CARNALITY AN INVOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE

     Carnality is an involuntary principle. A man can no more free himself from its inbeing than an Ethiopian can change his skin or a leopard his spots. Carnality is as inevitable with the natural man as is his complexion or the color of his hair. He may by artificial means so change the appearance of sin that to some it will seem quite acceptable, but when the mask is thrown off the same deceitful nature is revealed.

     Man is not responsible for the existence of carnality. He may be for its continued existence, since a remedy is provided, but not for its beginning. His birth, as a member of the sinful human family, which was not because of his choice, necessitated the birth or presence (as we may choose to express it) of the carnal mind, for the evil principles of his soul are as much an inheritance as is his life or the powers that make him a human being. The Bible declares that in Adam all die.

     Again, man is not responsible for the nature which carnality possesses. If he could cultivate and thus change it he might be responsible if it remained unclean, but since he does not possess this power he is blameless.

     The writer once visited a zoological garden and saw some baby lions two or three weeks old. How innocent they were! How timid and gentle! They would have been harmless as pets for a child. A few years afterward he visited the same place and asked to be shown the little lions of his former visit, and was pointed to some cages where ferocious beasts were pacing before the bars and roaring savagely. They could not help it, they were lions and must continue to be lions as long as they live. But even when little cubs they had the lion nature which only needed time to develop them into ferocious beasts that would roar and raven the prey. In like manner the uncleansed human heart possesses the carnal mind just as inevitably. The real triumph of grace lies in its power to change that heart, to not only cage but to destroy the elements of discord within.

     Carnality is not only an involuntary principle but its movements are involuntary, and since man's bosom is infested with this spawn of sin, and since sin will manifest its sinfulness wherever it may be, he is not responsible for its movements. He can no more control the involuntary movements of inward sin than he can control the outcroppings of his natural dispositions. Guilt begins when the man yields to and obeys this gross element of his nature. It moves as it does from sheer necessity, and will continue to do so till grace puts a full end to its miserable existence.

     Since carnality is not guilt, it cannot be forgiven, but it is pollution and must be cleansed. If you commit sin you are unsaved; but carnal pollution does remain in the same heart in which grace resides.

     The following is from Wood's Perfect Love, and is to the point here:

     "All [actual] sin involves guilt; depravity does not, unless it be assented to, yielded to, cherished, or its cure willfully neglected."

     "Depravity is one of the results of sin, and it may have somewhat of the nature of sin, in the sense of being a disconformity or unlikeness to God; and it is in this sense that 'all unrighteousness is sin.' Depravity lacks the voluntary element of sin, hence is not a thing to be pardoned, like sin proper, but it is to be removed from the soul by cleansing or purgation."