The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from
the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand
them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
~Paul, the Apostle
You are either natural, carnal, or spiritual. You. The one
reading. Right now. How can you know what you are? First, you have to
know the difference between the three categories of humanity.
THE NATURAL PERSON
Those
who are natural live according to the physical and temporal. They
judge all things by and through the five senses, according to their own
individual souls--their minds, emotions, and wills. They perceive all
things and everything and everyone independent of God. They neither
acknowledge God, nor serve Him. They are their own gods, but are
subject to the false gods, knowingly or unknowingly. They do not have
God's Spirit in them. There are some who have but do not follow the
Spirit within. These are the carnal men and women.
THE CARNAL PERSON
Some
have the Spirit of God in them through faith in Jesus Christ, but they
don't acknowledge or follow the Spirit. They, like the natural person,
judge all things and everything by their physical and soulical
faculties. These are miserable, because the Spirit in them convicts
them of their self-centered perspective. They have more in common with
the natural person than with the spiritual person.
The natural and carnal person cannot understand spiritual things, the thoughts of the Spirit. How can they? To you, the one who is reading, who can know your thoughts unless you reveal them? In the same way, the natural and carnal person live a life of separation from the Spirit. They reject His mind, exalting their own minds above the mind of God. They will not receive His thoughts. But the spiritual man and woman can. They alone are truly spiritual. They alone know the mind of God.
(Click here for part 3.)
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