humanity, hiding His divinity and laying aside His glory to be born a babe in Bethlehem. In human flesh He lived the law of God to condemn sin in the flesh and to bear witness to heavenly intelligences that the law was ordained to life to ensure the happiness, peace, and eternal good of all who obey, so that the same infinite sacrifice is life to those who believe and a testimony of condemnation speaking death and not life to the disobedient.
Law Exposes Human Helplessness
God's law is holy, just, and good, and it demands a holy character with the same perfect obedience and perfect harmony with all its precepts in every relation of life under every circumstance that was demanded of Adam in Eden, tolerating no unholy thought and justifying no unlovely action. Because it demands what no fallen person can render of himself, the whole human family stands guilty before the great moral standard. That standard cannot be lowered to meet fallen humanity, nor can any compromise accept less than its full requirement.
The holy law acts as a moral mirror that exposes people as sinners and shows their liability under its just penalty, leaving them with no strength in themselves to do good or to escape ruin. When the law is brought to the conscience, even those pleased with themselves see that they are under sin. In that condition humanity has transgressed the law and is God's enemy and powerless to do good.
The law itself cannot pardon the transgressor, acquit the guilty, cleanse the sinner, or give power to rise into a purer and holier life, so standing condemned before it leaves only the cry of what shall be done to be saved. Human effort, education, culture, exercise of the will, and willpower have their proper place but are powerless here. They may produce outward correctness of behavior, yet they cannot change the heart, purify the soul, or give life to its lifeless faculties. The heart is evil by nature and no human invention can cure the sinning soul, so what is needed is not improvement of the old life but transformation of nature.
When the law makes a person see sin, the right response is not to attack or abolish the law but to put away sin and crucify the carnal mind that resists it, with self slain. Refusing its claims does not remove guilt or protect anyone from the consequences of breaking it.
Opposition to Law and Truth
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, the false testimony that Christ died to abolish the law is more palatable to men and women than the truth. In some this enmity appears as indifference and contempt toward the law, and in others as a greater hatred that tears down its precepts by falsehoods and ingenious arguments. Through every successive generation down to the close of this earth's history people in this hostility daily enact afresh the scenes of Calvary, trampling upon and dishonoring the law until God arises to punish the inhabitants of the earth.
The same enmity shows itself in opposition to the seventh-day Sabbath and the fourth commandment, for resistance to that commandment is opposition to God's law itself. It labors with inferences to wrest Scripture to make a breach in God's law, seeking to change, abolish, or evade the Sabbath rather than observe it, and to silence the flock by making error appear like truth to followers who search their Bibles little and trust dishonest teachers as men of God. Those teachers want only to get around the Sabbath sanctified and set apart by Jehovah in order to keep some other day and mislead troubled followers, and when driven from one position they take an opposite one that is equally weak. Their reasoning is shifting, weak, and contradictory, with one opposer tearing down another's arguments while all alike refuse the fourth commandment as it stands, and no strength is in any of their arguments to change the commandment.
This enmity explains why the churches of the various denominations and the world unite in a corrupt confederacy to make void the law of God and to teach and enforce the commandments of men. They refuse to change their own false theories, including Sunday sacredness, for Bible truth. It is the same spirit the Jewish nation, priests and rulers showed in delivering Christ to Pilate and Herod to be crucified.
The enmity is seen in those who claim sanctification and perfection while turning away their ears from hearing the law and refusing perfect obedience to God's requirements and the conditions of His promises. Their claim proves them to be children of disobedience and self-deceived, self-righteous expectants of the blessing promised only to the obedient. Their carnal hearts are not subject to the law of God and cannot be while left to themselves, and God will not accept their willful, imperfect obedience or imperfect service. This false sanctification is eagerly grasped by all who hold their own ideas tenaciously, because it lets them carry out their own unsanctified wills under pretense of doing God's will, opposite to true sanctification which gives soul, body and spirit wholly to God to know and do His will without regard to self. It shows itself in rudeness, boldness, disrespect, irreverence, presumption and defiance against God and the light of His Word, with no reverence for the Bible.
Such false sanctification sets aside God's Word for impressions, feelings, and inward leading, claiming to be taught directly by the Lord and to be too holy to keep the commandments, while putting human wisdom and feeling in place of Scripture. It despises God's government and tears down God's moral law as the only standard of righteousness, whereas true sanctification produces meekness like Christ and obedience to the law. Its profession repeats Satan's false claim to be sanctified while exalting himself above God and corrupting others, and it puts its followers under Satan's leadership to deceive others. Those who so break the law while claiming holiness become false lights who deceive others into the same iniquity, into disregard for God's law and teaching that transgression goes unpunished, repeating his original work of bringing sin into the world by leading Adam and Eve to disregard God's word and fail His test. Protection from that deception comes only by living by every word that comes from God.
The same hostility that cried Crucify him, crucify him, produces hatred and persecution of Christ's followers, placing one portion of humanity on Satan's side in opposition to Christ and all His followers. Human nature is no more in harmony with the principles of Christ than in ages past, so the proclamation of glad tidings, hope and joy opens a controversy that burns deep and arouses intense passion. That hostility explains every indignity, reproach and cruelty visited upon followers of Jesus, repeating the opposition seen in the days of the apostles and continuing today. It is seen in the imprisonments, exiles, tortures of the Inquisition, massacre of St. Bartholomew and fires of Smithfield in the Dark Ages, and the persecution will be fulfilled in a yet more marked manner even where people can now worship according to conscience.
That enmity is exposed by the life and character of Christ, whose pure, lofty piety and uncompromising holiness show God's glory and what true religion is. His practical purity and earnest life of holiness manifested in His life and conduct awakened hatred in the unregenerate heart, while outward religious profession and pretense did not. Confronted with that light, rebellious hearts desire to follow their own inclinations as the antediluvians did and turn against the light because the path it marks out requires self-denial and a cross. Truth and holiness are never more odious to the unregenerate heart, which hates truth and holiness and refuses to receive the truth in love.
To the carnal, unrenewed heart the Word of God is unattractive because it reveals truths that testify against the sinner, seeming a desolate wilderness and a barren waste in which the mind finds no pleasure in contemplating it. Without the heart being restrained and brought under the sanctifying influence of God's grace received through faith, its thoughts remain impure. People therefore resist the requirements and reproofs of Scripture because those requirements condemn the course their hearts desire.
