11. The Ongoing Warfare— The Spirit against the Flesh
11
The Ongoing Warfare—
The Spirit against the Flesh
The Spirit-flesh conflict in Paul has to do not with an internal conflict in one’s soul, but with the people of God living the life of the future in a world where the flesh is still very active.
A good friend wrote recently, “Christians seem to me to divide into two groups these days: the first lot don’t think that sin matters very much anyway, and the second know perfectly well that it does, but still can’t kick the habit.” This chapter picks up the concern of the second lot. Indeed, we now come to the real world! Painfully, for many of God’s people the subject of this chapter tells the story of their Christian life, a story of ongoing inner conflict of soul. They take some comfort in believing that Paul was their companion in this struggle. If Paul, the great apostle of the faith, could write, “what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom. 7:15), then what hope is there for us? So they simply resign themselves to the struggle.
People come by this comfort by reading Galatians 5:17, the single Pauline text that speaks about a conflict between the Spirit and the flesh, in light of Romans 7:14–25—although the Spirit is not so much as mentioned in the Romans passage, where Paul describes the conflict that goes on in the soul of a person living under law and without the Spirit’s help. People accept this unfortunate reading of Paul at face value, because the text in Romans vividly describes something they know only too well. Sadly, for the vast majority of those who adopt such a view, the flesh usually wins. Thus Paul’s passion, namely, the sufficiency of the Spirit for all of life in the present age, is brushed aside as unrealistic in favor of one’s own personal reality.
To be sure, such war does rage in the hearts of many. Often the warfare—and the sense of helplessness to live above it—is the direct result of the intense individualism of Western culture. Both secular psychology and much Christian teaching focus on the inner self: How am I doing according to some set of criteria for wholeness? Focused on the inner struggle, we can scarcely see Christ or walk confidently in the way of the Spirit. Instead of living out the fruit of the Spirit, in constant thankfulness for what the Spirit is doing in our lives and in the lives of others, our individualistic faith turns sourly narcissistic—aware of our personal failures before God, frustrated at our imperfections, feigning the love, joy, peace, and gentleness we wish were real. Our turmoil crowds out openness to the Spirit himself. In such spiritual malaise God almost always gets the blame.
But as real as this is for some, Paul is not addressing this issue when in Galatians 5:17 he speaks of the Spirit and “flesh” as in utter opposition to each other. Indeed, he would not even understand it. His world is that of Psalm 19, not that of “the introspective conscience of the West.” In consecutive verses (12–13), the psalmist acknowledges first his “errors” and “hidden faults” and then the possibility of “willful sins.” The former is an acknowledgment of the depth of our fallenness; for these “hidden faults” he asks forgiveness. His concern—and it does not take the form of a struggle—is with the “willful sins.” About these he prays that they will “not rule over me.” Paul’s view is similar. In Galatians 5:17 he is not addressing a struggle over “hidden faults” but open disobedience to God in the form of “willful sins.”
At issue for us in this chapter, therefore, is Paul’s own view of the conflict between the Spirit and the flesh, between living kata sarka (“according to the flesh”) and kata pneuma (“according to the Spirit”). Every occurrence of these terms in Paul has to do with our present eschatological existence—what it means for believers to live together as a people, defined by the already/not yet fulfillment of God’s promises, in contrast to a former life defined and determined by the world. My point: Nowhere does Paul describe Christian life, life in the Spirit, as one of constant struggle with the flesh. He simply does not speak to that question. His point rather is the sufficiency of the Spirit for God’s new end-time people.
Basic to Paul’s view is that, as with Torah observance, the time of the flesh is over for followers of Christ. According to Romans 7:4–6, Christ and the Spirit have, with the new covenant, brought an end to the time of the law and the flesh, which belong to our existence before and outside Christ. Continuing to live this way is incompatible with life “according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:5–8). But Paul’s view does not represent triumphalism, as though people who lived by the Spirit were never tempted by the old life in the flesh or that they never succumbed to such. They have, and they do; and there is forgiveness for such, and gracious restoration.
A careful analysis of the key texts Galatians 5:17 and Romans 7:14–25 demonstrates that this is Paul’s perspective. But we will be helped in that analysis by looking first at Paul’s use of the term “flesh.”
