earthly: belonging to the earth rather than to heaven, whether by where a thing is, what it is made for, or what it is fixed on.
This is a plain word built from the ordinary Greek noun for earth (γῆ) plus a small prefix meaning "on" or "at," so at root it says no more than "on the earth." Its real work in the New Testament is comparative. It hardly ever stands alone: three of its six verses set it directly beside the matching word for heavenly (ἐπουράνιος), and two more set it against heaven in other words. The writers reach for it when they want to sort things into two spheres.
Most of the time that sorting carries no criticism at all. It simply says where a thing belongs, or what kind of existence it was made for:
- bodies made for life down here, set beside bodies made for heaven
- the body we live in now, an earthly tent against a lasting home from God
- every knee that bows, those on the earth alongside those in heaven
But because heaven is where God is, calling something merely of the earth can become a verdict rather than a location, and twice it plainly is. Paul describes people whose minds are set on earthly things, and James calls a jealous, quarrelsome wisdom earthly, unspiritual (ψυχικός), and demonic. The word has not changed meaning. The setting has asked it to weigh a thing rather than just place it, and being of the earth alone is a poor thing to be when heaven was on offer.
So the two senses below are one idea seen from two angles: the neutral map reference, and the same map reference used as a complaint.