The carnal, world-loving mind shows friendship with the world which is enmity against God, craving conformity with the world rather than obedience to God. Its desire for conformity divides the heart and makes the distinction between God's people and the world hard to see, for a person cannot serve God with a divided heart while yielding to those cravings. Worldliness contaminates religious life and obscures the self-denial and cross-bearing that show Christ's likeness, requiring separation from the world and a life marked by Christlikeness. Cheap, worldly entertainments gratify that mind but do not strengthen the intellect or confirm moral character, and church fundraising by feasts, games, lotteries, and amusements appealing to appetite divides the heart in the same way. Ministers' world-loving example can lead people to excuse the same spirit in themselves and become indifferent to spiritual things. Very many who profess to be Christians have not known God because the natural heart has not been changed and stays hostile to God, hating the spirit and power of the truth and the salvation of Christ, while feeling no objection to smooth preaching and a form of piety without true godliness that does not stir Satan, make the sinner tremble, or bring the fearful realities of a soon-coming Judgment to heart and conscience.
Satan works through the whole time of probation to keep people in that condition by making the law of God seem objectionable and by filling minds with enmity against that law. For imperfection opposes perfection, impurity is out of harmony with purity, and sin cannot be bound up with holiness.
Renewal Through Christ Alone
Romans 8:7 shows the carnal mind hostile to God, neither submitting to His law nor able to do so, and the law exposes this condition by revealing people as sinners under its just penalty with no strength in themselves to do good or escape ruin. Salvation comes only through Christ, who gave His life to save the transgressor from ruin and reconcile him to God. Apart from Christ and without union with Him nothing can be done, for sufficiency is of God.
Change from sin to holiness requires new life from above, which Christ's grace alone provides. Human effort, education, culture, exercise of the will, and willpower have their proper place but cannot change this condition or purify the heart; they may produce outward correctness of behavior but cannot change the heart, purify the soul, or give life to its lifeless faculties. What is needed is conversion and sanctification, by which divine grace renews the heart through the merits of Christ whom God gave in love, bringing it back into harmony with God and into accord with His law. Sin had alienated man from his Maker and put the heart at war with the principles of His law, whereas man was first created in the image of God in perfect harmony with His nature and law with righteousness written on the heart; the new birth restores that harmony by giving new life from above.
The heart is evil by nature, and no human invention can cure the sinning soul. Conversion is therefore not an improvement of the old life but a transformation of nature, involving death to sin and self and a wholly new life. This change marks a passage from death to life, from sin to holiness, from rebellion to loyalty, and from alienation to reconciliation, and it is brought about only by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit, who renews the heart, purifies the life, changes enmity into faith and love, and molds the soul to Christ to bring it into harmony with God.
When faith yields the will and affections to God, the heart is renewed in His image and delights in the law's holy precepts. This faith works through love and purifies the soul, so that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk according to the Spirit. When the heart is thus changed the person sees the beauty of holiness, longs for it, and loves God and His law. Then Christ's yoke is easy and His burden light, and serving God is no longer mere outward duty but is seen in a life of godliness.
Union with Christ does not come naturally, because people are naturally at enmity with Him. Each person must choose whether to reject Christ by refusing His spirit and example and following his own way unreconciled to God, or to enter personal union with Him through self-renunciation, faith, and obedience. This union requires utter dependence and the surrender of a proud heart, with self crucified and Christ living in the heart by faith; merely accepting Him in name is not enough if He is not the sole ruler of the heart.
The struggle against sin begins when a person has received light and evidence, and Christ places enmity against wrong in the heart. Christ's imputed righteousness makes obedience possible through faith, while one who keeps departing from the laws of Christ's kingdom and continues in transgression after receiving light shows increasingly determined hostility toward God, choosing sin's dominion and repeating Adam's disobedience. Overcoming that enmity requires active working faith in His strength, for He overcame in behalf of men and they must overcome in His strength, with faith working by love to break the old hard heart upon Christ, whom men grasp by living faith with repentance for transgressing the law of God, receiving forgiveness as He fills and molds the believer by His Spirit from first to last.
Putting Off Carnal Mind
The carnal mind with its inclinations must be subdued, mortified, and crucified, for it is opposed to God and cannot submit to His law, and when the law is brought to the conscience those pleased with themselves see they are under sin and that self must be slain. Bringing actions into harmony with the law requires surrendering to truth and dying to self, with the heart wholly sanctified to God and the will, affections, and thoughts brought under His will, since the carnal mind resists the self-denial and sacrifice required in following Christ. The lower, carnal nature with all its inclinations, affections, impulses, will, and thoughts is unable to obey God's law, so every affection and impulse contrary to God's will must be uprooted, the body kept under and brought into subjection, through thorough daily conversion and sanctification of the whole person until self is slain. If it is allowed to rule it will overcome the person, and repentant sinners therefore need that complete daily work.
The food eaten helps or hinders this subduing of the lower nature, and a plain, simple but liberal diet of fruits, vegetables, and grains is best for those preparing for God's work. Gratifying appetite, especially by eating meat merely to gratify appetite, places in the mouth that which stimulates unholy passions and unhallowed emotions, fills the mind with feelings that war against holiness and happiness and purity, corrupts taste and judgment by self-gratification, beclouds spiritual eyesight, and prevents consecration of soul and body and flesh to Christ's service who gave His life to save soul and body and restore the moral image of God in man. Furnishing the table with this class of food goes counter to the will of God and brings about a condition leading to disregard for the precepts of God's law.
Resistance to the carnal mind is a constant struggle, for the mind can gradually become debased and accustomed to evil until sin once hated and loathed becomes pleasant when guard over it is relaxed. God's grace refines it, draws it toward pure and holy things, trains it to dwell on them, and forms new habits of thought. The carnal heart is the natural heart with its corrupt passions, perverse temper, anger, and natural appetites, and giving way to it and getting angry when one pleases cannot keep a clear conscience and God's approval, does not make one happier or better or add to enjoyment, but casts a shadow in the household and a pall over happiness, injures the constitution and tears the system to pieces. God therefore lays restrictions upon it and requires restriction of appetite, control of the passions, self-control and discipline, and holding the entire man in subjection, promising strength to do this work, and the body must not be allowed to rule with unreasonable demands when uncontrolled. This applies to liquor, tobacco, tea, and other habits that degrade body and mind and turn God-given powers toward selfish desires: they pervert the senses and faculties, weaken reason and conscience, make sacred things less appreciated, and defile the body as God's temple.