The Meaning of “Flesh” in Paul
The place to begin such a study is with the Old Testament, since Paul’s usage originates there. The Hebrew word bāsār refers primarily to the flesh of bodies, and by derivation sometimes to the bodies themselves. On a few occasions the term is extended to describe human frailty and creatureliness, usually in contrast to God as creator. Thus a common expression for all living beings, especially humans, is “all flesh,” meaning “every creature.” When the psalmist asks in light of his trust in God, “What can flesh do to me?” (Ps. 56:4), he means that with God as his protector what can a mere human do to him (cf. Jer. 17:5). In his anguish Job asks God, “Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see?” While “flesh” is not a neutral term when used in this way, neither does it express a negative moral judgment; rather, it expresses the frailty of human creatureliness. It would be unthinkable to the Hebrew that sin lay in the flesh, since sin’s origins lie in the human heart.
Although Paul rarely uses the Greek term sarx in its basic sense, as referring to the physical body, he regularly uses it in the extended sense as referring to our humanity in some way or another. Thus he can speak of “Israel according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 10:18), or Abraham as our forefather “according to the flesh” (Rom. 4:1), or of Jesus as descended from David “according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:3), meaning in each case “according to ordinary human descent.” In the same mode Paul recognizes present human life as still “in the flesh” (e.g., Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 10:3), that is, lived out in the present human body, characterized by frailty as it is.
Paul also uses sarx, however, in a more unusual sense, derived in part from intertestamental Judaism but marked by his own basically eschatological view of life in the world. “Flesh” for him denotes humanity not simply in its creatureliness vis-à-vis God but in its fallen creatureliness as utterly hostile to God in every imaginable way. It is in this sense that he contrasts life “according to the flesh” over against life “according to the Spirit.” The one describes the present evil age in terms of human fallenness, where by nature each has turned to his or her own way; the other describes the eschatological age that has dawned with the coming of Christ and the Spirit, as described in chapter 5 above.
This does not make sarx an easy term to translate. The NIV often uses “sinful nature.” That translation works well in Romans 7, where Paul is describing the failure of his former life under the law. The “flesh” represents “another law in his members” that rises up to defeat the law of God and thus to render the law helpless. That “other law” is his own “sinful nature.” But this rendering does not work well in other places, where he is describing what characterizes the whole world in its present fallenness.
The clearest instance in which Paul plays on the two basic senses of this word (“human frailty” and “human fallenness”) is in 2 Corinthians 10:2–4. Accused by them of acting “according to the flesh” in the morally negative sense, Paul allows, for the sake of his argument, that he does indeed live “in the flesh,” by which he means “in the weaknesses and limitations of present mortality.” But, he goes on, I do not engage in warfare “according to the flesh,” in keeping with the fallenness which characterizes the present age that, because of the cross and resurrection, is on its way out. This argument does not work at all if “flesh” is morally negative in both instances.
Our interest lies strictly with this latter sense, human fallenness, which has completely lost its relationship to the physical and has become strictly eschatological—and morally negative—describing existence from the perspective of those who do not know Christ, who thus live as God’s enemies. It describes believers only before they came to be in Christ and live by the Spirit. Any conflict in this matter has to do with believers in Christ, people of the Spirit, continuing to behave according to their pre-Christ perspective and values. Paul’s point always is, “Stop it.” “Put off your old self,” he says, and “put on the new self” (Eph. 4:22, 24). My point, then, is that whenever “flesh” occurs in contrast to the Spirit, it always bears this eschatological sense.
The Spirit-Flesh Contrast in Paul
That Paul viewed the flesh as belonging to the past for believers, in the same way as he viewed Torah observance, is specifically stated in Romans 7:4–6: “When we were living in the flesh, the passions of sin, aroused by the law, were [also] at work in us; . . . but now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been set free . . . to walk in the new way of the Spirit.” How Paul understands this is set forth vividly in 2 Corinthians 5:14–17:
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So then, from now on we regard no one from the perspective of the flesh. If indeed we once considered even Christ from this perspective, now we know him in this way no longer. So then, if anyone is in Christ, a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, the new have come.
The death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Spirit have changed everything. The former order of things is described in terms of flesh, that basically self-centered, creature-oriented point of view, which has caused the Corinthians to regard Paul as he had formerly regarded Christ, as weak and therefore not of God. The flesh perceives things from the old age point of view, where value and significance lie in power, influence, wealth, and wisdom (cf. 1 Cor. 1:26–31).
