Paul tells Christians not to “walk according to the flesh” but according to the Spirit.
Galatians contrasts the “works of the flesh” with the “fruit of the Spirit.”
Romans 8 says the mind of the flesh is death.
It is easy to hear a Greek philosophical dualism:
physical body = evil
immaterial spirit = good
But that is not Paul’s anthropology.
Paul believes the body is created by God, belongs to Christ, can glorify God, is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and will be raised from the dead.
To understand Paul, we have to distinguish flesh from body.
Sarx: Flesh
The Greek word sarx can literally mean flesh.
Paul can use it neutrally for:
- physical descent;
- human kinship;
- bodily existence;
- ordinary mortality.
Jesus is descended from David “according to the flesh.”
Paul’s fellow Israelites are his kin “according to the flesh.”
In these texts, flesh is not morally evil.
But Paul also gives sarx a powerful theological meaning.
It can describe human existence as:
- weak;
- mortal;
- self-reliant;
- enslaved to sin;
- resistant to God;
- belonging to the old age outside the Spirit’s transforming rule.
That meaning cannot simply be translated “physical body.”
Sōma: Body
Paul’s normal word for body is sōma.
And his theology of the body is strikingly positive.
First Corinthians 6 says:
- the body is for the Lord;
- the Lord is for the body;
- God will raise the body;
- believers’ bodies are members of Christ;
- the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit;
- Christians must glorify God in their bodies.
Romans 6 tells Christians to present their bodily members to God as instruments of righteousness.
Romans 12 tells them to present their bodies as a living sacrifice.
Paul does not want salvation from having a body.
He wants salvation of the whole embodied person from sin and death.
Why Does Flesh Sound So Negative?
Because Paul often uses sarx to name the human condition in Adam apart from the life-giving Spirit.
The “flesh” is not identical to muscles and skin.
It is humanity attempting to live from its own fallen resources.
That is why some “works of the flesh” are not bodily in any obvious sense.
Galatians 5 includes:
- jealousy;
- rivalry;
- anger;
- divisions;
- envy.
These are not body parts.
A disembodied intellect could hypothetically be proud or envious.
Paul’s category is moral and eschatological, not anatomical.
Sexual Sin and the Body
Paul condemns sexual immorality strongly.
That has sometimes been interpreted as fear of physicality.
But First Corinthians 6 gives the opposite reason.
Sexual sin matters because the body is holy.
The body belongs to Christ.
The Spirit dwells in it.
Resurrection awaits it.
Paul’s sexual ethic is bodily precisely because his salvation is bodily.
Romans 7
Romans 7 contains difficult language:
“nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.”
Paul also describes a “law of sin” operating in his members.
Does this mean the physical organism is evil?
No.
In the same passage Paul says God’s Law is holy and that he delights in it according to the inner person.
The problem is sin inhabiting fallen human existence.
Romans 8 will provide the answer not by destroying the body but by giving life to mortal bodies through the Spirit.
Romans 8 Is Decisive
Paul writes that if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus dwells in believers, God will give life to their mortal bodies through his Spirit.
That sentence rules out anti-body salvation.
The mortal body is not abandoned.
It is vivified.
Paul’s gospel ends in resurrection.
“Flesh and Blood Cannot Inherit the Kingdom”
First Corinthians 15:50 sounds dualistic:
“flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”
But Paul immediately explains:
“nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”
“Flesh and blood” is a biblical idiom for mortal human existence.
Paul’s point is not that embodied existence cannot enter God’s kingdom.
The entire chapter argues that the dead will be bodily raised.
The present mortal mode must be transformed.
Natural Body and Spiritual Body
Paul contrasts a sōma psychikon with a sōma pneumatikon.
Older English translations sometimes render these “natural body” and “spiritual body.”
Modern readers hear:
physical body versus ghost.
That is misleading.
Both are sōma—body.
The contrast concerns what animates or characterizes the body.
A “spiritual body” is embodied existence transformed by the life-giving Spirit.
Scholars debate more precisely whether Paul imagines a body governed by Spirit or a body constituted from transformed pneuma-like materiality, because ancient concepts of spirit were not always immaterial in the modern sense.
Either way, Paul is not advocating a bodiless afterlife.
Paul and Platonism
Earlier scholarship sometimes portrayed Paul as heavily Hellenized and therefore hostile to matter.
That view is much less persuasive today.
Paul’s Jewish creation and resurrection framework is unmistakable.
Biblical salvation is not an immortal soul escaping material creation forever.
Creation itself groans for liberation in Romans 8.
Human bodies await redemption.
The whole cosmos participates in renewal.
What About the “Inner” and “Outer” Person?
Second Corinthians 4 says the “outer person” wastes away while the “inner person” is renewed.
This can sound Platonic.
But Paul immediately moves toward resurrection hope.
Second Corinthians 5 does not celebrate permanent nakedness.
Paul says he does not want to be unclothed but further clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed by life.
Even when Paul distinguishes inward and outward dimensions of the person, his final hope is embodied transformation.
The Body of Christ
Paul’s theology becomes even more anti-dualistic when sōma refers to the Church.
Christians are one body.
Eucharistic participation creates bodily ecclesial communion.
The body is therefore both:
- the believer’s embodied existence;
- the communal reality of Christ’s people.
Salvation is never merely private interior spirituality.
Orthodox Anthropology
Eastern Orthodoxy strongly rejects the notion that matter or the body is evil by nature.
Creation is good.
The Word becomes flesh.
Christ rises bodily.
The Eucharist sanctifies material creation.
Human beings await resurrection.
The Orthodox Church in America’s doctrinal explanation of resurrection uses 1 Corinthians 15 directly: the corruptible body is raised in incorruption and glory.
This fits Paul’s anthropology remarkably well.
Asceticism Does Not Mean Hatred of the Body
Orthodox fasting, celibacy, vigils, and bodily discipline can look anti-body from the outside.
But Christian asceticism is meant to heal bodily desire, not destroy embodiment.
Paul says he disciplines his body.
He does not say he hates it.
The body becomes an instrument of worship.
This is the difference between ascetic Christianity and dualistic contempt for matter.
Final Verdict
Paul does not identify the physical body with evil.
His contrast between flesh and Spirit is fundamentally a contrast between:
- fallen human existence under sin and death;
- new creation empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The evidence is overwhelming:
- the body belongs to the Lord;
- the body is a temple;
- bodily members can become instruments of righteousness;
- Christians offer bodies as living sacrifices;
- Christ will transform the body;
- mortal bodies will receive life;
- creation itself will be liberated.
So when Paul condemns “the flesh,” the safest summary is:
He is not condemning embodiment. He is condemning human life turned inward upon itself and enslaved to the old age of sin. The Spirit does not rescue us from bodies; the Spirit raises, sanctifies, and glorifies embodied human beings.
That is thoroughly compatible with Orthodox Christianity’s sacramental and resurrection-centered anthropology.
Key Sources
Primary sources
- Romans 6–8; 12.
- 1 Corinthians 6; 15.
- 2 Corinthians 4–5.
- Galatians 5–6.
- Philippians 3:20–21.
Modern scholarship
- Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology.
- Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body.
- Troels Engberg-Pedersen, works on Paul, pneuma, and bodily transformation.
- N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God.