Among professed Christians the untransformed mind appears as contention, hatred, jealousy, evil surmising, enmity, suspicion, and envy, even in those who have passed through baptism and profess godliness while character is unchanged and heart not right with God. It is expressed by retaliating against reproof, faultfinding, and accusing others instead of putting away one's own wrong, by evil-minded speech against physicians tearing down rather than building up, and by selfish covetous demands, and hiding or covering sin in this way gratifies the carnal mind, adds sin to sin, and brings greater displeasure from God. Such a mind misrepresents Christ, makes His work difficult, tries the souls of His servants, becomes a stumbling block to others, does not reveal Christ's love in the life, and stands in direct opposition to the oneness of believers with the Father and Son for which Christ prayed. Overcoming it requires being cleansed and purified until as new creatures in Christ a change is seen in the life, through confessing sin and coming into harmony with brethren.
Those who remain carnally minded are sensual and debased in thought, ruled by self and worldly desires, abominable in God's sight, not sanctified through truth nor partakers of the divine nature, and have not overcome self and the world with its affections and lusts. If they remain so despite warnings they will never unite with the family of the redeemed and are unfit to join them. Such people are present throughout the churches, and their presence makes the churches weak and sickly and ready to die, requiring decided pointed testimony rebuking every impurity, exalting Jesus, and living in expectation by working, waiting, watching, and praying. A person governed by the flesh and personal desires cannot live in harmony with a person shaped by Christ's mind who resists selfishness and seeks to obey God, so in marriage their different tastes, inclinations, and purposes create continual conflict. A heart out of harmony with God's will is at enmity with Him, and knowing and believing truth without living it leaves a person no nearer to doing God's will than an unbeliever.
Accepting and obeying truth creates constant conflict between inclination and duty in which inclination often wins and silences the Holy Spirit's convictions, so it requires denying self, bearing the cross daily, and following Jesus. Spiritual growth requires separation from the world and a life marked by Christlikeness, self-denial, and cross-bearing, for a person cannot serve God with a divided heart while yielding to worldly cravings and conformity. The selfish murmuring mind that complains, whines, dwells on self, shirks taxing burdens and responsibilities, lacks faith, is gloomy and dejected, serves without delight and only at will, seeks praise and esteem, and fails to manifest Christ's love and accept trials joyfully, must be put away forever, not for a week. Putting it away means laying hold on faith, seizing God's promises, training thoughts and feelings in the right channel, asserting Godlike manhood, being freed from Satan's fetters and bondage, economizing moments in studying the Word, earnest prayer, faithful labor and useful physical work, forgetting self in caring for others and seeking to do them good, with plain temperate eating and taxing physical powers to weariness rather than preaching with an uncleansed heart, becoming a cheerful happy Christian whose cheerfulness flows from inward peace, whose countenance attests the Sun of Righteousness shining on the heart and the Lord as health of the countenance, who serves with delight, makes melody to God in the heart, carries sunshine everywhere rather than light trifling talk, and repels not angels; keeping the murmuring spirit insults God's cause and misrepresents Christ.
Families are called to recognize their need of God's converting power and to examine their lives in the light of Scripture. The daughters' stubborn self-willed course reflects the natural will hostile to God and not submitting to His law, and their hearts must be transformed and made submissive to God. An uncontrolled temper and spirit of insubordination express a carnal unsubdued heart resisting God's control and unable to be subject to His law, and must be corrected through conversion, self-discipline, and persistent effort with God's grace. A person who tries to serve both world and Lord lets worldly plans and impulses rule with will unsurrendered, and God's Word then feels uncongenial because the heart is not being shaped by the Holy Spirit. When the soul is converted it undergoes a marvelous change: Scripture that once seemed unattractive, a desolate wilderness and barren waste, because it exposed the sinner and testified against him and the carnal mind found no pleasure in contemplating it, becomes through Christ illuminating it and the Holy Spirit making it meaningful, with eyes anointed with spiritual discernment, the food of the soul and consolation and joy and comfort and light, with new charms and divine beauty and celestial light in every passage, turning wilderness into living streams and the garden of God covered with fragrant buds and blooming flowers, and through that truth the soul is regenerated and renewed in spirit of mind loving God's truth.
Adopting false theories places the sinner in opposition to the law as enmity against God, and while God graciously permits him to live out his probation his time is appointed. Instead of using brain, bone, and muscle and God-given opportunities to do all he can for advancement of God's kingdom, he wastes physical, mental, and moral strength and squanders opportunities studying how to indulge and glorify self, closing the door to all improvement of capabilities. The discordant lawless elements that disturb and oppose preaching of truth are at enmity with God and are used by Satan to hinder truth's progress, but God is able to protect His work and make truth triumph amid opposition. Confronted with Christ's pure lofty piety and uncompromising holiness showing God's glory and true religion, rebellious hearts desire their own inclinations as the antediluvians did and turn from light because its path requires a cross, so God calls His people to come out and be separate, and freedom from darkness and perfection of character come only through believing in Jesus as personal Saviour who dispels darkness and lifts fallen humanity into a pure and holy atmosphere.
If the carnal nature is not daily controlled by God's Spirit, worldly desires and Satan's temptations lead to carelessness, indifference, and sin, and when allowed to rule through fleshly lusts and evil passions it sears the conscience with selfishness and sin and encourages skepticism about Christian realities with doubt treated as virtue. Continued transgression after receiving light reveals a carnal heart at enmity with God and not subject to His law, refusing light, choosing sin's dominion, repeating Adam's disobedience, and placing the person with apostasy's forces, whereas Christ's imputed righteousness makes obedience possible through faith for the one who receives light. In that carnal condition the sinner separated from God lives in continual opposition to His will and ways, under another power listening to another voice, with passion ruling, judgment blinded, reason dethroned, impetuous desires and rash impulse governing physical mental and moral being, affections depraved, every faculty demoralized, dead in sin, moved by inclination, held by passion, swayed in appetite by unknown power, talking of liberty while in abject slavery and not his own, with truth having little influence, unable to see beauty of truth, calling truth falsehood and falsehood truth, weak in moral power under Satan's control. Such a person has no attraction to heaven and would find nothing congenial there, and without renewal and yielding to God to be renewed by the Spirit the mind remains unfit for heaven's holiness and joy and cannot be taken into holy heaven into angels' society, so to place the impenitent there would be no mercy.
