Victory Over Sin 5: Paul and Flesh

You may have noticed that what the NIV translates as "sinful nature," I have consistently translated as "flesh." In my opinion, this move on the part of the NIV can perpetuate misunderstandings.

Although Paul can say that "those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8), it is clear enough that there is a connection between physical flesh and Paul's use of this word. Otherwise, why would Paul use it? There is an overlap on some level between our mortal bodies, our flesh, and our "members" as Paul talks about them. On the other hand, there is a point in Paul's argument where flesh becomes a metaphor for "bodies under the power of sin," and of this a person can be free.

As far as I can tell, the idea of a sinful nature is an Augustinian invention. And in holiness circles it eventually gave rise to questions over whether the sinful nature could be "eradicated" or whether it was only "suppressed" in an experience we call "entire sanctification." If indeed the whole "nature" discussion is slightly misleading, then it may very well be that this entire discussion is a bit of a rabbit trail.

Sin for Paul was more a power than a nature. It may work on my members and on my physical flesh, but Paul can also talk about it in distinction from my members and my flesh.

Let's hone in on what Paul understood "the flesh" to be, remembering that God inspired him to speak within the categories of his own ancient worldview. To give an example, we should not be surprised or troubled that Paul could speak of being caught up to the "third heaven," as if you went straight up through three layers of sky to God (cf. 2 Cor. 12:2). After all, that's the way many Jews in Paul's day pictured the universe. Why wouldn't God speak to Paul in the categories he understood?

Similarly, we should not be surprised that the truth of Paul's message comes to us in the garp of not a little ancient psychology. It is as inappropriate to build a precise human psychology off of Paul as it is to contruct a precise picture of the cosmos from his words. After all, Paul's imagery of human psychology is different from Genesis and other parts of the Bible that come from other periods of history when even different pictures of human psychology were in play. For example, "soul" in Genesis refers to the entirety of a living being (including the sea creatures of Genesis 1). These were not the points of inspiration God was making but the "clothing" in which He was revealing His message to people with particular worldviews, meeting them where they were at in their own categories.

The starting point for understanding what Paul means by "the flesh" is clearly our physical bodies. A careful examination of the comments Paul makes throughout his writings reflects a sense that what we think of as the physical world--including our physical bodies--is subject to the powers of sin. Paul thus says in Romans 8:20:

"For the creation was subjected to futility, not willfully but in hope, because of the One subjecting it. Because even the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption to the freedom of the glory of the children of God."

Part of the subjection of the creation to the slavery of corruption is the subjection of the elements of the world to the power of sin. Paul alludes to this power sin has over the elements in Galatians 4:3-5:

"We, when we were infants, had been enslaved under the elements of the world. But when the fulness of time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those under the Law, in order that we might receive the adoption."

Again, I do not fully understand what Paul is thinking here. But he connects the power of sin by way of the Law to the physical nature of the universe, the elements of the world. The antidote is the Spirit. Paul continues:

"But because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, 'Abba,' [which means] Father" (Gal. 4:6)

As a side note, Paul is not talking about a second work of grace here. The most fundamental use of Spirit for Paul is in the very entrance into sonship. As he says in Romans 8:9: "If someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this one is not of him." One of the most unfortunate misunderstandings I had as a child was my impression that we first receive the Holy Spirit at entire sanctification. This of course is not what the Wesleyan Church actually teaches, since the Wesleyan Church teaches that we initially receive the Holy Spirit at the time of "initial sanctification" when we first come to Christ.

But it seems to me that the holiness tradition has historically focused so much on our concept of the "fulness" of the Spirit in entire sanctification that we sometimes fail to hear the way Paul talks about the Spirit. Paul sees the Holy Spirit as the very threshhold of becoming a Christian, the "seal" of God's ownership (2 Cor. 1:22) and the downpayment and guarantee of our heavenly destiny (2 Cor. 5:5). This is one aspect of our teaching that I think has tended to be somewhat out of biblical focus.

If my body is subject to the power of sin through the commandments of the Law, the Holy Spirit is the "stuff of heaven" inside of me that frees me from this power and enslaves me to righteousness. This is a kind of "sanctification," as 2 Thessalonians 2:13 speaks of how God chose the Thessalonians for salvation "by the sanctification of the Spirit and by faith in the truth" (I should note that Paul is talking about the Thessalonian church collectively here).

