Spirit and Flesh, a Candid Explanation

A Candid Explanation of my Understanding of Spirit and Flesh

I believe that Holy Spirit lives in our spirit.

When I teach that we inherit His traits, I mean that His fruit/traits are now a part of our makeup. They are part of us just as the traits we inherited from our earthly parents are part of us.

While these things are expressed through our bodies by our soul (mind, will, and emotions), my view is that Holy Spirit lives in our spirit. 1 Corinthians 6:17 helps us with this by telling us that, "the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him." (NASB 2020)

I also gather this idea from Ezekiel 36:26–27 "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statutes, and are careful and follow My ordinances." (NASB 2020) Also compare Ezekiel 11:19.

Since the Scriptures portray not only that He lives in us, but also that we live in Him, I find myself drawn to the idea that He lives in our spirit. We are one spirit, we are told, in much the same way that a married couple is one flesh. Neither spouse ceases to be their individual self, yet they are together a unit in many profound ways.

Sin Living in Us

On the issue of sin living in us, I do not understand sin as a being. I see sin as a “power.” That's a distinction I am not sure I can explain well, but it is what I (currently at least) believe nonetheless. The Romans 7 passages on this are a little problematic. The two schools of thought on Romans seven are opposed to one another. One understands Paul to be speaking of his state before regeneration and the other thinks that he is speaking of himself as one who is in Christ (saved).

Obviously, if one holds that Paul is unregenerate (unsaved) as he relates himself in Romans 7 then sin can easily be seen to live in him. I recognize that this view raises other questions, but for our discussion here, let's leave those out for now.

On the other hand, if one holds that Paul is regenerate (saved) and in Christ, then his comment that sin lives in him is more difficult to reconcile. This view helps resolve other problems, however.

Personally, I have found myself on both sides of this particular question over the years. My current view is that I am not ready to bleed for either position and I think that focusing on these distinctions causes us to miss the point the Spirit is making through Paul, namely that we truly desire godliness and that we can only conduct ourselves in godly ways by the energy He provides via the dynamo of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

Perhaps more to the point, however, Paul says that sin lives in his members, in his body. The Greek here is (melos) which means members or parts of one’s physical body. For me, this is crucial because it helps me understand the Biblical use of (sarx-flesh) more readily.

My view of "the flesh" is that it is the worldly way of interacting with temporal life. This word (sarx) has a number of uses. The entry for it in BDAG* spans parts of three pages. Here, however, it is used in the way to which I have referred. BDAG* glosses it as “the outward side of life.” It is "earthy."

The whole world presses us from every side to believe that we only get what we pay for, we must earn everything we get, we must improve ourselves if we are to be acceptable, and so on. It is, as Tim Chalas has said, "a gravitational pull" that draws us incessantly to figure things out on our own, to strive to control outcomes, and to engage in meritorious self-improvement.

In this sense then, I see sin dwelling in my members. It "resides" in my earthiness, the fleshly modus operandi of my humanity. That Jesus was in fact tempted by the things Satan offered Him demonstrates to me that, just like us, He was affected by that gravitational pull.

So, my current way of understanding this is that Holy Spirit lives within, or in conjunction with, our spirit and the power of sin lives within our members, our body, in the sense that our earthiness (the flesh) is drawn to and coexists with the world and its ways.

* William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, Walter Bauer, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature, 2000, 916.