What Is the Flesh in the Bible — In Biblical Context

The Biblical Context

The flesh is one of the most important concepts for understanding the Christian life — the biblical term for the sinful nature that remains in believers after conversion and wages war against the Spirit until the day of glorification. The Greek word sarx can mean simply 'body' or 'physical flesh,' but in Paul's theological usage it refers to the entire fallen human nature — the self-centered, God-opposing disposition that is the legacy of Adam's sin. Paul declared a fundamental conflict in the Christian life: 'For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.' This is not a conflict between the body and the soul, as if the body were evil and the spirit good. The flesh includes the mind, will, and emotions as well as the body. It is the whole person in rebellion against God. Before conversion, the flesh dominated completely. Paul described the unregenerate state: 'We ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.' The flesh produces 'the works of the flesh,' which Paul cataloged as 'adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.' These works are not merely external actions but spring from the flesh's internal orientation — self-worship, self-indulgence, and self-assertion. After conversion, the flesh does not disappear. Paul described his own experience with agonizing honesty: 'For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.' The believer has a new nature, created in righteousness and true holiness, but the old nature — the flesh — remains and struggles for control. The believer's responsibility is to 'walk in the Spirit' so as 'not to fulfil the lust of the flesh.' This means cultivating dependence on the Holy Spirit through prayer, the Word, and obedience. It means reckoning ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. It means putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit. It means refusing to gratify the flesh's desires, whether sinful passions or legitimate desires pursued selfishly. The ultimate fate of the flesh is destruction. At glorification, the believer will be completely freed from the flesh's presence and power. Until then, the battle rages daily. But the promise is sure: 'There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.' The flesh cannot condemn those who are in Christ, for Christ has condemned sin in the flesh by His death on the cross. The Christian life is a war, but it is a war already won by Christ. We fight from victory, not for victory. And one day, the flesh will be no more, and we will be fully what God has called us to be.

Where It Sits in Scripture

Supporting Passages