Sermon of the Week: Why Many Believers Stall And How Humility Unlocks Depth

The trouble in the Corinthian church didn’t just come from the outside world—it was rising up from the inside. Yes, the culture around them was pressing in, but the flesh within them was giving way. Worldly pressure met human weakness, and the result was a church wrestling with its own carnality.

Paul says these believers were no longer “natural,” but they weren’t truly “spiritual” either. They weren’t walking under the full control of the Holy Spirit. Instead, they were carnal—still driven, pulled, and persuaded by the old, fallen flesh. Every believer has the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9), but every believer also has a battle on their hands (Rom. 7:14–25).

And Paul calls them babes in Christ. Their carnality exposed their immaturity. They should have been further along. They should have been stronger. They should have been able to digest the deeper things of God. Paul had poured into them, taught them, labored among them—yet they were still stuck on milk when they should’ve been chewing meat (1 Cor. 3:2; Heb. 5:12–14; 1 Pet. 2:1–2).

In other words, the problem wasn’t just the world around them—it was the world still alive within them. And Paul is calling them, and calling us, to grow up, to stand up, and to let the Spirit of God take full control.

Each month, Elder Tolliver offers a spiritually encouraging book to help you in your walk with Christ for any size donation. Please go to biblicaltalks.com website to take advantage of this opportunity. 

Transcript

Corinth’s Problem: Carnality Inside

Spirit, Flesh, And Immaturity

Introducing John Piper’s Message

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Welcome to Biblical Talks. Sermon of the Week. The trouble in the Corinthian church didn't come from the outside world. It was rising up from the inside. Yes, the culture around them was pressing in, but the flesh within them was also giving way. Worldly pressure meets human weakness, and the result was a church wrestling with its own carnality. Paul said that these believers were no longer natural, but they weren't truly spiritual either. They was not walking under the full control of the Holy Spirit. Instead, they were cardinal, steel driven, poor, persuaded by the old fallen flesh. Every believer has the Holy Spirit, Romans eight and nine, but every believer also has a battle on their hands. Romans 7 verse 14 to 25. And Paul calls them babe in Christ. Their cardinality exposed their immaturity. They should have been further long by now. They should have been stronger. They should should be able by now to able to digest the deeper things of God. Paul had poured into them, taught them, labor among them, yet they were still stuck on milk when they should have been chewing meat. In other words, the problem wasn't just the world around them, it was the world still alive in them. And Paul is calling them, he's calling us to grow up, stand, and to let the Spirit of God take full control. Today we have John Piper preaching a sermon called The Battle for the Christian of the Christ in the Life. Here's John Piper.

