Sarx

The Greek word sarx means "flesh," but its theological range spans from neutral to darkly ominous. Sometimes it simply denotes physical body: Jesus asked, "does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox...and lead it away to water it?" using reasoning about sarx as created matter (Luke 13:15). But Paul can also write that "nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh" (Romans 7:18), making sarx practically synonymous with sin itself. Understanding this word requires tracking which meaning is active in each context.

The incarnation hinges on sarx's neutrality: "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). If sarx were inherently evil, this would be impossible—God cannot become sin. Yet Paul writes that God sent "his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (sarx) and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). Christ took on genuine humanity, including its vulnerability and mortality, but without sin. The flesh itself isn't the problem; it's what we've done with it.

Paul's letters develop sarx as shorthand for human nature organized in rebellion against God. "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Romans 8:8), he warns, contrasting it with life "in the Spirit." The "works of the flesh" include not just bodily sins like "sexual immorality" but also relational and spiritual ones: "enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger...envy" (Galatians 5:19-21). Sarx describes the whole person oriented away from God, not just physical appetites.

The crucial distinction appears in Romans 8: "if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Romans 8:13). Notice Paul shifts from sarx (flesh) to soma (body)—the problem isn't having a body but living "according to the flesh," letting fallen human nature dictate. Christians still have sarx but don't live kata sarka (according to flesh). We're embodied beings, but our bodies can now be "temples of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Here's the often-missed nuance: when Paul declares "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live" (Galatians 2:20), he's describing the death of the sarx-dominated self, not escape from embodiment. Christianity isn't body-denying Gnosticism. Resurrection is bodily (soma); salvation includes the physical (Romans 8:23). What must die is sarx, the organizing principle of life—the flesh-centered existence that trusts in human strength, wisdom, and righteousness rather than God's. The body is redeemed; the flesh is crucified.