John MacArthur,
While all Christians are spiritual positionally, they are not always spiritual practically. That is, we do not always act spiritual. That is why Paul wrote about spiritual babies in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. Paul said that he should have been able to talk to the Corinthians as spiritual men, but they were not acting like spiritual men. They were not receiving the Word, and there was unholiness in their lives. They were behaving carnally, requiring him to deal with them as babes in Christ.
The Corinthians were not unique. All Christians face the same problem. All Christians are “spiritual” because they know Christ as Savior and have the Holy Spirit dwelling within, but all Christians do not always act spiritual. Sometimes we act in very carnal and natural ways.
A good illustration of that is the apostle Peter. In Matthew 16 Peter recognized Christ as the Son of the living God. Jesus immediately responded, “Blessed are you, Simon, and now I am going to change your name to Peter [the word meant "rock"]. You are going to be a new person, solid as a rock” (see 16:17-18). But in the twenty-first chapter of John, Jesus met Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, following Peter’s failure on the night before the crucifixion. There Jesus called him Simon, because Peter had been acting like his old self–like the man he was before he believed in Christ.
What Peter had done–and what all of us do from time to time–was temporarily cease following closely after Christ. Even after Pentecost, Peter continued to struggle occasionally with fleshly behavior. At one time even Paul had to rebuke him face to face (see Gal. 2:11-21)
Paul himself understood firsthand the Christians unrelenting struggle with the flesh, and wrote movingly of it in Romans 6-7. The point is, spirituality is not a permanent state you enter into the moment you get “zapped” with some kind of spiritual experience. Spirituality is simply receiving the living Word daily from God, letting it dwell in you richly, and then living in obedience to it through a moment-by-moment walk in the Spirit. Paul said as much in Galatians 5:16: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.”
The word “walk” is a very important word in the New Testament. To walk speaks of moment-by-moment conduct. Paul taught the church to walk in accord with the Holy Spirit: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). Walking speaks of a measured pace, taking one step at time. That is, after all, how true spirituality functions: one step, one moment at a time.
taken from: Charismatic Chaos. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992. pp. 250-251. (emphasis added)
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