1 Cor. 4:6-21, Thinking Like the Natural Man

Today’s post involves the family of words for “nature.”  Be sure to note, and meditate on the fact, that these words also are used for being puffed up or proud.  A person is proud about who or what they are naturally, without any outside help.

phusikos (adj): belonging to nature

·       Rom 1:26,27: women exchange natural use of body for what is against nature; men abandon natural relations w/women.  (The problem with homosexuality is that it defies how the Creator equipped our bodies.  In this passage what is “natural” is what was made by the Creator.) 

·       2 Pt 2:12: blasphemers are natural brute beasts. (They deny their Creator.  Thus they reduce themselves to being mere animals who lack the image of God.)

phusikōs (adv): naturally, by instinct

·       Jude 10: what these men don't understand by instinct is what destroys them.  (This belongs alongside the previous passage.  They are ignorant because they only gain knowledge like an animal.  They see and smell, etc. but do not actually know because their consciences are seared and they have shut out what comes from being created in God’s image.)

phusoō (verb): to make natural; also to puff up, make proud

·       1Co 4:6,18,19: Paul spoke truthfully of himself and Apollos stewards of God’s mysteries and not to be judged by the Church but by the Lord (v1-5), so that the Church would not be puffed up on behalf of one against the other.  Some were puffed up against Paul, but he promised to come to show not the words but the power of those who were puffed up.

·       1Co 5:2 The puffed up Corinthians needed instead to mourn over the man who had grievously sinned.

·       1Co 8:1 An important principle. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.  (Look back through the previous passages, inc. from 1 Pt. and Jude.  This applies.)

·       1Co 13:4 And here is another great truth: Love … is not puffed up. 

 ·       Col 2:18 Again, false teachers whose teaching would cheat the believers of their reward from the Lord, were vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.  (We have seen several connections with false teachers and “natural” thinking.  The problem is that when sin entered the world, that which had been created “good” by the Creator, now was tainted by sin.  Like Adam and Eve, so all sinners since then have had a natural tendency to be proud or “puffed up.”  This pride provides the substance for their false teaching.  If we are to think truthfully, we must have renewed minds.  We must have the mind of Christ.  We must be born again.)