Comfortable Carnality

 "So I advise you to live according to your new life in the Spirit. Then you won't be doing what your sinful (carnal) nature craves." Galatians 5:16...."Carnality refers to preoccupation with, or indulgence in, the flesh or the body and its passions and appetites; sensuality." 

A.W. Tozer said, "We find ways to avoid the sharp point of obedience, comfort carnality, and make the words of Christ of none effect.....We sing of Him and preach about Him, but He must not interfere." Comfortable carnality. It's a state that so many professing believers are living in, all the while believing that they're doing anything but.

To be carnally minded is to be led and dominated by the desires and wants of the flesh. Sexuality and sensuality are certainly strong elements in carnal desires, but hardly all of it. Wherever we put the desires of Christ and His Holy Spirit in a secondary role to our own desires, we are being carnal believers. Our flesh and not His Spirit predominates in that area. Paul said that the desires of the Holy Spirit will always be in conflict with the desires of our flesh. Paul said, "But when you are directed by the Holy Spirit, you are no longer subject to the law," that is, to being controlled by our fleshly desires. Paul writes in Galatians 5:24, "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to His cross and crucified them there." This doesn't mean that we no longer have natural physical and emotional desires. It means that we're no longer controlled by them and have the power to resist those ones that will draw us away from Him, and eventually to spiritual shipwreck. That's why Paul could say, "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." Paul didn't stop being Paul, but he did cease to struggle with desires that he knew to be sinful or that would lead Him away from His Lord. He lived in the power of His Holy Spirit. So can we.

Comfortable carnality then is when we find ways to justify behaviors, attitudes, desires, that we know in our heart are not what He desires for us, but somehow believe in these cases, it doesn't apply to us. We justify disobedience and dress it up in religious ways. We're comfortably carnal. We acknowledge Him in every way....except as the Lord of our lives.

Comfortable carnality is an easy place to live in because....it's comfortable. May we, you and I, have the courage to allow His Spirit to search us out and expose any place where we're living as comfortably carnal believers....and where He does expose it, yield to Him at His cross, and crucify it there.

Blessings,
Pastor O