1 Corinthians 3:3-4

“For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying and strifes, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? 4. For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I of Apollos, are ye not men?”

The apostle here uses, according to the great majority of the documents, the term σαρκικοί, carnal by acts. The matter in question is no more a simple state of weakness which continues in spite of regeneration, but a course of conduct which attacks the new life and tells actively against it. The form ὅπου, there where, borrowed from the notion of place, is used here, as often, in a logical sense.

Ζῆλος has most frequently in the New Testament an unfavourable sense: heat, jealousy; thence springs ἔρις, strife, which is only the manifestation of the ζῆλος in words.

The third term in the T. R., divisions, seems to be unauthentic; perhaps the enumeration of the works of the flesh, Galatians 5:20, gave rise to this interpolation.

Such a state can only arise from self-complacency, either on the part of the leaders or their adherents; and that is the flesh. What completes the proof that such a state is a fruit of man's natural heart, is the analogy presented by the Church thus divided with the spectacle offered in the midst of the Greek people by the rival schools of philosophy. And doubtless that is what the apostle means by the expression: walking according to man, that is to say, following a conduct after the manner of man left to himself. No doubt a wholly different meaning could be given to the term, walking according to man, did we explain it by the following verse. It would signify: to make oneself dependent on a man, a party leader. But this meaning would depart somewhat from the idea which rules in this passage: the influence of the carnal mind on the conduct of the believer.