06.2.2. The Carnal and the Spiritual

II. -- THE CARNAL AND THE SPIRITUAL IN this view Adam’s sons represent the two great classes of the sons of men, in whom respectively the flesh and spirit rule, and who, by the preponderance of the one or of the other, fall under one or other of those two great classes, the carnal and spiritual, which make up the human family; who, though born by nature from the same womb, and nursed at first by the same mother, in their ways and ends are most distinct, both worshipping indeed the same God, but very differently; the one, offering Him the improvement of the creature, -- for carnal men must have a religion as well as spiritual men, -- the other, accepting judgment for sin, pouring out a life to Him, in hope of resurrection: the one, ignoring the fact of the curse, and going out to fill the earth with crimes, and arts, and energies; the other, suffering as martyrs here, and departing to find, what they had not here, a home, in another world. For "by faith Abel offered unto God" (Hebrews 11:4). He saw the curse, and instead of hiding from himself that sin and death are here, he makes this the base of his religion, looking to God for better things to come. And his seed offer still by faith. They see the curse, that they are sinful creatures, for their sin cast out of paradise. But the death of the Lamb, though it seals the judgment on sin, pledges to them that there is a way through death out of it. Therefore they are content to give up their lives. Others may seek to improve self; they will rather die to self. Their acceptance is not in self improved, but in deliverance out of self by the cross, through a Deliverer. Hence they take willingly the sinner’s place; first by baptism confessing death in them; (for baptism is burial (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12), and we do not bury live things, but dead things;) and then living a life of daily death in hope of resurrection. Not so the other seed. Cain’s line are all for cultivating the ground, that is, improving the fallen creature. When most religious, they yet spare the flesh. They like what is beautiful in religion: they can appreciate good fruits. But let there be the shedding of blood, a life poured out, such self-mortification is with them rank superstition; while the judgment of the pride of reason and of sense is treason against Him who suffered us to become such creatures as we now are. They are not, they feel, in Eden, but in a world where sin and sorrow reign on every hand. Death is here: blink it they cannot. A curse is working in that soil, on which they spend so much labour. But they will approach God as though no sin were here; as if in soul and body all were right and normal. What have they to do with anything so horrid as the cross? No bloodshedding -- no "religion of the shambles" -- for such worshippers. Hence the efforts to seem other than they really are. Hence the wrath, if anything open their eyes to see their state in God’s sight. Then these men, who mock at the blood poured out, who say that crosses and mortifications are brutal and brutalising, will not scruple to hate a brother worshipper, if he be holier, or more accepted, than they are; like their father Cain, who would not offer the blood of the Lamb, but could stain his hands in his own brother’s blood. Surely "the way of Cain" (Jude 1:11) remains; and the objectors to a worship by blood are yet "murderers;" (Note: "He that hateth his brother is a murderer" -- 1 John 3:15.) though, like Cain, they profess not to be conscious of it.

Is, then, the improvement of the creature wrong? Are good fruits not acceptable? On the contrary, God accepts them as a meat offering, where the blood ("for the blood is the life" -- Leviticus 17:13-14,) has first been shed in a burnt offering. For man’s duty to his neighbour (and the meat offering is this) is accepted, if God first has His portion. (Note: The difference of the burnt offering and meat offering was this: -- a life was offered in the one, fruits in the other. See Leviticus 1:1-17, Leviticus 2:1-16. Life is that which God claimed as His portion in creation, Genesis 9:4; as an emblem, therefore, it represents what the creature owes to God. But the fruit of the herb and of the tree was man’s allotted portion, Genesis 1:29; as such, it is the figure of man’s claim, or of what we owe to man. What we owe to God or to man is respectively our duty to either. Thus, in the burnt offering, the surrender of a life figured man’s duty to God; while fruits, in the meat offering, represented man’s duty to his neighbour.) But to think that these fruits can alone satisfy God is just Cain’s error, and must meet with reprobation. God will accept anything He can -- anything which proceeds on real ground; but take a place which does not belong to you, then God, because He is true, cannot meet you there; for He deals with realities, and the course you pursue is not a reality. It does not confess your place as fallen; therefore He cannot meet it, though it may have cost you much. But only be true; and without attempting to meet God with the fruits which the cursed earth produces, only confess, by act and voice, that you are fallen, and that in this state, though sin be in the world, you yet give God credit for grace and power to meet it; then, as in Abel’s case, so in yours, the faith that puts you on such ground must be accepted. Remember, Cain, because he got off true ground, lost the help of the true God. Abel, because confessing the truth of sin and death, found acceptance and all the help he needed.