This article concerns a very important and critical truth of discernment for this hour in which Christians live. Sad to say, most Christians will fail to come to a clear consciousness of the flesh’s power and its profound influence in their living.
Sometimes biblical terms may appear as a play on words or perhaps be synonymous at times in certain contexts. The appearance of both flesh and the flesh is such an example. The term flesh has prompted confusion in the latter centuries of Church history, especially when a distinction was not seen between flesh and the flesh. Even in the deeper life truths of Christian living, there must be a distinction between the terms. The Christian must understand how the Bible deals with this term in each context.
The Distinction Between Flesh and the Flesh
We must go back to the beginning of creation and into the early unfolding of history to discern the distinction between flesh and the flesh, and especially how the Bible carefully reveals these two terms. Although the terminology is the same, the context clarifies the distinction. If the distinction is not seen, the Christian will not understand the deeper life and may expect a realm of perfection that the Bible never declares.
The first time that flesh is mentioned in the Bible is in the context of the created physical flesh. In Genesis 2:21 God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and performed the holy surgery to extract both a rib and its surrounding flesh from his body. When the Lord brought to Adam this new creature, Adam declared:
This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed (2:23–25).
From this context we see the physical body and all that God made it to be for the natural man. However, a part of this flesh is the human nature that is an integral part of the complete human being. This nature must equally be understood because it is essential to what makes a human being.
God created angels a one-nature essence, a spirit being of only an angelic nature. Though they live in the limitation of space, they are invisible to the human eye and the human senses, unless God allows a visible form for a human to see. These visible manifestations are not their true nature nor spiritual appearance (Gen. 18 and 19). Angelic beings have only an angelic spirit nature. Human beings have a human body and a human nature, with a human soul/spirit. Flesh is the distinguishing part of being human.
The Temptation
Genesis 3 records the scene that led up to the temptation of the first man and woman; it is most revealing concerning human flesh and human nature. Man and woman were placed in the Garden of Eden unfallen. There, Satan initiated the first temptation through a tangible serpent (Heb., nachash, “the brilliant, shining one”). The temptation to Eve and then to Adam came through the avenue of the flesh, the human flesh; it did not come through the flesh, the sin-principle flesh.
When we carefully read the narrative and conversation between the serpent and Eve in Genesis 3, perhaps we are surprised that this temptation took place despite her having no sin nature within. First Timothy 2:14 reveals that “the woman being deceived was in the transgression,” and yet Adam was not deceived.
Unfallen, holy angels in heaven, prior to the creation of man, were tempted to sin. However, they were tempted through the spirit, not through the flesh; a spirit self can be tempted to pride. It is clear in Ezekiel 28:11–19 and Isaiah 14:12–15 that Lucifer became his own temptation through his inward heart and thoughts; he created his temptation from within. Lucifer then became the temptation to the angels, tempting their own thought lives, hearts, and wills (Rev. 12:4). They had no sin principle; they were created without sin, yet their own nature was used for the avenue of temptation. The personality and thoughts of self united with the will of self to choose to rebel against God. The first great fall from grace was solely in the spirit realm of angelic persons.
With Adam and Eve, the temptation was to persons with a fleshly body and a human nature. Both man and woman could be tempted. Yielding by uniting their wills with the temptation, they brought sin into existence within the human race. Yes, they could both be tempted and sin in a holy environment.
They were holy, without sin. Yet Eve could be drawn away from God through the enticement of a temptation directed at her human nature, the nature of the flesh. Genesis 3 illustrates the three classic desires that God made for the human nature’s flesh:
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food [lust of the flesh], and that it was pleasant to the eyes [lust of the eye], and a tree to be desired to make one wise [the pride of life], she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat (3:6).
It was both a temptation of her human flesh and human spirit—“she took of the fruit thereof.” Eve was tempted in both the natural flesh and human spirit.
God gave these desires of the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life for the good of man. However, within this flesh there is the constant danger that its desires could be used to draw man away from God and to rebel against God and His Word. Within the flesh and human nature that God made, there was the potential for this flesh nature to fall away from God. Could God have made the flesh that would not fall? Could God have made an angelic nature that would not fall? Yes, He could; yet, He did not! However, along with both the angelic and human natures, each was given personality. Each creature had (1) a will to make a choice and to execute that choice (whether for good or against God), (2) intellect (a thought processing ability), (3) emotions (a sensitivity to enhance thought), and finally (4) a will of self for the choice and execution. Yes, it was a perfect creation. Yet, it was a creation of weakness that could choose to think thoughts away from God even unto its own attempted deification.
The flesh, even without the sin principle, is ever in a present danger or risk of being drawn away from God. The flesh can project itself beyond its headship (as with Eve) and make decisions considered good but inevitably unprofitable and deadly. The flesh nature is weak and potentially drawn to that which is good or to that which would cause it to fall away from goodness. Something must control or influence our flesh no matter how pure it may be. Whatsoever is flesh is flesh; its weakness will always be there and the potential of flesh’s self.
The Fall of the Flesh
When Adam through the flesh and nature that God made for him partook of the forbidden fruit, he willfully chose to go against God’s Word. This failure and disobedience brought into existence another nature that came to reside in his human nature as well as in his offspring’s. All offspring of mankind came through the seed of Adam; Adam passed down the inheritance of a human body, a human nature, and the human spirit. Additionally, these offspring were polluted and corrupted by the nature and principle of the flesh passed down from Adam.
