b. ‘Spirit’
6. ‘Flesh’ and ‘spirit’ in Romans
To readers of this letter Tyndale’s prologue to Romans gives the following wise advice: ‘First we must mark diligently the manner of speaking of the apostle, and above all things know what Paul meaneth by these words—the Law, Sin, Grace, Faith, Righteousness, Flesh, Spirit and such like—or else, read thou it never so often, thou shalt but lose thy labour.’
Of these words two of the most important are the opposed terms ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’, which in their distinctive Pauline usage relate respectively to the old order superseded by Christ and the new order inaugurated by him. Flesh and spirit wage incessant warfare one against the other within the citadel of Mansoul. This warfare, as described in Paul’s writing, is not the conflict between matter and mind, between the physical and rational elements in humanity, which we meet in other schools of ancient thought. The background of the Pauline usage of these terms is the Old Testament, although their Old Testament usage is extended by Paul along lines peculiarly his own.57
a. ‘Flesh’
In the Old Testament ‘flesh’ (Heb. bāśār, šĕ’ēr)58 is the basic material of human (and animal) life. Leaving aside the frequent occurrences of ‘flesh’ in the sense of animal life (e.g. Gen. 6:19) or the meat of animals which may be eaten (e.g. Exod. 12:8), we observe that, as ‘flesh’, human beings are distinguished from ‘the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh’ (Dan. 2:11). When God announces that he will limit the duration of human life, he says, ‘My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh’ (Gen. 6:3). Man, in fact, is animated flesh; ‘all flesh’ (e.g. Gen. 6:12; Isa. 40:5–6; Joel 2:28) means ‘all mankind’ (when the context does not indicate the wider sense of ‘all animal life’). ‘Flesh’ may denote human nature in its weakness and mortality: ‘he remembered that they were but flesh’ (Ps. 78:39). It can be used of the human body, as when a man is instructed to ‘bathe his flesh in water’ (e.g. Lev. 14:9, RV); or of the man himself in a more general sense, as in Psalm 63:1, where ‘my flesh faints for thee’ stands in synonymous parallelism with the preceding clause, ‘my soul (Heb. nepeš) thirsts for thee’ (here both ‘my soul’ and ‘my flesh’ are little more than alternative ways of saying ‘I’).
It is against this Old Testament background, then, that we are to understand the Pauline use of the term (Gk. sarx), with more particular reference to the letter to the Romans.
1. ‘Flesh’ is used in the ordinary sense of bodily flesh in Romans 2:28 (cf. Gen. 17:11), where the literal ‘circumcision, which is outward in the flesh’ (RV), is contrasted with the spiritual ‘circumcision’ of the heart.
2. ‘Flesh’ is used of natural human descent or relationship. Thus Christ is said in 1:3 to be David’s descendant ‘according to the flesh’, as in 9:5 he is said to belong to the nation of Israel ‘according to the flesh’.59 In 4:1 Abraham is called ‘our forefather according to the flesh’ (i.e. the ancestor of those of us who are Jews by birth), whereas spiritually he is the father of all believers (4:11–12, 16; his descendants by physical propagation are ‘the children of the flesh’ by contrast with ‘the children of the promise’ (9:8). People of Jewish birth are Paul’s ‘kinsmen according to the flesh’ (9:3, RV) or simply his ‘flesh’ (11:14, RV).60
3. ‘Flesh’ is used in the sense of mankind in Romans 3:20, ‘by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified’ (RV). This is a common Hebrew usage: Old Testament examples are ‘To thee shall all flesh come’ (Ps. 65:2) and ‘no flesh has peace’ (Jer. 12:12). We may compare our Lord’s words: ‘except the Lord had shortened the days, no flesh would have been saved’ (Mark 13:20, RV). Paul appears to have been fond of this usage: in Romans 3:20 he quotes Psalm 143:2, where the word ‘flesh’ does not appear in the Old Testament text, yet he introduces it into his quotation both here and in Galatians 2:16. (Cf. 1 Cor. 1:29, RV, ‘that no flesh should glory before God.’) Sometimes the same idea is expressed by ‘flesh and blood’ (e.g. Gal. 1:16, ‘I did not confer with flesh and blood’, i.e. with any human being).
