On the Resurrection of the Flesh

YOU MAY NOTICE THAT THE APOSTLE EVERYWHERE CONDEMNS THE WORKS OF THE FLESH IN SUCH A WAY THAT HE SEEMS TO CONDEMN THE FLESH ITSELF: But no one can suppose that he means this, since he goes on at once to suggest another sense, even though it somewhat resembles that one. For when he actually declares that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, he immediately calls the statement back from a heretical sense to a sound one by adding, "But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit," in Romans 8:8-9. Now, by denying that they were in the flesh, though they obviously were in the flesh, he showed that they were not living among the works of the flesh. Therefore, those who could not please God were not those who were in the flesh, but only those who were living after the flesh. But those pleased God who, although they existed in the flesh, were still walking after the Spirit. And again, he says that the body is dead. But it is dead because of sin, just as the Spirit is life because of righteousness. When, however, he thus sets life over against the death that is established in the flesh, he unquestionably promises the life of righteousness to the same condition for which he assigned the death of sin. But this contrast that he makes between life and death is meaningless if the life is not there where the very thing is to which he opposes it, namely, the death that is, of course, to be rooted out from the body. Now, if life thus roots out death from the body, it can do this only by entering there where the thing is that it excludes. But why am I resorting to difficult arguments when the apostle treats the matter with complete plainness? For if, he says, "the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwells in you," in Romans 8:11. So then, even if a person were to suppose that the soul is the mortal body, he would still, since he cannot possibly deny that the flesh is also this, be forced to acknowledge a restoration even of the flesh, because it shares in that same condition. Moreover, from the words that follow, you may learn that it is the works of the flesh that are condemned, and not the flesh itself: "Therefore, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if you live after the flesh you shall die; but if you, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live." Now, to answer each point separately, since salvation is promised to those who are living in the flesh but walking after the Spirit, it is no longer the flesh that is an enemy to salvation, but the working of the flesh. When, however, this operativeness of the flesh is done away with, which is the cause of death, the flesh is shown to be safe, since it is freed from the cause of death. For "the law," he says, "of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death"—that, surely, which he had previously mentioned as dwelling in our members. Our members, therefore, will no longer be subject to the law of death, because they cease to serve that of sin, from both of which they have been set free. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and through sin condemned sin in the flesh, in Romans 8:3—not the flesh in sin, for the house is not to be condemned with its inhabitant. He did indeed say that sin dwells in our body, in Romans 7:20. But the condemnation of sin is the acquittal of the flesh, just as the non-condemnation of sin subjects it to the law of sin and death. In the same way, he first called the carnal mind death, in Romans 8:6, and afterward enmity against God. But he never said this of the flesh itself. But to what then, you will say, must the carnal mind be ascribed, if not to the carnal substance itself? I will allow your objection, if you will prove to me that the flesh has any understanding of its own. If, however, it has no thought of anything without the soul, you must understand that the carnal mind must be referred to the soul, although it is sometimes ascribed to the flesh, on the ground that it is ministered to for the flesh and through the flesh. And therefore he says that sin dwells in the flesh, because the soul, by which sin is stirred up, has its temporary lodging in the flesh, which is indeed doomed to death, though not on its own account, but on account of sin. For he says in another passage also, "How is it that you conduct yourselves as if you were even now living in the world?" in Colossians 2:20. There he is not writing to dead persons, but to those who ought to have ceased to live after the ways of the world.