This pollution and corruption inherited with the human nature is called the sin principle, the old man, and the flesh because the Fall came through the desires of the flesh. Now this sin principle controls man’s flesh; his flesh is empowered with the flesh principle. This principle was a new and powerful nature controlling the human nature. These two natures (human nature and sin nature) are distinct from one another. The older a person grows, the more interwoven these two natures become, making them more difficult to separately detect. It is a power, a principle, that came out of flesh; it is known as the principle of the flesh, ever drawing the human nature away from God and deeper and deeper into the self of man and what he is: flesh. This principle of the flesh is anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-spiritual, and it ever promotes self to be its own god in the flesh.
The Flesh by the Days of Noah
By Genesis 6, one begins to truly see how powerful this principle of the flesh is. Note Genesis 6:3: “And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh.” There was a measure of God’s Word that had been divinely revealed to mankind: this truth was a striving, a reproving, and a judging of man. This work of God’s Spirit was aiming to correct and to check man’s strong propensity toward evil in his flesh during the days of progressive degeneration. But most men persisted in abandoning the way of truth and life. They did not want their homes centered in godly instruction where divine truth prevailed; instead, they chose the way of the flesh. The lust of the flesh caused the men to take all the women they desired in marriage as the whim of the moment moved them (6:2). Man was no longer simply being sinful; the human race had practically sunk to the level of being only flesh, totally and absolutely flesh, with no consciousness of spirit, the realm whereby man may know God. Man was no longer only sinful; man was fully controlled by and abandoned to flesh.
There was to be only one last period of grace fixed by God for the repentance of mankind. God’s economy was now to change. We read in Genesis 6:11, 12:
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth [the way and purpose for which God had made man a fleshly creature].
In 6:13,
And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
The end of man’s rejection of God in his living was coming to a climax before the Flood. How serious had this principle of flesh become? It had come to the point that it was the all-consuming reality of man; thus, God’s purpose was to destroy men together “with the earth.” Up to this point God had not revealed how He would destroy both man and his habitation. But Genesis 6:17 states that God would destroy the earth and “destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life,… and everything … shall die.”
The earth had become fully corrupt, and violence had filled the earth. Mankind had not only given himself fully to the sins of the flesh, but also the very principle of flesh had gone out of him to corrupt the whole earth, the system of the world. Even the earth was exclusively used by man for the flesh alone. In our present day we have come to this fleshly world power once again. The Flood judged mankind, but it did not destroy sin, the flesh principle.
The World and the Flesh
First John 2:15–17 records John giving a description of the spiritual strength of his readers and declaring the various spiritual stages among God’s people. Then he warns them about the world. This is the first time he mentions the word world in this epistle.
In his Gospel rendering, John speaks much of the world and of the desperate need of sanctification to overcome the world (John 17). In 1 John 2:15 he declares,
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Why?
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world (2:16).
The Christian has entered a great inheritance through the forgiveness of sins, a fellowship with God, and the conquest of the wicked one. Nevertheless, the Christian’s temptations have not come to an end.
Since the Flood destroyed the first world, the Lord brought into existence a renewed world, as noted in Genesis 8 and 2 Peter 3. But once again this present world has become the product of man’s obsessive principle of sin, the flesh. Another reason we should not love the world is seen in 1 John 2:17: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” The Christian must be neither conformed to nor contaminated by the world. For the world is the product and manifestation of the flesh of man.
The Power of the Flesh
By the time the centuries unfold and we come to the New Testament, we read of the powers of flesh. The flesh within mankind is still the consuming passion of his existence. The two terms now become prominent in their control of man’s nature and living. Jesus reveals in John 3:6, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” There is no hope for anything of eternal worth to be birthed out of the flesh; it will always be flesh. Only the Spirit can pierce through the proclivities of the natural flesh and the controlling law of the flesh. The Son of God came into the world and took on flesh: “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3). Christ was tempted in all points like as we are, “yet without sin.” He lived in the flesh, the body, but He was not “of the flesh.” The flesh was not the controlling power of His life. He had a body; He had flesh. He did not do the will of the flesh; He did the will of His Father.
We live in the flesh, and a fleshly body in and of itself is not sin. But it is weak; it is made from the ground of the earth; it is made of clay, the weakness of what man was created in. Our fleshly body is not sin, but its very weakness possesses a potential proclivity to be tempted away from God. At the same time, I am born with the principle of that flesh. That principle, that governing law in which I was conceived and shapened will always be my enemy. For the law of sin, the flesh principle that Adam brought into existence, is my aggressive enemy. Lucifer’s sin was not perpetrated by flesh, but by his spirit. Pride is a power that can be found in an angelic or human spirit because it can reside in personality. Man’s sin against God and that which brought sin into existence on this planet was the “missing of the mark” or missing the purpose of the body’s creation: to obey God’s Word and for the spirit of man to control the body.
Man is given to the flesh, the controlling flesh, in all of its aspects, proclivities, and desires. What must I do with the flesh principle as a Christian? And what must I do with my flesh? God must bring about a miracle for both. We read in John 17:2, “As thou hast given him [the Son] power over all flesh.” Is Christ the power over all flesh—my carnal flesh and my human flesh? As a Christian, I must come to know the answer to these questions! And only the Word of God can give me the answer!