"Clearly, there was an individual and collective need for greater spirituality on the part of the people before the Comforter could appear. The Apostle Paul addressed this need. To the Christians at Rome he wrote, (Rom. 8:6), 'To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually is life and peace.' What does Paul mean by the term 'carnally minded' ? He speaks of this so-called mind as 'enmity against God'. He is referring to a limited, finite, and mortal mind, separate from and opposed to God, and supposedly residing in the flesh. He describes this state of mind as death. To be 'spiritually minded', on the other hand, means to recognize that God, Spirit, is the only Mind, and that man is the image and likeness, or reflection of this infinite Mind. Jesus gave the most vivid and accurate description of the role this image and likeness actually plays when he said, (John 5:19), 'The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do, for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.' The same carnal mindedness which made it impossible for the people to recognize the Comforter, the power and presence of God’s perfect spiritual law, made it equally impossible for them to recognize Jesus as the Christ, or Messiah. They said, (John 19:6-7), 'Crucify him, crucify him; by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.'
"Carnal mindedness, or a hypnotic preoccupation with materiality and the flesh, has effectively concealed the power and presence of God’s unerring law from mankind ever since the original deception, (Gen. 3:1-6), symbolized by Eve’s encounter with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. And, as Paul points out, nothing but spiritual mindedness, or genuine spirituality, can break this hypnotic spell. In his first letter to the Corinthians he wrote, (I Cor. 2:7), 'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the Princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.' What is this 'hidden wisdom' which God ordained, but which the Princes of this world have failed to know? It is the genuine spiritual understanding of God’s law, the Comforter, which the Scriptures have made plain for centuries, but which mankind’s general lack of spirituality prevents them from discerning. Clearly, spiritual awakening is humanity’s most pressing need, for without it the Comforter cannot be recognized and understood; and men and women must continue unaware of their inherent exemption from sin, sickness, and death, — an exemption which Jesus both taught and illustrated. The Bible affords many interesting insights into why mankind’s efforts to demonstrate this spiritual exemption have met with so little apparent success."
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