What Fleshly Christians Means

Sanctification As Lifelong Warfare

The Already/Not Yet Tension

Milk, Solid Food, And Pride

Humility As The Organ Of Growth

Solid Food: The Depths Of God

Warning Against Stalled Growth

SPEAKER_02 2:11

I could not address you as spiritual, but as fleshly as babes in Christ. Now, what does that little phrase mean? That's a rich and wonderful phrase. That phrase is so full of encouragement for babies in Christ and fleshly people as well as mature people. What does in Christ mean? The best explanation in the vicinity of this verse, I think, is chapter 1, verse 30, if you want to look at it with me. In chapter 1, verse 30, Paul says that God is the one who has put us in Christ. From him you are in Christ, or the RSV says he is the source of your life. That means he's the one who put you there. He's the one who wrapped you up in Christ, unified you to Christ, joined you to Christ, so that now you're in Christ. Now, what does it mean? That's what the last part of the verse is good for. This Christ, God made our wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption, which simply means Christ is for you all that you need to be when you are in him. And that's good news. That's one of the greatest doctrines of the faith. It's called justification sometimes, or union with Christ. To be wrapped up so in Christ by being united to him by faith, he becomes for us all that he is for us. All that we need to be in order to be accepted by God. He becomes for us and begins to work within us as we are in him. So the first thing Paul wants to say about fleshly Christians is that they are in Christ as far as he can tell. He assumes that they are in Christ. Second observation: they are fleshly. I could not address you as spiritual, but as then the literal word would be fleshly. What does that mean? What is the flesh and what is a fleshly Christian? The first thing it means is that a deep spiritual walk with God that all of us are longing for doesn't happen overnight after conversion. That's surely implied here. It doesn't necessarily happen overnight. It might, God sometimes does that sort of thing, but by and large there's process. Conversion is a little start, and then there's this baby period, and then there's adulthood. And so the first implication of calling these Christians fleshly is that the depth that we want with God doesn't come automatically and quickly right after conversion. Let me try to explain another way what this carnal or fleshly Christian is. And I struggled so hard with sins in my youth that I'm so ashamed of. God was very patient for me ruling from the citadel of my life. He tolerated the imperfections and the resistance forces that came from my body and my soul for many years, and only slowly did he exert his sanctifying massive control over my life. And today yet, there are lingering guerrillas trying to unseat him from his throne. That's the way you talk about biblical sanctification. You don't unseat the Lord inside the life of a Christian. He's sovereign, or he's not there. Now let me try to add a verse or two to give additional scriptural support for what I'm saying. Galatians chapter 5, verse 24 says, those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh. That's why John Piper is going to be lying on the ground with a dagger in his tummy. The old man is dead, according to Galatians 5.24, if I belong to Jesus Christ. Somebody died. The flesh died, it got nailed to the cross, it was crucified. But Galatians 5.13, just a few verses earlier, says, For freedom Christ has set you free, therefore do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. And you kind of back off and say, Whoa, wait a minute. I thought he was dead. What's this? Don't give opportunity for the flesh if he's dead. And you find that tension all through the New Testament. Already dead, not yet dead. What do you do with it? How do we conceive of this? I conceive of it as the fact that the citadel has been stormed, the rule has been taken. A decisive blow to the rebels has been struck by the rightful owner of the kingdom. And now it will take a lifetime to clean up all the forces of the flesh and the guerrilla warfare that's out there. Or if you want another analogy from World War II, when the atom bomb fell, the war was virtually over. It was settled and everybody knew it. But it took how many months before the treaty was signed, and how many years before outlying islands in the South Seas quit shooting at each other? And so there is a sense in which there's been a decisive execution, and there's a sense in which we must fight against the flesh. And so, on this point, I ask you to be vigilant in your spiritual warfare. Don't hobnob with the gorillas. Look to the victory of Christ. Look to the atomic power of the Holy Spirit. There is great hope in this conception of the Christian life for imperfect people like you and me. I plead with you, rethink the words and the categories with which you interpret your walk with God. I'm not calling into question anybody's experience. I'm only asking you, have you learned words to interpret your experience that don't accord with biblical truth as well as they could? The third observation about the carnal or the fleshly Christian is that they can't eat solid food. They can only drink milk. Verse 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it, and even yet you are not ready. Now, what is milk and what is solid food, and what is the organ by which solid food is digested, which the Corinthians don't have? Those are the three questions I've got. Verse 3, I think, answers all of them, or at least to me was the seed of the answer to all of them. It goes like this: You are still of the flesh, for while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh? Now, what that verse did for me was to give me the nature of fleshiness. And put it in practical terms, nobody knows what the word flesh means. What's that mean? Skin? What are you talking about? Flesh. Well, now we know what it means. It means jealousy and strife. And what's underneath jealousy and strife? Pride and self-assertion and self-reliance and self-exaltation. Things that say, I belong to Paul. You don't. I belong to Apollos, and you've only got Paul. Apollos is a lot more eloquent than Paul, or Paul was the first one here, and he baptized me, and he's the real apostle. That's the flesh talking. Jealousy, pride, strife, dissension, boasting. So what is milk? What is solid food, and what's the organ by which that solid food is digested? I would say pride is what keeps people from eating solid food without choking. Or to put it positively, the organ of digestion for solid food is humility. And until there is sufficient brokenness, self-renunciation, and humility, solid food will gag and choke and even kill. As you could kill a little baby by forcing down the wrong food. Let's define solid food and milk then. Here's the way I would define milk milk is teaching that is uniquely designed by God to get a proud sinner started on the path of humility and hope. Teaching designed to get people started on the path of humility and hope. Let me describe it for you here. Here's an unbeliever whose esophagus is as rigid and as tight as it can be. And obviously, no big foods going down this esophagus. It's just that's pride, self-reliance. I'm not going to bow down before a crucified bloody savior as though I needed somebody to die for me. We think I am. That's the unbeliever, whether he says those words or not. Well, now how do you ever get into that person? If you go back and read chapter 1, Paul tells us what his milk was. It's the word of the cross. The word of the cross is not something that cottons with pride, but it is tailored to make its way through that esophagus so that down here, once it gets in, it can start giving off the juices of humility and hope so that the esophagus begins to become a little more pliable and open to more food. And what is it about the word of the cross that enables it to? I think it's just the good news. Sinners, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, know they need a cross. The cross is the most precious news in all the world. A crucified Lord of glory covering all my sins, that can slip down by the grace of God. And inside, then the implications of this and all it would mean in my life begin to loosen up so that I can swallow more of the implications of the truth. Well, if that's milk, if the word of the cross that Paul began with at Corinth is the milk that can get a person started on the road to hope and humility, what is solid food? I think the most important thing to notice about solid food is that it's not something that takes superior intellect to grasp. I think we get off base here. We got milk for, and then we tend to think in intellectual terms, simple people, and then a solid food for intellectual types who like to talk about theology. That's not the way the Bible talks about it. The Bible talks in moral terms, not intellectual terms. The Bible says the big obstacle to swallowing solid food is pride, not stupidity, or not inferior intellect. What is needed is humility, not intellect. That's the big obstacle, because jealousy and strife are the mark of the flesh and the babe and the narrow gullet. Well, what is the solid food practically then? Let me suggest what very concretely I think it would be. Notice verse 10 of chapter 2. For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. See that little phrase, depths of God? That sounds like solid food, is it? Well, he's describing the wisdom that he teaches here. And it says in verse 6, you see verse 6 of chapter 2, I impart a wisdom among the mature. Now that's the opposite of the babes who can't eat solid food. So I assume that the wisdom that will go down in the mature is solid food, and it's the wisdom or the depths of God in verse 10. Now, what is that? There's one other place in Paul's writings where the wisdom of God and the depths of God are put together. Romans 11, 33. Oh, the depth of the wisdom of God. Now, if you would ask me then, give me a concrete, specific biblical example of solid food, I would say Romans 9, 10, and 11. That section of Romans is doctrinal solid food, which is extolled as the depth and the wisdom of God at the end. And we all know what's in there. It's heavy things about election and predestination and the effectual call of God and the hardening of Israel and the ingathering of the elect. These are doctrines that do not go down a gullet that is full of jealousy, pride, self-reliance, self-exaltation, and especially self-determination. Something massive must happen in the throat of a person before they will swallow Romans 9. Charles Spurgeon preached to 4,000 people every Sunday for 30 years, and I don't think there ever has been a man who did better what Paul did here, namely, took the large chunks of Romans 9, put them in the blender of his mind, and stirred them in with the milk of the gospel and fed them to thousands every Sunday. So that it in a sense was solid food, but in a sense it was not. It was mingled with the milk of the gospel, and in a sense, it was solid food. I think that's what I've tried to do in my own stumbling echo of Paul's message, and that's what we should try to do for each other. Well, let me close with the last point here. The fourth observation about these fleshly Christians is that they are not growing, and this is very dangerous. They are not growing, and Paul is very upset about it. I want you to see the ominous change of tense in verse two. From the past to the present. Listen as I read and interpret the tense for you, starting at verse one. I was not able to address you as spiritual, past tense. I fed you with milk, past tense. You were not ready, past tense, and then comes the terrible shift. It wasn't so bad that they were babies then. They were brand new Christians, but now he says, and even yet you are not ready. You are still fleshly, and then listen to how the words become increasingly ominous and warning in verses three and four. And are you not walking according to man? And when someone says, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, are you not merely men?