Only as sinners come into harmony with God's government and obey His law will Christ avail them anything, for pride, bigotry, love of sin, and unwillingness to accept truth veil minds claiming the law died with Christ so they cannot see the end of that which was abolished, despising the foundation of God's government which is despising God Himself. They may call Christ Saviour, but without repentance toward God for transgression of His holy law they cannot have genuine faith in Christ the Redeemer whose mission was to exalt God's law and by His righteousness put men where obedience is possible, or Christ will at last say He does not know them. Those who refuse Christ's yoke while imposing human rules remain unrenewed with heart not subject to God's law and unable to become subject without new birth, until they pass through the death struggle and are born again, since worldly wisdom and supposedly meritorious work corrupted by selfishness keep Christ out unless they repent and receive Him, facing His judgment otherwise. Faith fails to match God-given light while enmity as selfishness in the heart remains uncleansed, but when the heart is emptied of all selfishness and cleansed by Christ's Spirit the person becomes a vessel fit for the Master's use.
A truly converted heart shows unmistakable marks of the carnal mind's subjection in a changed life, for the carnal mind must die or be subdued and outward religious acts and profession do not change it. Its subduing is seen in service made willing rather than burdensome, freedom from pride, self-idolatry, and preoccupation with outward appearance, love for Christ, self-abasement, inward adornment and growth of Christian graces, while mere outward profession without inward change remains empty formality. Those who receive light but do not cherish or share it are counted among those at enmity with God and not subject to His will or guidance, and the struggle against sin beginning when light and evidence are received with Christ placing enmity against wrong in the heart is reversed when a person keeps departing from Christ's kingdom laws in increasingly determined hostility toward God. Cherishing worldly vanity and desires of eyes and flesh weakens people and can lead into impurity, including sensual sin and deliberate violation of plain commands even while professing to keep the law, bringing God's indignation and wrath, while rooting out lust and purifying thought guards against such acts. Conflicts in the carnal heart arise from self seeking to remain alive and spiritual pride striving for control where the heart is not subdued by grace, and a worldly selfish proud rebellious spirit opposed to God cannot obey His law, so a life pleasing to God requires obedience through receiving the Spirit's work and the means God provides, leading to obedience and happiness.
The unrenewed natural mind is at war with God, refusing His law and in fact unable to obey it. Humanity was first made in God's image in perfect harmony with His law, but sin broke that likeness and set the heart against its principles. God's law still demands perfect holiness in every thought and act, yet it cannot pardon, cleanse, or give power to obey, and no human effort, culture, or willpower can change the heart. Deliverance comes only through Christ, whose life and death reconcile the sinner to God, for conversion is not improvement of the old life but death to self and a wholly new life by the Holy Spirit that turns enmity into love and delight in obedience. That change requires the lower nature with its passions, appetites, and self-will to be daily subdued, mortified, and crucified until the soul loves what God loves and finds His service joyful.
Meaning of Carnal Mind
The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it does not submit to the law of God and indeed cannot do so. The holy law exposes all as sinners standing guilty under its just penalty, powerless in themselves to do good or escape ruin. Human effort, education, culture, exercise of the will and willpower may produce outward correctness but cannot change the heart, purify the soul, or give life to its lifeless faculties; change from sin to holiness requires new life from above, which Christ alone provides by giving His life to save the transgressor from ruin. Sin has alienated man from his Maker and put the heart at war with the principles of the law, and reconciliation requires conversion and sanctification by which divine grace renews the heart and brings it back into harmony with God. Those whose minds have not been renewed are lawless, clinging to sin and resisting the law's authority while professed faith remains only surface religion when indulgences are loved more than righteousness, even professing holiness while serving sin and opposing the law because it condemns wrongdoing.
The carnal mind is the unrenewed natural mind not under the direct influence of the Spirit of God, which Satan can mold as he chooses and make carnal in all the rational powers he controls. The sinner who refuses to give himself to God comes under the control of another power and listens to another voice, ruled by passion, impetuous desire, rash impulse, inclination, appetite and depraved affection, with judgment blinded, reason dethroned, every entrusted faculty demoralized, and the whole physical, mental and moral being swayed by a power he does not know. He is dead in sin, weak in moral power under Satan's control, talking of liberty and freedom of action while in abject slavery and not his own, with truth having little influence over him and unable to see the beauty of truth. Merely professing to follow Christ does not remove that hostility while the heart is unchanged, for men who with all their powers war against the law of God and break that holy law remain carnal until, like Paul, they are thoroughly converted.
The enmity is selfishness in the heart, taken away only when the heart is emptied of all selfishness and cleansed by the Spirit of Christ to become a vessel fit for the Master's use. It is self in all that is done, with little faith, continual whining, murmuring, complaining, gloom and dejection, serving God without delight and only at will, shirking taxing burdens and responsibilities, seeking to be praised and esteemed, and failing to manifest the love of Christ and accept trials and afflictions joyfully. Such a murmuring mind must be put away forever, not for a week, by laying hold on faith, seizing the promises of God, training thoughts and feelings in the right channel, studying the Word, earnest prayer, faithful labor and useful physical work, and forgetting self in caring for others. Then the person becomes a cheerful and happy Christian whose cheerfulness flows from inward peace, whose countenance attests that the Sun of Righteousness shines on the heart, who serves with delight and makes melody to God in the heart, accepts affliction joyfully, looks up and trusts in God, and carries sunshine everywhere rather than insulting the cause of God and repelling angels by misrepresenting Christ.
The enmity means tastes, views, preferences, likes and dislikes, and choice of things and pursuits directly opposed to God, standing in determined opposition to His thoughts, words and corrections and refusing to listen to His words by pen or voice. It has no relish for what God loves or approves but delights in what He despises, with affections set not on pure, holy, ennobling themes but on self, maintaining a course offensive to Him. It cannot bear God's presence, enjoys having less of God, hates God and hates His servants, and brings controversy with those trying to walk in the way of the Lord. It calls light darkness and darkness light, good evil and evil good, truth falsehood and falsehood truth, and cherishing the spirit of the world expresses this hostility in defiance and faultfinding against bearers of truth, using God-given abilities against His work and rejecting light because it condemns wrongdoing.
