“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.” (Romans 7:18) “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63)
Nearly every time the flesh is mentioned in the Scriptures, it is placed in a negative light, there is very little if anything said in a positive way about our flesh. I want you to catch this, I think it’s very important, what would you think if Jesus, when He was in the flesh here among us would have said these words. He who created all things, including death, being subject to the flesh. I don’t think any of us can completely comprehend this.
He not always has had power over all of His creation, but He created all of it. For Christ to be in the flesh had to be excruciating, to say the least, to be subject to those opening verses and many others, while retaining the full knowledge of who He is, and why He came.
I don’t think that many give near enough thought, or credit, to the Holy Spirit, to be continuously inside of sinful people, to continuously lead them, and it must have been the same for the Lord Jesus. Not only was He in the flesh, but He was around others that were, so to speak, in the same predicament, it got to Him at times. “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (John 14:9) “Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.” (Matt. 17:17)
If no good thing dwells in our flesh, then that was the reason that the Lord said, “Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.” (Mark 10:18) Which is the topic of what will be a very poorly written letter here, God Himself subjected Himself to exist in something, a human form, that knew no good, that profited nothing.
There are religious sects that believe that the soul is good, and the flesh is bad, but that is not Scriptural, or Paul would not be able to say, “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” (1 Cor. 9:27) And at the same time cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24) Nor would Jesus be able to be within human form, for darkness can find no place in light. (John 1:5) The flesh is us; it is the sinful nature that science will never discover, it can’t be found under a microscope, it can’t be surgically removed, it is more than symbiotic with us, it is us. To put it more succinctly, it is a part of us that cannot be removed, but it can be subdued, it can be at least partially bound, if you have the Holy Spirit within you.
The Lord Jesus did not only have the Holy Spirit within Him, He is the Holy Spirit. “For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.” (John 3:34) Consider this, when you die, unless you are raptured, your flesh is not going to heaven, that part of you stays here until it is resurrected at the rapture, but the sinful nature within you will stay in you until you are glorified, which will happen when you give your account to God, (Romans 14:12) before you walk into His kingdom. No sin can be in the presence of God, which as a side note begs the question of how Satan stood before Him as recorded for us in the book of Job, so then, if our flesh profits nothing, yet sin is in us until we are glorified, what part of us are we to keep in subjection, and how did a Holy God live within that sinful flesh, and never sin, not once.
A lot of people have asked these questions over the centuries, and I don’t believe even one of them has ever come close to the right answer, miracles don’t have answers, the Lord does them, we accept them. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Cor. 5:21)