SPEAKER_03 18:52

What does that mean? What word would you take from chapter two to define mere man? Naturally. You see what he's saying?

Swim Upstream: Persevere In Faith

SPEAKER_02 19:12

He's saying, could it be that the reason you got such a good start and then seem to have made no progress is that you don't have the spirit at all. You're just a natural man. Now Paul won't say it, really. He doesn't say that. I don't think he believes it. He hopes for the best in them. He just raises the question Is it the case that you are just men after all? And so my closing admonition is first, don't drift in your Christian life. Don't act as though immaturity were unimportant. Picture yourself in a stream of the flesh and the world and the devil, and you are swimming as the stream is flowing the other way. And there are falls behind you, and they make a loud noise. And if you stop swimming and fold your arms and float in this water, dead in the water, you go only one direction, and that's backward. The evidence of being eternally secure in Christ is not that you have made it to the headwaters and gone over the continental divide so that now you flow easily in the Spirit to heaven. That's not the evidence of being in Christ. Be eternally secure. The evidence of being in Christ and being eternally secure is that you are swimming.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

And not floating.

Hope For Seekers And Believers

SPEAKER_02 20:58

And the second admonition I have is let's hope for the best in each other. We're so quick to judge, aren't we? That person couldn't be a Christian the way they are. Let's hope for the best in each other. That God's best is going to be one day worked in each other. There is such a thing as a carnal baby, fleshly Christian. And finally, I hope that those of you who are not Christians here are sort of on the outside this morning looking in and listening and watching and wondering what it might mean to give your life to Christ and to see him come straight to the citadel and unseat you and put himself on the throne. I hope that you will hear what I'm saying this morning as hope. At least as as I take myself back and try to imagine what it would be like to get converted all over again and to give my life once for all to Jesus Christ and to welcome him onto the throne of my life. I think I would be greatly encouraged if somebody told me it's going to be a long to get changed. I think I'd be encouraged by that. I hope you are. In fact, let me close with this encouraging word that Matthew said about Jesus. Until he brings justice to victory, and the nations will hope in him.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Amen. Thank you, John Piper.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

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