The carnal mind cannot understand spiritual mysteries or receive the saving force of vital truth. Separated from the Source of truth, with judgment blinded under passion and sin, God's wisdom appears foolish to it, and intellect cannot discern truth independently of God. Human philosophy that pleases the carnal heart leads people to trust their own reasoning, turn from God's wisdom, and reject divine truth. When people persist in doubt and follow Satan's deception, impressions of God's Spirit diminish and Satan's influence grows until their minds submit to his control. Pride, love of the world and ease, selfishness, covetousness, envy, jealousy, lust, hatred and other evils keep people from understanding vital truth, and distrust of God naturally grows from hostility toward Him; overcoming these evils by acting on the plain teachings of God's word in humble obedience sanctifies, forms Christian character, and makes people partakers of the divine nature.
The carnal mind is the lower nature with all its inclinations, affections and impulses, including the natural heart with its corrupt passions, perverse temper, anger and natural appetites, and a stubborn self-willed course reflecting a will hostile to God. It is an unhappy, fretful, dissatisfied spirit with an impure fountain within, showing itself in a disagreeable countenance and proving God is not with the man while the old life of sin, disobedience and transgression in willing ignorance of guilt and danger has not been given up, even in one professedly keeping the commandments while continually violating them. Giving way to it and getting angry when one pleases cannot keep a clear conscience and the approval of God, does not make a person happier or better nor add to enjoyment, but casts a shadow in the household and a pall over happiness, injures the constitution and tears the system to pieces. For that reason God lays restrictions upon it and requires restriction of appetite, control of the passions, and holding the entire man in subjection, promising strength to do this work, and Christ in requiring self-denial does not deprive of any real good. It must therefore be subdued, mortified and crucified, with the body kept under and brought into subjection and every affection and impulse contrary to God's will uprooted, by getting the fountain pure and letting the image of God shine into the heart to make all pure and peaceful and glorious within, becoming a converted man with a pure, lowly, loving, obedient heart that abhors evil and seeks and practices the good because it loves the right. Until this new birth takes place God cannot use the man in His cause, and the cure is to forget self in caring for others and doing others good, with plain temperate eating and taxing physical powers in work to weariness rather than preaching with an uncleansed, unpurified, unsanctified heart. The food eaten helps or hinders this work, so a plain, simple but liberal diet of fruits, vegetables and grains is best for those preparing for God's work, while gratifying appetite, especially by eating meat, and food that strengthens feelings which war against holiness, happiness and purity, stimulates unholy passions, corrupts taste and judgment, clouds spiritual eyesight, and brings disregard for the precepts of God's law.
Fall From Original Harmony
Humanity was first created in the image of God in perfect harmony with His nature and law, with righteousness written upon the heart. Sin alienated man from his Maker, broke that likeness, and put the heart at war with the principles of God's law. The carnal mind therefore neither submits to God's law nor indeed can submit to it, and reconciliation requires being brought back into accord with God and His law.
In the fall humanity has sunk very low and is thoroughly bad and desperately opposed to God. Separated from God and not under the direct influence of His Spirit, the mind can be molded as Satan chooses, so that every faculty entrusted for wise improvement is demoralized, judgment is blinded, and reason is dethroned. The sinner comes under another power and listens to another voice, ruled by passion, impetuous desire, rash impulse, inclination, appetite, and depraved affection, dead in sin and weak in moral power under Satan's control. He talks of liberty and freedom of action while in abject slavery and not his own, with truth having little influence over him, unable to see the beauty of truth, calling light darkness and darkness light, good evil and evil good, truth falsehood and falsehood truth.
Sin made the whole human race at enmity with God, and the world at war with the law of Jehovah. The plan of redemption was formed to bring unity and peace to men and to end that war and enmity, bringing everlasting righteousness to all who believe. To meet that enmity Christ at infinite cost and by a painful process mysterious to angels and men assumed humanity, hiding His divinity and laying aside His glory to be born a babe in Bethlehem. In human flesh He lived the law of God to condemn sin in the flesh and to bear witness to heavenly intelligences that the law was ordained to life to ensure the happiness, peace, and eternal good of all who obey, so that the same infinite sacrifice is life to those who believe and a testimony of condemnation speaking death and not life to the disobedient.
Law Exposes Human Helplessness
God's law is holy, just, and good, and it demands a holy character with the same perfect obedience and perfect harmony with all its precepts in every relation of life under every circumstance that was demanded of Adam in Eden, tolerating no unholy thought and justifying no unlovely action. Because it demands what no fallen person can render of himself, the whole human family stands guilty before the great moral standard. That standard cannot be lowered to meet fallen humanity, nor can any compromise accept less than its full requirement.
The holy law acts as a moral mirror that exposes people as sinners and shows their liability under its just penalty, leaving them with no strength in themselves to do good or to escape ruin. When the law is brought to the conscience, even those pleased with themselves see that they are under sin. In that condition humanity has transgressed the law and is God's enemy and powerless to do good.
The law itself cannot pardon the transgressor, acquit the guilty, cleanse the sinner, or give power to rise into a purer and holier life, so standing condemned before it leaves only the cry of what shall be done to be saved. Human effort, education, culture, exercise of the will, and willpower have their proper place but are powerless here. They may produce outward correctness of behavior, yet they cannot change the heart, purify the soul, or give life to its lifeless faculties. The heart is evil by nature and no human invention can cure the sinning soul, so what is needed is not improvement of the old life but transformation of nature.
When the law makes a person see sin, the right response is not to attack or abolish the law but to put away sin and crucify the carnal mind that resists it, with self slain. Refusing its claims does not remove guilt or protect anyone from the consequences of breaking it.
Opposition to Law and Truth
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, the false testimony that Christ died to abolish the law is more palatable to men and women than the truth. In some this enmity appears as indifference and contempt toward the law, and in others as a greater hatred that tears down its precepts by falsehoods and ingenious arguments. Through every successive generation down to the close of this earth's history people in this hostility daily enact afresh the scenes of Calvary, trampling upon and dishonoring the law until God arises to punish the inhabitants of the earth.