To be sure, such a worldview is still about. But for those in Christ, all of that has passed away; behold, the new has come, the time of the Spirit, in which there has been a total change in the definition of what has value or significance. The new model is the cross: the power lies not in externals but in the Spirit, who indwells believers and by grace is renewing the “inner person” (2 Cor. 4:16), transforming us into God’s own likeness (ultimately portrayed in Christ through the cross).
This eschatological view of the Spirit/flesh contrast is found in other passages as well:
1. “I could not speak to you as Spiritual, but as fleshly,” Paul tells the Corinthians (1 Cor. 3:1). The irony of this sentence lies in the fact that the Corinthians, who think of themselves as Spirit people, are thinking just as they did before they met Christ, just like those leaders of this passing age, who crucified Christ (2:6–8). Their attitude toward Paul’s suffering and his message of the cross in effect makes them bedfellows with those who killed Christ, viewing things from the perspective of the flesh.
This is obviously eschatological terminology. Moreover, it does not reflect some internal struggle in the believer between these two kinds of existence. On the contrary, it describes the essential characteristics of the two ages, which exist side by side in unrelieved opposition in our present already-but-not-yet existence. The one, flesh, has been condemned and is on its way out; they are to be done with that. Paul is cajoling them to live the real life of the Spirit.
2. Similarly, in Philippians 3:3 Paul warns against those who would insist on circumcision. He describes believers as those who serve “by the Spirit of God” and who put no confidence in “the flesh.” Here “flesh” refers to self-confidence based on a presumed advantaged relationship with God evidenced by circumcision. But as noted in chapter 9 above, the Spirit also stands opposed to, by fulfillment, any form of Torah observance. Thus these too are basically eschatological realities. To revert to circumcision, that is, to put “confidence in the flesh,” is to go back to the way that has come to an end with the death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Spirit.
3. The strong contrasts in Romans 8:5–8 likewise do not deal with internal conflict. Paul is again describing the two kinds of existence, and indicating their utter incompatibility. Those who walk according to the flesh—and it is clear in context that this does not mean believers, but those still outside Christ—“have their minds set on what the flesh desires” (v. 5). Such a mindset is hostile to God, does not—indeed, cannot—submit to God’s law, cannot please God (how in the world could it?), and ends up in death. That simply does not describe Christian life, not in Paul and not anywhere else.
The people of God, who walk according to the Spirit, live in bold contrast to flesh-walkers. Their minds are set on the things of the Spirit (their minds have been renewed by the Spirit, after all); in place of hostility to God, they live in peace; and instead of death, they know life.
That this is the conflict Paul describes is made certain in Romans 8:9, where he addresses his Christian readers: “but you,” he says, “are not in the flesh [in the sense that the flesh-walkers in verses 7–8 are], but in the Spirit [a whole new way of existence], since indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.”
But Paul also recognizes that life in the Spirit is not just a stroll in the park. So in Romans 8:12–13 he applies all of verses 1–11 to their lives, by reminding them that by the Spirit they must continue to kill that to which they have already died (the already/not yet again). They were formerly controlled by, and thus under obligation to, the flesh. Their new obligation is to the Spirit, to walk in his ways, led by him (v. 14).
Life in the Spirit is not passive; nor is obedience automatic. We continue to live in the real world; we are, after all, both already and not yet. Therefore, the imperative for the already is walk in/by the Spirit. That assumes that we live in a world very much controlled by the flesh; but it also assumes that we now live in that world as different people, led by the Spirit and empowered by the Spirit to produce the fruit of righteousness, rather than to continue in the works of the flesh.
That leads us finally to Galatians 5:17 and Romans 7:13–25. We begin with the latter, since it does not have to do with this contrast at all; and we conclude with another look at the Galatians passage (see chap. 10 above).
The Struggle in Romans 7:13–25
What about the intense, deeply emotional narration of Paul’s own internal conflict in Romans 7:13–25? Doesn’t this passage suggest that Paul himself, even though a man of the Spirit, continually struggled in his inner person with the pull of the flesh? At first glance, and taking the passage out of context, one might think so. But three things reveal otherwise: the surrounding context, what Paul actually says, and what he does not say.