4. ‘Flesh’ is used variously in the sense of human nature, as follows:
(i) Weak human nature. In Romans 6:19 Paul explains his argument by the aid of an analogy from everyday life ‘because of the infirmity of your flesh’ (RV); by ‘flesh’ here he refers more particularly to his readers’ intelligence. Again, in 8:3 he speaks of the law as being unable to produce righteousness because it was ‘weakened by the flesh’, i.e. the frail human nature with which it had to work. (A good example of this sense of ‘flesh’ is provided by the saying of Jesus in Matt. 26:41, ‘the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’)
(ii) The human nature of Christ. The humanity of Christ is something he shares with all mankind. But our flesh is ‘sinful flesh’, because sin has established a bridgehead in our life from which it dominates the situation. Christ came in real flesh, but not in ‘sinful flesh’; sin was unable to gain a foothold in his life. Therefore he is said to have come ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Rom. 8:3). Having come thus, he dealt effectively with sin in his humanity: he repelled its attempts to secure an entrance into his life, and when in death he presented his sinless life to God as a sin-offering, God by this means ‘condemned sin in the flesh’ (Rom. 8:3)—the territory ruled by sin was redeemed from its domination through the incarnation, sacrifice and victory of the man Christ Jesus.
(iii) The ‘old nature’ in the believer. When Paul speaks of ‘my flesh’, he most often means his sinful propensity inherited from Adam. There is nothing good in it (7:18); with it, he says, ‘I serve the law of sin’ (7:25).61 It is still present with him, even if progressively disabled—and this in spite of its having been ‘crucified’ (cf. Gal. 5:24, ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’).62 This apparent paradox is met repeatedly in the Pauline writings: believers are enjoined time and again to be what they are—to be in actual practice what they are as members of Christ. Thus they are said to have ‘put off the old nature’ and ‘put on the new nature’ (Col. 3:9–10), while elsewhere they are exhorted to ‘put off their ‘old nature’ and ‘put on the new nature’ (Eph. 4:22, 24). The ‘old nature’ is what they were ‘in Adam’; the ‘new nature’ is what they are ‘in Christ’. Therefore to put on the new nature is to put on Christ; and while Paul tells the Galatians that ‘as many … as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ’ (Gal. 3:27), he bids the Romans ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Rom. 13:14).
(iv) Unregenerate human nature. Though ‘my flesh’ is still present with me, I am no longer ‘in the flesh’.63 To be ‘in the flesh’ is to be unregenerate, to be still ‘in Adam’, in a state in which one ‘cannot please God’ (Rom. 8:8). Believers were formerly ‘in the flesh’ (7:5), but now they ‘are not in the flesh’ but ‘in the Spirit’, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells within them—and if he does not, they do not yet belong to Christ (8:9).
5. Since, then, believers are no longer ‘in the flesh’ but ‘in the Spirit’, they should no longer live ‘according to the flesh’—according to the pattern of their old unregenerate life64—but ‘according to the Spirit’ (see 8:4–5, 12–13). They have exchanged their unregenerate outlook (‘the mind that is set on the flesh’) for one which properly belongs to the children of God (who ‘set the mind on the Spirit’), and it is for them now to ‘make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires’ (8:5–7; 13:14).65
6. The flesh is subject to the principle of ‘sin and death’ (Rom. 7:23; 8:2), and so is under sentence of death, for ‘in Adam all die’ (1 Cor. 15:22). ‘To set the mind on the flesh is death’ (Rom. 8:6); ‘if you live according to the flesh you will die’ (8:13). As it is put in Galatians 6:8, ‘he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption’—or, in the NEB rendering, ‘if he sows seed in the field of his lower nature, he will reap from it a harvest of corruption’.
The flesh, the human nature which is ours ‘in Adam’, is corrupted by sin; but the sins of the flesh have a much wider range in Paul’s thought than they have tended to have in Christian moral theology. They include the sins that are specially associated with the body, but they also include sins which might more naturally be classified by us as sins of the mind. Thus, Paul’s catalogue of ‘the works of the flesh’ in Galatians 5:19–21 comprises not only fornication and related forms of sexual vice, with drunkenness and carousing, but also sorcery, envy, quarrelsomeness, selfish ambition and idolatry. Sin of any kind, in fact, is a ‘work of the flesh’.
