What follows is a conversation about the body and its relationship to indwelling sin that I had via e-mail with my friend Brian Coatney of Hopkinsville, KY. It began with a question from Brian about Romans 6:12: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.” Brian asked “I notice translations vary on the antecedent to the pronoun its in Rom 6:12. Do you take its to refer back to the body or to sin?” In others words, does “its desires” refer back to the body’s desires or to sin’s desires?
Brett (me):
The Greek is somewhat ambiguous. “Autou” or “its” is singular and neuter in gender, and “your bodies” is neuter but plural, whereas sin is singular but feminine in gender. It seems that Paul has made a grammatical error, since the pronoun is not in agreement with either of the nouns. Personally I think it refers back to “your bodies,” with the meaning “so that you do not obey its (the body’s) desires. Theologically I would prefer that it referred back to sin, but I think agreement in gender is more important than agreement in number. After all, Paul does speak elsewhere of the lust(s) of the flesh:
Rom 13:14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.
Gal 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
Eph 2:3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
At the same time, Eph 2:2 is clear that the flesh is the way it is because it is the prince of the power of the air operating in us, and Romans 7:*, that it is sin (Satan) which produced in us every kind of desire through the commandment. “Flesh” or this mortal body (and soul) is the fertile ground into which Satan plants the seeds of desire which give rise to sins, so much so that Paul can speak of “the deeds of the body: which must be put to death (Rom 8:13). This brings up the issue of whether the body/flesh of believers is bad or corrupted rather than just neutral, as we have often claimed. I think Scripture is clear that “Sin” is the origin of sinful desire and the resulting sins, but that flesh is the realm in which Satan has been free to manifest himself. Because our bodies have been operated by Satan since we were born, they are accustomed to being operated by him, and because of the fall, Satan has the authority(?), ability(?), to continue to pull us through our flesh. For this reason, one might say that the flesh is corrupt:
Gal 6:8 “For the one who sows to the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption.”
2Pe 2:10 “those who indulge the flesh with its corrupt desires.”
Because Satan can continue to produce sinful desires within our flesh, Paul refers to the body as the body of our humiliation (Phil 3:21). Fortunately, in the Spirit we already have a new unseen spiritual resurrection body within us in which and from which we can live. The Spirit is the deposit or firstfruits of this body, which means not only that the Spirit is a promise of a new body, but the source of this new body in us: in other words this new body is already present within us in some embryonic and invisible form. We are already being transformed into this body of glory, from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18, Phil 3:21).
Brian:
“Bodies washed with pure water in Hebrews tells me that our bodies are not unclean.
Those are good parallel verses you cite that show Paul’s pattern of saying not to live by bodily lusts. That’s where we feel the urge at first.
Then we can switch to the “instrument” or operator issue, which is the central one. But it does look like Paul keys in on we have a history (as cite) of thinking that we are our bodies or that we must respond to their urges and that override bodily desires
Thinking about what you wrote, and looking at the parallel verses, one might say that Paul says to an alcoholic, “You don’t have to give in to the urge to drink.”
Then he explains why.
On the new body, it is mysterious, and I go long periods without thinking about it. But it does make sense, and nature appears to support it with the worm to butterfly transformation perhaps, with an outer discarded, except that with us, I think it must be that all that is discarded and goes to the grave gets pulled back in in the last transformation.
Brett:
I like your statement that “Satan tries to lead us into the lie that our bodies still belong to the powers of darkness.” You are absolutely right, since Paul says that we are to honor God with our bodies, since they are the temples of the Holy Spirit. You also said: “bodies washed with pure water in Hebrews tells me that our bodies are not unclean.” I don’t think I am saying that our bodies are unclean – I probably did not express myself very well. Paul’s view of the body and the flesh is quite difficult to understand and unravel, and he is not always consistent in the way he uses the words, especially flesh and body, and he does not seem to always distinguish the operator from the instrument. In Gal 5:16-17, the flesh is at war with the Spirit, which certainly seems to make the flesh bad, sinful, or evil. And in Gal 5:24, those that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires – again, one does not crucify something that is either neutral or good. One could argue that “flesh” has nothing to do with the body, but I think “flesh” has an inescapable bodily connotation. And Paul does use the terms flesh and body interchangeably in Rom 6-8: “body of sin”, “body of death”, “deeds of the body.”