The context throughout has to do with the place of Torah in the Christian life. In verses 1–6 Paul has made it clear, by repeating himself yet one more time, that the believer has no relationship to it at all. In the death of Christ we have died with respect to the law (v. 4). Not only so, he adds, but we have also died with respect to the flesh (vv. 5–6; note the past tense, “when we were in the flesh”). But Paul is also aware that he has been extremely hard on the law in his argument to this point, which will hardly sit well with his readers who are Jewish Christians. Besides, he does not really consider the law a bad thing—quite the contrary. His problem with the law was with its inadequacy, its helplessness to empower what it required.
So in verses 7–25, he sets out to exonerate the law from any suggestion that, because it was implicated in our death, the law itself was a bad thing. To make this point, he argues in two ways. First, he says in verses 7–12, what killed “me” (and “me” in this paragraph stands for all other Jews as well as for himself) was not the law but the innate sinfulness that the law aroused. The law is implicated in his “death,” to be sure, but as an abettor, not as a direct cause.
This, too, could put the law in a bad light, so he starts all over again (v. 13), this time insisting that the law is not really to blame at all. Its fault lay in its helplessness to do anything about the sin it has aroused in us by making us vividly aware of sin’s utter “sinfulness.” This is said with great intensity, and in a way in which all who try to please God on the basis of law can empathize with. In the final analysis it is a totally useless struggle. For the person under law, who has not experienced the gift of the Spirit, sin and the flesh are simply the stronger powers.
Enter Christ and the Spirit (Rom. 8), as God’s response to the anguished cry of 7:24. Not only is there no condemnation in Christ (that is, the judgment we all so richly deserve has been put into our past through the death of Christ) but we now live by a new “law,” that of the Spirit of life (8:2). What the law was unable to do, Christ has now done for us (positionally) and the Spirit “fulfills” in us (experientially) as we “walk in the Spirit” (vv. 3–4).
Three simple points, then, in conclusion:
1. What Paul describes throughout is what it was like to live under the law; and whatever else is true of the Christian Paul, he did not consider himself to be under the law. What he describes, from his now Christian perspective, is what it was like to live under law before Christ and the Spirit. The use of “I” and the present tense of the verbs only heighten the intensity of his feelings toward the utter helplessness of the law to do anything about the real problem of sin.
2. The person here described never wins. Being under the helpless law, in the face of the more powerful flesh and sin, means to be sold as a slave under sin, and thus incapable of doing the good things the law demands. Such a description is absolutely incompatible with Paul’s view of life in Christ, empowered by the Spirit.
3. There is not a single mention of the Spirit in the entire passage (vv. 7–25). The Spirit was last mentioned in verse 6, as the key to our new life in Christ, who has brought our relationship with the law and the flesh to an end. Christ and the Spirit are then picked up again in 8:1–2 as the divine response to the anguished cry of the person struggling with sin, but with the helpless law standing by, pointing out the sinfulness of our sin, unable to do anything about it.
Thus the only questions Paul himself raises in this entire passage have to do with Torah, whether it is good or evil, and, once this is affirmed as good, how this good thing is still implicated in our death. Life under Torah alone is under scrutiny.
Galatians 5:17 in Context
But what of Galatians 5:17, where Paul says (literally), “for the flesh has desires over against the Spirit, and the Spirit over against the flesh; for these two [realities] are in opposition to each other, so that whatever things you may wish [= feel like doing], these things you may not do”? Does this not indicate that there is an internal struggle of the Spirit against the flesh? In context, not so. In fact, this text is precisely in keeping with the texts previously looked at, where this contrast appears.
Verse 17 comes at the heart of an argument dealing with one urgent question: Since Torah observance is now a thing of the past because of the coming of Christ and the Spirit, what is to ensure righteousness? That is, Paul is arguing against (perhaps anticipating) Jewish-Christian opposition that would see his bypassing Torah observance as a sure invitation to license and ungodliness. Indeed, as Romans 3:7–8 makes clear and Romans 6:1 implies, Paul has been charged with this very thing.
Paul takes up this question, typically, not in terms of the individual believer in a one-on-one relationship with God, but at the very point where the Galatians are living as they used to, when the flesh held sway. Paul therefore warns the Galatians not to let their new freedom in Christ serve as a base of operations for the flesh (5:13), meaning in this case to continue to engage in strife within the community of faith (v. 15). Rather, in love they are to “perform the duties of a slave to one another” (v. 13). For love like this “fulfills the law” (v. 14).