Sometimes the term ‘body’ is used instead of ‘flesh’. Thus what are called ‘the works of the flesh’ in Galatians 5:19 are called ‘the deeds of the body’ in the same comprehensive sense in Romans 8:13. We may compare ‘the sinful body’, lit. ‘the body of sin’ (Rom. 6:6), with ‘sinful flesh’, lit. ‘flesh of sin’ (Rom. 8:3); cf. also ‘this body of death’ (Rom. 7:24). (On the other hand, the ‘body’ of Rom. 8:10, which is ‘dead because of sin’, is more simply the mortal body of flesh and blood.) We may also compare ‘your members which are upon the earth’ (Col. 3:5, RV; RSV renders ‘what is earthly in you’), which are to be treated as dead.66
b. ‘Spirit’
In the Old Testament, ‘flesh’ is set over against ‘spirit’ (Heb. rûaḥ, primarily ‘wind’, then ‘vital vigour’). A classic text is Isaiah 31:3, ‘The Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit.’ God, by implication, is Spirit (cf. John 4:24); not only so, but the Spirit of God can energize men and impart to them physical power, mental skill, or spiritual insight that they would not otherwise have. The spirit in man is his breath, his disposition, his vitality.67
Similarly in the Pauline writings ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ are opposed terms. Believers in Christ are no longer ‘in the flesh’ but ‘in the Spirit’ (Rom. 8:9); they ‘walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ (Rom. 8:4); they do not produce ‘the works of the flesh’ but ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ (Gal. 5:19, 22).
We are under the embarrassment of having to choose between a capital ‘S’ and a minuscule ‘s’ each time we write the word; Paul was subject to no such embarrassment when he pronounced the Greek work pneuma during his dictation of this letter, and neither was Tertius as he wrote it down. (The distinctive use of capital initials to denote nouns referring to divine persons is of relatively recent date.)
The following principal usages of ‘spirit’ can be distinguished in Paul:68
1. The ‘spiritual’ part of the human constitution. ‘I serve’ God ‘with my spirit’, says Paul (Rom. 1:9); with this we may compare Romans 7:6, where believers, being no longer under law but under grace, ‘serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit’ (which, however, goes beyond 1:9 in its implications).69 Circumcision which is ‘spiritual and not literal’—i.e. the inward purification of the heart, of which the prophets spoke (Jer. 4:4; cf. Deut. 10:16)—is contrasted with the external circumcision of the flesh (Rom. 2:28–29). The spirit of believers moves in harmony with the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:16).70
The other New Testament writers use ‘spirit’ more or less as a synonym of ‘soul’. This appears, for example, in the opening words of the Magnificat: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’ (Luke 1:46–47). Again, our Lord’s words in John 12:27, ‘Now is my soul troubled’, may be compared with the Evangelist’s statement in John 13:21 that ‘he was troubled in spirit’. Paul himself uses ‘spirit’ in this more general sense when he asks, ‘what person knows a man’s thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him?’ (1 Cor. 2:11). But for the most part ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’—especially in the adjectives derived from the two nouns—are distinguished in Paul, and indeed set in contrast: the ‘unspiritual man’ of 1 Corinthians 2:14 (AV ‘natural man’) is literally the ‘soulish’ man (psychikos, from psychē, ‘soul’), in contrast to the ‘spiritual man’ of verse 15 (pneumatikos, from pneuma, ‘spirit’).71 In Paul the human spirit may perhaps be described as the God-conscious element, which is dormant, if not dead, until it is stirred into life by the Spirit of God. Or it may be thought of as the ‘Christian personality’ of those ‘who, if we may put it so, are not only alive, but “Christianly” alive’.72
2. The Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit. He is called ‘the Spirit of holiness’ in Romans 1:4, in relation to the resurrection of Christ; cf. 8:11, where he is called ‘the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead’. Under his enlightenment the human conscience bears true witness (9:1). In the proclamation of the gospel he supplies the power to make the message effective in the hearers (15:19); those who are thus brought to faith in Christ are ‘sanctified’ by the Holy Spirit’ (15:16). Into the hearts of those who believe the gospel he comes pouring out the love of God (5:5; cf. 15:30), and by his power they are filled with peace, joy and hope (14:17; 15:13).
Since God has revealed himself in Christ, the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ (8:9). So completely does the Spirit convey to believers the life and power of the risen and exalted Christ that in practice the two seem frequently to be identified (although in principle they are distinguished).73 For example, the expressions ‘if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you’ (8:9) and ‘if Christ is in you’ (8:10) are practically synonymous.