The same enmity shows itself in opposition to the seventh-day Sabbath and the fourth commandment, for resistance to that commandment is opposition to God's law itself. It labors with inferences to wrest Scripture to make a breach in God's law, seeking to change, abolish, or evade the Sabbath rather than observe it, and to silence the flock by making error appear like truth to followers who search their Bibles little and trust dishonest teachers as men of God. Those teachers want only to get around the Sabbath sanctified and set apart by Jehovah in order to keep some other day and mislead troubled followers, and when driven from one position they take an opposite one that is equally weak. Their reasoning is shifting, weak, and contradictory, with one opposer tearing down another's arguments while all alike refuse the fourth commandment as it stands, and no strength is in any of their arguments to change the commandment.
This enmity explains why the churches of the various denominations and the world unite in a corrupt confederacy to make void the law of God and to teach and enforce the commandments of men. They refuse to change their own false theories, including Sunday sacredness, for Bible truth. It is the same spirit the Jewish nation, priests and rulers showed in delivering Christ to Pilate and Herod to be crucified.
The enmity is seen in those who claim sanctification and perfection while turning away their ears from hearing the law and refusing perfect obedience to God's requirements and the conditions of His promises. Their claim proves them to be children of disobedience and self-deceived, self-righteous expectants of the blessing promised only to the obedient. Their carnal hearts are not subject to the law of God and cannot be while left to themselves, and God will not accept their willful, imperfect obedience or imperfect service. This false sanctification is eagerly grasped by all who hold their own ideas tenaciously, because it lets them carry out their own unsanctified wills under pretense of doing God's will, opposite to true sanctification which gives soul, body and spirit wholly to God to know and do His will without regard to self. It shows itself in rudeness, boldness, disrespect, irreverence, presumption and defiance against God and the light of His Word, with no reverence for the Bible.
Such false sanctification sets aside God's Word for impressions, feelings, and inward leading, claiming to be taught directly by the Lord and to be too holy to keep the commandments, while putting human wisdom and feeling in place of Scripture. It despises God's government and tears down God's moral law as the only standard of righteousness, whereas true sanctification produces meekness like Christ and obedience to the law. Its profession repeats Satan's false claim to be sanctified while exalting himself above God and corrupting others, and it puts its followers under Satan's leadership to deceive others. Those who so break the law while claiming holiness become false lights who deceive others into the same iniquity, into disregard for God's law and teaching that transgression goes unpunished, repeating his original work of bringing sin into the world by leading Adam and Eve to disregard God's word and fail His test. Protection from that deception comes only by living by every word that comes from God.
The same hostility that cried Crucify him, crucify him, produces hatred and persecution of Christ's followers, placing one portion of humanity on Satan's side in opposition to Christ and all His followers. Human nature is no more in harmony with the principles of Christ than in ages past, so the proclamation of glad tidings, hope and joy opens a controversy that burns deep and arouses intense passion. That hostility explains every indignity, reproach and cruelty visited upon followers of Jesus, repeating the opposition seen in the days of the apostles and continuing today. It is seen in the imprisonments, exiles, tortures of the Inquisition, massacre of St. Bartholomew and fires of Smithfield in the Dark Ages, and the persecution will be fulfilled in a yet more marked manner even where people can now worship according to conscience.
That enmity is exposed by the life and character of Christ, whose pure, lofty piety and uncompromising holiness show God's glory and what true religion is. His practical purity and earnest life of holiness manifested in His life and conduct awakened hatred in the unregenerate heart, while outward religious profession and pretense did not. Confronted with that light, rebellious hearts desire to follow their own inclinations as the antediluvians did and turn against the light because the path it marks out requires self-denial and a cross. Truth and holiness are never more odious to the unregenerate heart, which hates truth and holiness and refuses to receive the truth in love.
To the carnal, unrenewed heart the Word of God is unattractive because it reveals truths that testify against the sinner, seeming a desolate wilderness and a barren waste in which the mind finds no pleasure in contemplating it. Without the heart being restrained and brought under the sanctifying influence of God's grace received through faith, its thoughts remain impure. People therefore resist the requirements and reproofs of Scripture because those requirements condemn the course their hearts desire.
The carnal, world-loving mind shows friendship with the world which is enmity against God, craving conformity with the world rather than obedience to God. Its desire for conformity divides the heart and makes the distinction between God's people and the world hard to see, for a person cannot serve God with a divided heart while yielding to those cravings. Worldliness contaminates religious life and obscures the self-denial and cross-bearing that show Christ's likeness, requiring separation from the world and a life marked by Christlikeness. Cheap, worldly entertainments gratify that mind but do not strengthen the intellect or confirm moral character, and church fundraising by feasts, games, lotteries, and amusements appealing to appetite divides the heart in the same way. Ministers' world-loving example can lead people to excuse the same spirit in themselves and become indifferent to spiritual things. Very many who profess to be Christians have not known God because the natural heart has not been changed and stays hostile to God, hating the spirit and power of the truth and the salvation of Christ, while feeling no objection to smooth preaching and a form of piety without true godliness that does not stir Satan, make the sinner tremble, or bring the fearful realities of a soon-coming Judgment to heart and conscience.
Satan works through the whole time of probation to keep people in that condition by making the law of God seem objectionable and by filling minds with enmity against that law. For imperfection opposes perfection, impurity is out of harmony with purity, and sin cannot be bound up with holiness.
Renewal Through Christ Alone
Romans 8:7 shows the carnal mind hostile to God, neither submitting to His law nor able to do so, and the law exposes this condition by revealing people as sinners under its just penalty with no strength in themselves to do good or escape ruin. Salvation comes only through Christ, who gave His life to save the transgressor from ruin and reconcile him to God. Apart from Christ and without union with Him nothing can be done, for sufficiency is of God.
Change from sin to holiness requires new life from above, which Christ's grace alone provides. Human effort, education, culture, exercise of the will, and willpower have their proper place but cannot change this condition or purify the heart; they may produce outward correctness of behavior but cannot change the heart, purify the soul, or give life to its lifeless faculties. What is needed is conversion and sanctification, by which divine grace renews the heart through the merits of Christ whom God gave in love, bringing it back into harmony with God and into accord with His law. Sin had alienated man from his Maker and put the heart at war with the principles of His law, whereas man was first created in the image of God in perfect harmony with His nature and law with righteousness written on the heart; the new birth restores that harmony by giving new life from above.