Paul can use sanctification language not only in reference to the event of coming to Christ, as in this verse, but he can speak of the carnal, fleshly Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:2) and even of non-Christian spouses who are married to believers (1 Cor. 7:14) as "sanctified." If we remain true to the biblical text, we will have to find a way to define sanctification so that it accommodates passages like these.

Sanctification refers primarily to becoming associated with a god and thus becoming holy, dedicated and belonging to a deity. The temple prostitutes of pagan gods were thus considered holy to those gods. The term has as much of a "feel" to it as a logical meaning. I think of something that is radioactive and that you approach it with caution. Or think of how careful you would be around a bully or abusive person's stuff. There is an aura around it that makes you careful and cautious.

How much more so with God! The holiness of God led Isaiah to fall on his face in Isaiah 6. The holiness of Mt. Sinai meant that animals that wandered onto it had to be stoned. When we are in association with the Holy Spirit, there is a God-ness about us that means something, not least a freedom from the power that is in conflict with the Spirit, namely, the power of sin.

The sanctification of an unbelieving spouse or of the children of such a marriage is thus more than some banal influence on them. It is a "spiritual zone" around the believer that actually makes it more likely that the spouse and children will come to Christ and that they will be less under the power of sin--even if they are not saved in the end (1 Cor. 7:14).

The Corinthians, as carnal as they are, are still in the "spiritual zone" that is the church at Corinth. They are the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16). There is an uncleanness that is contagious as well, and Paul commands the man sleeping with his step-mother be cast out of the church at delivered back to the world, where Satan is in control (1 Cor. 5:5). There his flesh will again come under the power of Satan. But Paul hopes that his spirit might turn around and eventually be saved as a result.

Paul can also speak of a kind of "entire sanctification" when he prays that the Thessalonians' whole spirit, soul, and body might be sanctified (1 Thess. 5:23). Of course the "you" is plural here. Paul is not presenting some individualistic or standardized experience in this verse.

But I think it is legitimate for us to connect the dots as John Wesley did. These passages do not seem to institutionalize a definite, instantaneous experience subsequent to coming to faith. But they connect sanctification to being possessed of God's Spirit and they imply that such a person is not a slave to sin. In the next entry we'll talk about how this sets us up to urge Christians toward the sanctification of their entire being, in connection with not being in the flesh. We can still preach entire sanctification as the logical conclusion of Paul's theology even if he did not formulate it precisely in the terms our tradition has used in the past.

But before moving on to consider how this theology might play itself out in Christian experience today, I must finish discussing how Paul views flesh.

It is clear that a person's literal flesh for Paul is that part of us that is most susceptible to the power of sin and Satan. The law is also the power of sin as it seems to exacerbate the human tendency to sin (1 Cor. 15:56).

By contrast, the Spirit is the antidote to the flesh. The law of the Spirit sets us free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:2). Through the Spirit we can fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law (Rom. 8:4), which is love (Rom. 13:10). Such a person is led by the Spirit, not by the flesh (Gal. 5:16; Rom. 8:9). We can even say, somewhat metaphorically, that such a person is no longer "in the flesh," for those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom. 8:8).

Clearly a person's ability to live above sin and tempation is linked to the presence of the Spirit in their lives. At the same time, we will always have our mortal bodies with us as well until the resurrection. In that sense, the "flesh" is only as far away as our bodies, just as righteousness is only as far away as the Holy Spirit. Again, there is great potential for something like our doctrine of entire sanctification in these observations.

Of course we might use different imagery if we were to express these truths in our current worldview. We at least think we know a great deal about the brain, for example. While desires may not be limited to chemical reactions in my brain, no one today could deny that such biochemical processes are a major part of desires and choices. A colleague of mine in the psychology department tells me that it might be possible to stimulate certain parts of the frontal lobe to where a person would feel they were experiencing God. He does not deny that God actually interacts with us, only that there is a physical dimension to religious experiences in our brains.

I am willing to say that when God's Spirit takes hold of us, He actually changes the structure of our minds physically. These are not areas of my expertise, so I'll leave these musings to Christian doctors and psychologists.

My point is biblical. Paul believes that the Holy Spirit empowers us to be victorious over sin and temptation. The default human state is to be "in the flesh," a situation in which a person cannot do the good even if they want to do it. In the next entry I want to discuss what kind of a theology of experience we might build out of these building blocks from Paul.