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The Carnal Mind

- The Cause of Division (1Kings 18 v30-32).

By W.Hay Aitken. 

 

What did Elijah mean by building an altar of twelve stones in the presence of Ahab? His action seemed to say, ‘The family of God is one. You may split it or divide it into twelve pieces or subdivide it into a hundred fragments, but still in God’s eyes it is one. One altar though broken, and we must recognize that unity if the fiery answer is to descend’.

 

In our own day the family of God is strangely divided. I do not hesitate to say these divisions have their origin in the carnal mind within the Church of God and that they have been fostered by human selfishness. These divisions do exist, but if in these days we are to have an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, if there is to be a restoration of the broken altar, if the God that answers by fire is to give that answer which we so much need, there must be a recognition of the oneness of the family of God. We may have different names, we may be divided from each other by ecclesiastical barriers but the unity of the Spirit is something more real than external divisions. Those who are “one in the Lord” have a unity which is real and essential and which arises from the presence of the same life within the souls of all who are the Lord’s.

 

Biblical Union 

What is the union that is recognised in the Word of God? Primarily “the unity of the Spirit”“Endeavour”, says Paul, “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4 v3). It would seem that there is a strong movement today in the direction of unity but I cannot help fearing that Satan, who is always eager to pervert a good thing and to turn a right aim in a wrong direction, should lead men to think that this unity is to be attained by attempts at external combination, and to ignore the one true basis of union-fellowship in the Holy Spirit.

 

In proportion as we are less under the influences of the Holy Spirit, the less He controls our thoughts, the less He lives in our lives, the less He works out His will in us, in the same proportion are we the authors of division in the Church of God.

 

The Cause of Division 

What has been the great cause of division in the Christian Church? The presence of the carnal mind. It was so at Corinth and has been so throughout all church history. What is the presence of the carnal mind but the absence of the spiritual mind?

 

Unspiritual men are not only and not always the authors of division. Those who are regarded as spiritual men not infrequently have been the cause of division. Yes, but whose fault has it been that the spiritually minded have been, as it were, thrust out of external communion with those with whom they originally consorted? That is what we have to face and I venture to say that the fault must lie most with those who have had least of the Holy Spirit. 

 

Our Duty 

What then is our duty? We may not be able to right wrongs, we may not be able to restore the unbroken external unity which once existed, but we can recognise the unity of the spiritual life in the heart of every one that has it.