The Flesh and Salvation — The Spiritual Man

Volume Two — The Flesh

Chapter One — The Flesh and Salvation

The word flesh in Hebrew is "basar", and in Greek is "sarx." This word appears frequently in Scripture, and its usage varies. Its most significant usage refers to an unregenerate person. This is clear from what Paul says: “I am of the flesh.” (Romans 7:14, NRSVue) It’s not just that one part of his nature, or some aspect of his being, is of the flesh, but that “I”—Paul’s entire person—is of the flesh. He reaffirms this in verse 18: “I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh.” Scripture clearly shows that “the flesh” refers to all that a person possesses prior to being born again.

Beyond this primary meaning, the term flesh is also used in other contexts:

(1) At times, it refers simply to the fleshly part of the body, that is, the soft parts of the human frame apart from bone and blood.(2) Sometimes it means the body itself.(3) In other instances, it denotes all humanity.

These meanings are interconnected. In the beginning, man was created as a being composed of spirit, soul, and body. The soul was the seat of personality and sensation. On one side, it was connected with the material world through the body; on the other, it was joined to the spiritual realm through the spirit. The soul had to make a choice: whether to submit to the spirit and be united with God and His will, or to yield to the body and the temptations of the material world.

When humanity fell, the soul rejected the rule of the spirit and became a slave to the body and its desires. Thus man became flesh. The spirit lost its noble position and became a prisoner. Because the soul came under the dominion of the flesh, Scripture describes man as of the flesh—he became flesh. Since the soul became enslaved to the flesh, everything pertaining to the soul also became fleshly.

(1) The human body originally consists of flesh and bone and blood. The flesh is the part full of perception, through which we sense and respond to the physical world. Therefore, a person who is of the flesh is one governed by material perception. Although flesh in this sense includes physical tissue, it is not limited to it; it refers to one who follows the impulses that arise from fleshly perception.

(2) Whether dead or alive, the human body is flesh. But in a spiritual sense, flesh refers particularly to the living body and the life that animates it. According to the text in Romans 7, the sins of the flesh are tied to the physical body. Paul says, “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” (v. 23) In chapter 8, he continues by explaining how to overcome the flesh: “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (v. 13) So while the term flesh includes both soul and body, it is especially linked to the physical human body. This is why Scripture uses sarx to speak both of man’s spiritual flesh and his physical body.

(3) Everything that people possess is born of the flesh, and thus they are all of the flesh. Scripture considers that all people in the world, without exception, are fleshly in nature. All are ruled by the flesh—which includes both soul and body—and act according to the sins in the body and the self-centeredness in the soul. So when Scripture refers to all people, it often does not say all people but rather all flesh (which is the literal meaning of the phrase “all who have breath” in Scripture). Since humanity is universally fleshly, sarx can refer both to the human body and to the person as a whole.