So here is my take on the church. We believers, when healthy, experience an ongoing growth process of abandoning ourselves to God against the tide of our own flesh and the world system. Being led by, filled with, and walking in the Holy Spirit, we often find ourselves spiritually exercised in the midst of personal and public trials from these forces. In the soil of such a life, the fruits of the Spirit grow and we are maturing. Those described in this way are disciples.
Carnality is different from the continuing struggle with our flesh.
It is a life where struggle is a mere whimpering before we yield consistently to the flesh till we appear void of the fruits of the Spirit as demonstrated by our actions. Discipleship is a difficult journey with a very high cost to our natural self in this temporal world. We grow out of sync with the people and the world around us. From the world, we experience loss of respect and acceptance, and eventually, opposition. More difficult to endure, we sometimes receive the same from believers who remain blinded by the world and operate in the flesh.