It is in chapter 8, that the nature and implications of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and operation in the believer are most clearly set forth.74
(i) The Spirit imparts life. His law is the law of life; to ‘walk … according to the Spirit’ and so ‘set the mind on the Spirit’ is to live (8:4, 5, 6, 10),75 for he enables the believer to treat ‘the deeds of the body’—the practices of the old unregenerate existence—as dead things, with no further power in life. There can be no true life without him. To be ‘in the Spirit’ (en pneumati) is the opposite of being ‘in the flesh’ (en sarki); and all believers are regarded as being ‘in the Spirit’ (8:9). In practice, then, to be ‘in the Spirit’ is to be ‘in Christ’ (or ‘in Christ Jesus’); to be in the Spirit is thus no individualist matter. The life which he imparts is the common life in the body of Christ: it is ‘by one Spirit’, says Paul in another letter, that ‘we were all baptized into one body’ (1 Cor. 12:13). To be ‘in Christ’ is to be incorporated into Christ, to be a member of Christ, and so to be a fellow-member of all others who are similarly incorporated into Christ (Rom. 12:5). The new solidarity which believers share ‘in Christ Jesus’ (8:1) is elsewhere described by Paul as ‘the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’ (2 Cor. 13:14; cf. Phil. 2:1) or ‘the unity of the Spirit’ (Eph. 4:3); the Spirit is the animating principle of the body of Christ.
(ii) The Spirit bestows freedom. However spiritual bondage be viewed—as bondage to sin, bondage to the law, bondage to death—it is the Spirit who brings liberation. It is he who conveys to believers the power of the risen Christ, by which they are ‘set free from sin’ (Rom. 6:18, 22); it is he who releases them from legal bondage, so that they now serve God ‘in the new life of the Spirit’ (7:6); it is he who imparts the new principle of ‘life in Christ Jesus’ which sets them free from ‘the law of sin and death’ (8:2). All these aspects of his ministry illustrate the principle concisely stated in 2 Corinthians 3:17b, ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.’
(iii) The Spirit supplies directive power in the lives of the children of God. It is those who are led by him that are God’s sons and daughters; he is ‘the Spirit of sonship’ by whose prompting believers approach God as his children and call him by the same familiar name of ‘Father’ as Jesus used when speaking to him (Rom. 8:14–15). To the same effect Paul tells the Galatians, ‘because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” ’ (Gal. 4:6).
(iv) The Spirit intercedes for the people of God. While Christ intercedes for his people in his place of exaltation in the presence of God (Rom. 8:34), the Spirit makes intercession from within the lives of the believers whom he indwells (8:26–27).76
(v) The Spirit is the sanctifying agency in the lives of believers. ‘Spirit’ and ‘flesh’ are in unremitting opposition, and wage perpetual warfare the one with the other. But the Spirit is divinely powerful, and can put the ‘flesh’ progressively out of action in those lives which are yielded to his control and enabling grace. It is no quietist doctrine that Paul propounds: he knew his own spiritual life to involve constant self-discipline (1 Cor. 9:24–27), but he knew that victory and final glory were assured by the Spirit (Rom. 8:15b–17). And in the lives of those whom the Spirit is preparing for final glory his congenial work here and now is to reproduce in increasing measure the likeness of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18).
(vi) The Spirit is the pledge of coming glory. According to Old Testament prophecy, the outpouring of the Spirit of God would be a sign of the approaching day of the Lord (Joel 2:28–32). Joel’s prophecy was quoted by Peter when the Spirit came down on the disciples of Jesus on the day of Pentecost: ‘this’, he said, ‘is what was spoken by the prophet Joel’ (Acts 2:16). The present interval ‘between the times’ is in a peculiar sense the age of the Spirit; in this age he not only makes effective in believers what Christ has accomplished for them, he not only communicates to them the power of the living and exalted Lord, but he enables them to live in the present enjoyment of the glory that is yet to be revealed.
Not only does the Spirit supply life here and now; his presence guarantees entry into resurrection life on a day yet to dawn. Thus the life of the age to come, ‘eternal life’, is conveyed to believers as the present ‘free gift of God … in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom. 6:23)—as an advance instalment, so to speak, of the coming resurrection life which accompanies the redemption of the body (8:23).77
Not only does the Spirit enable believers here and now to realize their prerogative as ‘the Lord’s free-born children in the way of holiness’;78 this too is an advance instalment of that ‘liberty of the glory of the children of God’ (Rom. 8:21, RV) which is eagerly awaited not only by themselves but by all creation. The deliverance from bondage which they have already begun to enjoy in the Spirit will be consummated then; the ‘adoption’ (8:23) on which they will enter fully at the resurrection is anticipated already by the Spirit’s aid (8:15), and the glory of full conformity to the image of God’s Son, for which they were predestined (8:29); will be the full flowering of that sanctifying work on which the Spirit is even now engaged in their lives. The gift of the Spirit is thus presented in terms of ‘proleptic eschatology’.79 He is the ‘first fruits’ of the final salvation (8:23),80 the immediate ‘down-payment’ of that inconceivably rich heritage which God has prepared for those who love him.