Paul and Jesus

In his letter to the Romans he explains more fully, and here one sees clearly Paul’s “already but not yet” dilemma working to its fullest. Those who have the Spirit of Christ are “not in the flesh” but “in the Spirit,” yet their life in the body continues, and the body remains “dead” because of sin. Paul sees this as an existential condition, a dichotomy of being—never to be solved by moral victory but only to be resisted and struggled against. He goes so far as to say that when one sins, it is not really that person who sins—but their sinful “flesh” that does so. He explains this on a very personal level, speaking of his own unending struggle with sexual temptation:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law [against “lust”] is good. So then it is no longer “I” that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Nor if I do what I do not want, it is no longer “I” that do it, but sin which dwells within me (Romans 7:15–20).

Paul had introduced the description of this struggle by quoting one of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not desire [Greek epithumeo] your neighbor’s wife” (Deuteronomy 5:21; Exodus 20:17). He says that as a child one would not be aware of this “Law” against coveting, but once one was able to realize the implications of the commandment, most likely as an adolescent, the prohibition itself, finding opportunity “through sin,” caused “all sorts of lust in me” (Romans 7:8–9). He does not fault the “Law” itself, which he calls “good, holy, and just,” but rather the “sin” that dwelt in his fleshly nature.

According to Paul there is no solution to this struggle, no victory to be won over the “flesh” until the body is shed at the resurrection and one becomes wholly transformed. Yet in the meantime, one has no choice but to resist—and that is the most that can be expected and required. He writes, “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. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14). Paul’s point here is that “to put to death the deeds of the body” is not to win the battle against sin—in this case sexual lust—but to denounce the flesh itself. That is the operational base of the problem. That way when one does “sin” it is not the person who is sinning, but their “flesh,” which they have denounced.

Such a view of sin and human responsibility runs directly counter to what finds in the Torah, or in most forms of Judaism. Though there is within Jewish tradition what is called a yetzer ra, an “inclination to do evil,” there is also, equally at work, the yetzer tov, the “inclination to do good.” They are not mismatched, but represent two choices, and one can overcome the other. God warns Cain when he is incensed with jealousy against his brother Abel: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7). Moses, in rehearsing all the commandments of the Torah before the assembly of ancient Israelites, states:

For this commandment that I command you this day is not too hard for you . . . But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. . . . therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live . . . (Deuteronomy 30:11–19)

In Paul’s experience such is not the case. God’s standard of judgment—to reward those who do good, whether Jew or Gentile, and punish those who do evil, whether Jew or Gentile—becomes moot because ultimately there are none who can do the good (Romans 2:9–12; 3:9–10). The giving of the Torah to Israel at Sinai ironically only served to “increase sin,” since it set forth standards that were even more demanding than those of the Noahide laws (Romans 5:20). Everything was calculated in God’s plan to bring humankind, both Jew and Gentile, to Christ, since it was only in Christ that the “flesh,” along with sin and death, could eventually be destroyed.

I don’t mean to suggest here that Paul was indifferent to sin and moral failure in his claim that all one could do was struggle. It all has to do with whether one is in Christ or outside. The Law of Christ, which operates by the Spirit of Christ dwelling within a person, is a strategy of resistance, activated by “yielding” to the Spirit and not to the flesh. Those who live “according to the flesh,” without actively engaging in the struggle, he says, will be excluded from the kingdom.

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