9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:9 translated from the NA28 Greek text to English)
When we talk about “the flesh” in this life, we are not always talking about these living breathing bodies we all have though the context does mean that in some cases as we shall see. Here in Romans 8, the root word of what is translated in English as “flesh” is σάρξ sarx.
The following is from Mounces’s Complete Expository Dictionary for this word.:
“sarx literally means “flesh.” However, the use of sarx within the NT is quite diverse. Of the 147x sarx occurs, Paul employs it the most (91x). The NIV reflects the diverse usage of sarx, by offering translations such as “flesh” (33x), “sinful nature,” (23x), “body” (20x), “human” 3x), and “people” (3x).
Sarx has a number of basic usages.
- it can refer simply to the physical material that cover the bones of a human or animal body, such as in Paul’s famous phrase , “thorn in my flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7. <Continue reading post>