I’ve been posting about the Apostle Paul’s description of how prayer in the spirit brings God’s wisdom to us.  If we want God’s best, then we need to develop a rich spiritual prayer life.  Unfortunately, in this generation, there aren’t many examples to follow.

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:14

The phrase, man without the Spirit, is literally the soulish man in Greek.  The New Testament actually speaks of three different kinds of Christians.  This is one of those described.

First, there’s the carnal or fleshly Christian.  This is the type of believer who serves God according to the way he or she feels.

“If I feel like going to church, I’ll go. If not I’ll stay home.”

Their flesh is in control of every decision they make.  Carnal Christians are very nominal at best.

Next, there’s the soulish or natural Christian, depending upon the translation of the Bible you use.  This kind of Believer serves God because he or she has made a conscious decision to serve Him.  They’ve decided that the Lord’s way is best no matter what they feel like.

They’ll give their best for the Lord because they believe it’s the right thing to do.  They serve the Lord with all of their soul. They’re very strong in their faith, and they can accomplish a lot for the kingdom of heaven.

There is, however, another class of believer spoken of in the Word of God.  That’s the spiritual Christian. He or she is the believer who lives their life by using their spirit to its fullest extent in their interaction with God.

This is the one that we either hear very little about or we mistake it for a soulish Christian who’s doing great works for Christ.  Over the years we’ve redefined many of the terms used in the Scripture.  It’s time to straighten out the rough spots.  In the above passage, Paul makes a clear distinction between a spiritual and soulish Christian.

According to Paul, the soulish person cannot understand life in the spirit.  The Greek literally says that he does not have the power to accept them.  The apostle actually uses the Greek word dunamis in this verse.

A soulish believer does not have the dunamis – the power – to receive the things that can only come by the Spirit.  This person is left to rely upon earthly means of communication to receive what he needs from the Lord.  This is because, as Paul writes, these things are spiritually investigated.

Without question, a soulish believer can receive from God.  The problem is that it’s a longer process.  As I said in the illustration in my last post – I’d much rather send an e-mail, than write out a letter to send from the Post Office.

Over the next few posts, we’ll see how Paul describes this spiritual Christian.

Question: How far do you venture into your spiritual life?

© 2019 Nick Zaccardi