Flesh

March 10

Flesh (1)
sarx
If the old man has been destroyed, why do we still sin? Paul knew that question would arise, so right after he writes Romans 6, he writes Romans 7, where he laments over “the flesh.” While the old man is gone, while sin doesn’t rule and dominate, “the flesh” remains.

The Greek sarx (G4561) occurs eighty-nine times in Paul’s epistles (excluding Hebrews) and refers to: the physical body thirty-seven times (e.g., Rom_2:28), humanity or that which is human twenty-five times (Rom_3:20), and inherent evil in the human nature twenty-seven times (Rom_7:5). Rom_7:5, in fact, defines that third use by calling it “the motions of sins.”

“Motions” is an Old English term for “impulses,” which is the idea in the Greek pathēma (G3804), from pathos (G3806; English, pathology), and “describes the emotions of the soul, i.e., human feelings, and impulses which a man does not produce within himself but finds already present, and by which he can be carried away.” In Classical Greek, “it acquired a predominately negative meaning, that of passion.” We can, indeed, be carried away by our passions.

“The flesh,” then, is the selfish inclinations, self-centered perversity and propensity, the desire for self-gratification and self-satisfaction that is inherent in our moral nature. While Satan is certainly the ultimate foe, our greatest enemy is ourselves, our flesh. Martin Luther hit the nail squarely when he wrote, “I dread my own heart more than the pope and all his cardinals, for within me is the greater pope, even self.”

We have two “states of mind,” the higher and the lower; the higher is our spirituality, the lower is the flesh. The higher is present because of the indwelling Holy Spirit (Romans 8), and the lower remains because we are still in the flesh.

That is precisely Paul’s point in Romans 7, where he says that the flesh was “another law in [his] members, warring against the law of [his] mind” (Rom_7:23). He laments that the things he wanted to do he didn’t do and the very things he didn’t want to do were the things he did (Rom_7:19).

He then asks, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom_7:24). Herein is the war of the flesh, the sin that still remains in us (Rom_7:18).

Thankfully, however, as we’ll conclude tomorrow, God provides the victory.
Scriptures for Study: What does Rom_7:5 declare? What is the command of Rom_13:14?

 
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