Paul’s response to verses 13 and 15 is verses 16–26. He begins in verse 16 with the basic imperative—and promise. “Walk in the Spirit,” he urges them, “and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.” Since this responds to verse 15, he is not talking about the inner life of the believers but of giving in to ungodly behavior within the community. After all, of the works of the flesh that follow, all have to do with behavior, and eight of the fifteen items mentioned are sins of discord within the believing community.
Verse 17 functions to elaborate verse 16, and it does so by way of what has been said in verses 13–15. The elaboration simply says what we have seen him say elsewhere: walking in the Spirit is incompatible with life according to the flesh, because these two are in utter opposition to one another. And because they are utterly incompatible, those who live in the Spirit may not do whatever they please, that is, their new freedom in Christ does not permit them to continue living as they used to, by eating and devouring one another.
Thus the flesh-Spirit contrast has to do with those who have entered the new way of life brought about by Christ and the Spirit; Paul is urging them to live this way by the power of the Spirit. His point is that the Spirit stands in opposition to the other way of living and is fully capable of empowering one to live so. It is not that Paul does not care about the inner life; he does indeed. But here he cares especially that the way God’s people live provides a radical alternative to the world around them. Those who so walk by the Spirit will not keep on destroying the Christian community through strife and conflict.
In all the passages where Paul sets the Spirit against the flesh he insists that through the death of Christ and the gift of the Spirit, the flesh has been mortally wounded—killed, in his language. It is not possible, therefore, that from Paul’s perspective a Spirit person would be living in such a way that she or he is sold as a slave to sin, who is unable to do the good she or he wants to do because of being held prisoner to the law of sin.
Believers live between the times. The already mortally wounded flesh will be finally brought to its end at the coming of Christ. The Spirit, already a present possession, will be fully realized at the same coming. To the degree that the old age has not yet passed away, we still must learn to walk by the Spirit, to behave in keeping with the Spirit, and to sow to the Spirit. We can do so precisely because the Spirit is sufficient. In Paul’s view, we live in the flesh, only in the sense of living in the present body of humiliation, subject to the realities of the present age; but we do not walk according to the flesh. Such a way of life belongs to the past, and those who live that way are outside Christ and “shall not inherit the [final eschatological] kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21).
Paul is always a realist. The “new righteousness” that fulfills Torah, effected by the Spirit, is itself both already and not yet. To return to the preceding chapter, the coming of the Spirit means that “divine infection,” not divine perfection, has set in. Our lives are now led by the one responsible for inspiring the law in the first place. But that does not mean that God’s people cannot still be “overtaken in a fault” (Gal. 6:1). The resolution of such between-the-times trespassing of God’s righteous requirement is for the rest of God’s Spirit people to restore such a one through the Spirit’s gentleness. It means regularly to experience God’s forgiveness and grace. It does not mean to accept constantly living in willful sin as inevitable, like a slow leak deflating our lives, as though the Spirit were not sufficient for life in the present.
* * *
If this explanation does not satisfy those of you who live in a constant struggle with some besetting sin, my word to you is to take heart from the gospel. I do not minimize the struggle. But you are loved by God, and that love has been “shed abroad in your heart by the Spirit.” The key to life in the Spirit for some is to spend much more quiet time in thanksgiving and praise for what God has done—and is doing and promises to do—and less time on introspection, focused on your failure to match up to the law.
Whenever you do feel like getting even for what someone has done to you rather than forgiving them as Christ has forgiven you, you are made to realize once more that you do still live between the times, between the time infection set in and the time perfection will be realized (see above, pp. ). But by the Spirit’s leading, neither do you do whatever you wish—tear into somebody for what they have done to you—as you used to do without thinking. The Spirit, God’s own presence—his empowering presence—is within, and the Spirit will lead you into appropriate responses.
Finally, to bring this discussion full circle, here is where your being a member of the body comes in. Since the ultimate goal of salvation is for us individually to belong as a growing, contributing, edifying member of the people of God, others in the body exist for the same purpose, and thus should serve you in the same way. Don’t try to be a lone-ranger Christian, slugging it out on your own. Seek out those in the community to whom you can be accountable and let them join you in your desire to grow into Christ’s likeness.
Reflection Questions