In your analogy of the alcoholic, I agree that “one might say that Paul says to an alcoholic, “You don’t have to give in to the urge to drink. Then he explains why.” We are no longer slaves to sin, as Paul says in Romans 6, and we have died to Satan’s domination and operation of us in our members. At the same time, I would say that our bodies are “porous” or “open” to Satan’s tempting, that he is able to affect (or distort?) bodily desires and appetites and soulish feelings and thoughts in his effort to regain control of our members and express himself through us. Satan can affect us in our souls and bodies, but has no authority to control us unless we believe him. He will have no such ability to tempt us or affect our thoughts, feelings, and bodily desires in our resurrection bodies. It is this openness to temptation and to the possibility of sinning that makes our bodies “bodies of humiliation.” On the other hand, it is also this very “openness” to the world that enables us to participate in Christ’s cross and intercession for others. Our weakness is our strength.
Brian:
Good stuff. I wonder if Paul wasn’t perhaps inconsistent as much as flexible in his use of the word flesh in that he can apply it on any level needed, all the way down to the will that thinks it can be independent. I find it humorous to see a word in a dictionary that has piled up a longer list of definitions over time because of its many contextual uses. On the one hand we have the bent to keep organizing and listing, but we also have the hunger for expansion. This may be like the 7 spirits, where the first two are expansion and contraction. they make a whirling wheel, and how we deal with that is “the rest of the story.”
The one thing we know is that love is always love. It isn’t flexible unto self-for-self.
Brian again:
I’ve been mulling more the body. Norman sought to make it neutral, the evangelicals make it a nature, and Jacob Boehme calls it a “house of sin.” I do think the body is disordered and out of whack from the fall and was the instrument of sin before the new birth, and it is still corrupt in the mortal sense and has no telling how many disorders from fallen nature. I am never disheartened by JB since he doesn’t make the body the person but faults the person who lives by the fallen body. I don’t see JB making it an alter self/nature, and certainly his mysticism is like Paul’s and leaves us triumphant despite whatever infirmities and weaknesses the body now has. I get the point from JB that we are to rise above the body, not as if we do not live in it or as if it is not sanctified in this life and the instrument of righteousness, but more to the point that we are in it not of it. I like how Bill Bower says, “I am a spirit, I have a soul, and I live in a body.” As to Norman’s neutrality, I am with that in the sense of the body being an instrument and appetites God-made. It has bothered me at times with some of the old union people, that there is what to me is an uneasy glorification of human appetites and faculties. Jesus was human and ant the same time mystical–or heavenly we could say. He shared a connection with ANOTHER, the Father, that comes out as he is going along oh so human. He is God in the flesh, the regular person, but then he is so much more behind the scenes. I guess what bothers me about some of the union talk on the street over the decades is the sense I get that union is simply changing what one calls himself. Instead of any transformation or deliverance, one just calls everything Christ without mind to the fruit of the Spirit or the works of the flesh.
Brett:
I like the way you express it: the body is disordered and out of whack since the fall, but it is not a “nature” or the source of sin. I was trying to say something like that, the disordering of the body makes it easier for it to be an instrument of sin than if Adam had never fallen, which is perhaps what JB meant by calling the body a “house of sin.” Our souls and our bodies seemed attuned to this fallen world so that Satan can easily tempt us through them, but they remain the vessel/container through which Christ or Satan express themselves. The difference is that Satan as the spirit of self-for-self encourages us to satiate our every desire and place no limits upon them, whereas Christ is often expressed through limiting, an even dying to our appetites and desires, as Paul says, “I beat my body and make it my slave,” “those that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24), not to mention Jesus’ words “Take up your cross and follow me.” Our crucifixion with Christ is not just something that happened to us in the past, whether at Calvary, at our conversion, or our new birth, but something that continues throughout this entire life, since death works in us to produce life in others. The uneasy glorification of human appetites that you detected in some union people reflects a gross misunderstanding of the cross and our co-crucifixion with Christ: a cross-less union that has no death in it. This is the psychological gospel of simple self-affirmation, rather than the cross-resurrection gospel of transformation from expressing the self-for-self spirit to expressing the slain lamb spirit of self-for-others that God is. If the gospel were just calling everything Christ, why talk about sin or Satan at all?
Transformed Into His Image 