The heart is evil by nature, and no human invention can cure the sinning soul. Conversion is therefore not an improvement of the old life but a transformation of nature, involving death to sin and self and a wholly new life. This change marks a passage from death to life, from sin to holiness, from rebellion to loyalty, and from alienation to reconciliation, and it is brought about only by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit, who renews the heart, purifies the life, changes enmity into faith and love, and molds the soul to Christ to bring it into harmony with God.
When faith yields the will and affections to God, the heart is renewed in His image and delights in the law's holy precepts. This faith works through love and purifies the soul, so that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk according to the Spirit. When the heart is thus changed the person sees the beauty of holiness, longs for it, and loves God and His law. Then Christ's yoke is easy and His burden light, and serving God is no longer mere outward duty but is seen in a life of godliness.
Union with Christ does not come naturally, because people are naturally at enmity with Him. Each person must choose whether to reject Christ by refusing His spirit and example and following his own way unreconciled to God, or to enter personal union with Him through self-renunciation, faith, and obedience. This union requires utter dependence and the surrender of a proud heart, with self crucified and Christ living in the heart by faith; merely accepting Him in name is not enough if He is not the sole ruler of the heart.
The struggle against sin begins when a person has received light and evidence, and Christ places enmity against wrong in the heart. Christ's imputed righteousness makes obedience possible through faith, while one who keeps departing from the laws of Christ's kingdom and continues in transgression after receiving light shows increasingly determined hostility toward God, choosing sin's dominion and repeating Adam's disobedience. Overcoming that enmity requires active working faith in His strength, for He overcame in behalf of men and they must overcome in His strength, with faith working by love to break the old hard heart upon Christ, whom men grasp by living faith with repentance for transgressing the law of God, receiving forgiveness as He fills and molds the believer by His Spirit from first to last.
Putting Off Carnal Mind
The carnal mind with its inclinations must be subdued, mortified, and crucified, for it is opposed to God and cannot submit to His law, and when the law is brought to the conscience those pleased with themselves see they are under sin and that self must be slain. Bringing actions into harmony with the law requires surrendering to truth and dying to self, with the heart wholly sanctified to God and the will, affections, and thoughts brought under His will, since the carnal mind resists the self-denial and sacrifice required in following Christ. The lower, carnal nature with all its inclinations, affections, impulses, will, and thoughts is unable to obey God's law, so every affection and impulse contrary to God's will must be uprooted, the body kept under and brought into subjection, through thorough daily conversion and sanctification of the whole person until self is slain. If it is allowed to rule it will overcome the person, and repentant sinners therefore need that complete daily work.
The food eaten helps or hinders this subduing of the lower nature, and a plain, simple but liberal diet of fruits, vegetables, and grains is best for those preparing for God's work. Gratifying appetite, especially by eating meat merely to gratify appetite, places in the mouth that which stimulates unholy passions and unhallowed emotions, fills the mind with feelings that war against holiness and happiness and purity, corrupts taste and judgment by self-gratification, beclouds spiritual eyesight, and prevents consecration of soul and body and flesh to Christ's service who gave His life to save soul and body and restore the moral image of God in man. Furnishing the table with this class of food goes counter to the will of God and brings about a condition leading to disregard for the precepts of God's law.
Resistance to the carnal mind is a constant struggle, for the mind can gradually become debased and accustomed to evil until sin once hated and loathed becomes pleasant when guard over it is relaxed. God's grace refines it, draws it toward pure and holy things, trains it to dwell on them, and forms new habits of thought. The carnal heart is the natural heart with its corrupt passions, perverse temper, anger, and natural appetites, and giving way to it and getting angry when one pleases cannot keep a clear conscience and God's approval, does not make one happier or better or add to enjoyment, but casts a shadow in the household and a pall over happiness, injures the constitution and tears the system to pieces. God therefore lays restrictions upon it and requires restriction of appetite, control of the passions, self-control and discipline, and holding the entire man in subjection, promising strength to do this work, and the body must not be allowed to rule with unreasonable demands when uncontrolled. This applies to liquor, tobacco, tea, and other habits that degrade body and mind and turn God-given powers toward selfish desires: they pervert the senses and faculties, weaken reason and conscience, make sacred things less appreciated, and defile the body as God's temple.
Among professed Christians the untransformed mind appears as contention, hatred, jealousy, evil surmising, enmity, suspicion, and envy, even in those who have passed through baptism and profess godliness while character is unchanged and heart not right with God. It is expressed by retaliating against reproof, faultfinding, and accusing others instead of putting away one's own wrong, by evil-minded speech against physicians tearing down rather than building up, and by selfish covetous demands, and hiding or covering sin in this way gratifies the carnal mind, adds sin to sin, and brings greater displeasure from God. Such a mind misrepresents Christ, makes His work difficult, tries the souls of His servants, becomes a stumbling block to others, does not reveal Christ's love in the life, and stands in direct opposition to the oneness of believers with the Father and Son for which Christ prayed. Overcoming it requires being cleansed and purified until as new creatures in Christ a change is seen in the life, through confessing sin and coming into harmony with brethren.
Those who remain carnally minded are sensual and debased in thought, ruled by self and worldly desires, abominable in God's sight, not sanctified through truth nor partakers of the divine nature, and have not overcome self and the world with its affections and lusts. If they remain so despite warnings they will never unite with the family of the redeemed and are unfit to join them. Such people are present throughout the churches, and their presence makes the churches weak and sickly and ready to die, requiring decided pointed testimony rebuking every impurity, exalting Jesus, and living in expectation by working, waiting, watching, and praying. A person governed by the flesh and personal desires cannot live in harmony with a person shaped by Christ's mind who resists selfishness and seeks to obey God, so in marriage their different tastes, inclinations, and purposes create continual conflict. A heart out of harmony with God's will is at enmity with Him, and knowing and believing truth without living it leaves a person no nearer to doing God's will than an unbeliever.
