There was the very same condition. We read that those who had been so long converted, and who ought to have been teachers, needed themselves to be taught the very rudiments of Christianity. And there are, as I have said, people who are always wanting to be helped instead of being a help to others. For a little child, a spiritual babe three months old, to be carnal and not to know altogether what sin is, and not yet to have got victory, it is, as Paul said, a thing not to be wondered at. But when a man continues, year after year, in the same state of always being conquered by sin, there is something radically wrong.
Nothing can keep a child in protracted infancy but disease of some sort.
The second mark of a carnal state is that sin and failure prove master. Sin has the upper hand. You know that God who loves us dwells in light. The whole of John's Gospel means love. But all of the following attitudes and actions are fruit of the carnal spirit.