Accepting and obeying truth creates constant conflict between inclination and duty in which inclination often wins and silences the Holy Spirit's convictions, so it requires denying self, bearing the cross daily, and following Jesus. Spiritual growth requires separation from the world and a life marked by Christlikeness, self-denial, and cross-bearing, for a person cannot serve God with a divided heart while yielding to worldly cravings and conformity. The selfish murmuring mind that complains, whines, dwells on self, shirks taxing burdens and responsibilities, lacks faith, is gloomy and dejected, serves without delight and only at will, seeks praise and esteem, and fails to manifest Christ's love and accept trials joyfully, must be put away forever, not for a week. Putting it away means laying hold on faith, seizing God's promises, training thoughts and feelings in the right channel, asserting Godlike manhood, being freed from Satan's fetters and bondage, economizing moments in studying the Word, earnest prayer, faithful labor and useful physical work, forgetting self in caring for others and seeking to do them good, with plain temperate eating and taxing physical powers to weariness rather than preaching with an uncleansed heart, becoming a cheerful happy Christian whose cheerfulness flows from inward peace, whose countenance attests the Sun of Righteousness shining on the heart and the Lord as health of the countenance, who serves with delight, makes melody to God in the heart, carries sunshine everywhere rather than light trifling talk, and repels not angels; keeping the murmuring spirit insults God's cause and misrepresents Christ.
Families are called to recognize their need of God's converting power and to examine their lives in the light of Scripture. The daughters' stubborn self-willed course reflects the natural will hostile to God and not submitting to His law, and their hearts must be transformed and made submissive to God. An uncontrolled temper and spirit of insubordination express a carnal unsubdued heart resisting God's control and unable to be subject to His law, and must be corrected through conversion, self-discipline, and persistent effort with God's grace. A person who tries to serve both world and Lord lets worldly plans and impulses rule with will unsurrendered, and God's Word then feels uncongenial because the heart is not being shaped by the Holy Spirit. When the soul is converted it undergoes a marvelous change: Scripture that once seemed unattractive, a desolate wilderness and barren waste, because it exposed the sinner and testified against him and the carnal mind found no pleasure in contemplating it, becomes through Christ illuminating it and the Holy Spirit making it meaningful, with eyes anointed with spiritual discernment, the food of the soul and consolation and joy and comfort and light, with new charms and divine beauty and celestial light in every passage, turning wilderness into living streams and the garden of God covered with fragrant buds and blooming flowers, and through that truth the soul is regenerated and renewed in spirit of mind loving God's truth.
Adopting false theories places the sinner in opposition to the law as enmity against God, and while God graciously permits him to live out his probation his time is appointed. Instead of using brain, bone, and muscle and God-given opportunities to do all he can for advancement of God's kingdom, he wastes physical, mental, and moral strength and squanders opportunities studying how to indulge and glorify self, closing the door to all improvement of capabilities. The discordant lawless elements that disturb and oppose preaching of truth are at enmity with God and are used by Satan to hinder truth's progress, but God is able to protect His work and make truth triumph amid opposition. Confronted with Christ's pure lofty piety and uncompromising holiness showing God's glory and true religion, rebellious hearts desire their own inclinations as the antediluvians did and turn from light because its path requires a cross, so God calls His people to come out and be separate, and freedom from darkness and perfection of character come only through believing in Jesus as personal Saviour who dispels darkness and lifts fallen humanity into a pure and holy atmosphere.
If the carnal nature is not daily controlled by God's Spirit, worldly desires and Satan's temptations lead to carelessness, indifference, and sin, and when allowed to rule through fleshly lusts and evil passions it sears the conscience with selfishness and sin and encourages skepticism about Christian realities with doubt treated as virtue. Continued transgression after receiving light reveals a carnal heart at enmity with God and not subject to His law, refusing light, choosing sin's dominion, repeating Adam's disobedience, and placing the person with apostasy's forces, whereas Christ's imputed righteousness makes obedience possible through faith for the one who receives light. In that carnal condition the sinner separated from God lives in continual opposition to His will and ways, under another power listening to another voice, with passion ruling, judgment blinded, reason dethroned, impetuous desires and rash impulse governing physical mental and moral being, affections depraved, every faculty demoralized, dead in sin, moved by inclination, held by passion, swayed in appetite by unknown power, talking of liberty while in abject slavery and not his own, with truth having little influence, unable to see beauty of truth, calling truth falsehood and falsehood truth, weak in moral power under Satan's control. Such a person has no attraction to heaven and would find nothing congenial there, and without renewal and yielding to God to be renewed by the Spirit the mind remains unfit for heaven's holiness and joy and cannot be taken into holy heaven into angels' society, so to place the impenitent there would be no mercy.
Only as sinners come into harmony with God's government and obey His law will Christ avail them anything, for pride, bigotry, love of sin, and unwillingness to accept truth veil minds claiming the law died with Christ so they cannot see the end of that which was abolished, despising the foundation of God's government which is despising God Himself. They may call Christ Saviour, but without repentance toward God for transgression of His holy law they cannot have genuine faith in Christ the Redeemer whose mission was to exalt God's law and by His righteousness put men where obedience is possible, or Christ will at last say He does not know them. Those who refuse Christ's yoke while imposing human rules remain unrenewed with heart not subject to God's law and unable to become subject without new birth, until they pass through the death struggle and are born again, since worldly wisdom and supposedly meritorious work corrupted by selfishness keep Christ out unless they repent and receive Him, facing His judgment otherwise. Faith fails to match God-given light while enmity as selfishness in the heart remains uncleansed, but when the heart is emptied of all selfishness and cleansed by Christ's Spirit the person becomes a vessel fit for the Master's use.
A truly converted heart shows unmistakable marks of the carnal mind's subjection in a changed life, for the carnal mind must die or be subdued and outward religious acts and profession do not change it. Its subduing is seen in service made willing rather than burdensome, freedom from pride, self-idolatry, and preoccupation with outward appearance, love for Christ, self-abasement, inward adornment and growth of Christian graces, while mere outward profession without inward change remains empty formality. Those who receive light but do not cherish or share it are counted among those at enmity with God and not subject to His will or guidance, and the struggle against sin beginning when light and evidence are received with Christ placing enmity against wrong in the heart is reversed when a person keeps departing from Christ's kingdom laws in increasingly determined hostility toward God. Cherishing worldly vanity and desires of eyes and flesh weakens people and can lead into impurity, including sensual sin and deliberate violation of plain commands even while professing to keep the law, bringing God's indignation and wrath, while rooting out lust and purifying thought guards against such acts. Conflicts in the carnal heart arise from self seeking to remain alive and spiritual pride striving for control where the heart is not subdued by grace, and a worldly selfish proud rebellious spirit opposed to God cannot obey His law, so a life pleasing to God requires obedience through receiving the Spirit's work and the means God provides, leading to obedience and happiness.