In Galatians 2:20, Paul says that the life he now lives “in the flesh” he lives by faith in the Son of God. In Romans 8:9 he tells believers, “you are not in the flesh”. Both cannot mean the same thing: Paul was still alive in a body when he wrote to Rome. The word is the same in both verses. The sense is not.
The Greek word is σάρξ (sarx). It appears around ninety times in the letters that bear Paul’s name, and it covers more ground than any single English word. Older English Bibles render it “flesh” almost everywhere and leave the reader to work out the sense. Some modern Bibles say “sinful nature” in many places, and others “human nature”, “human descent” or “worldly”. This article lays out the range, and shows what Open Word Bible does at each level.
Where the word comes from
The background is the Hebrew Bible. Its word for flesh, bāśār, means the soft stuff of the body, and from there all living creatures, and especially human beings in their frailty. Isaiah 40:6 says כָּל־הַבָּשָׂ֣ר, “all flesh is grass”:
A voice says, “Call out.” And someone answered, “What should I call out?” Humankind is grass, and all its loyalty is like a wildflower.
The Balanced level says “Humankind is grass”, because that is what the Hebrew phrase means. “Flesh” here is not sinful. It is weak and passing, set beside the word of God, which “stands forever” (verse 8). The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, rendered this Hebrew word with sarx, and Paul read his Bible in that Greek.
The same plain sense is in John’s Gospel. “The Word became flesh” (λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο) means that the Word became fully human, body and all. The record’s meaning decision says so, and the Readable level writes “The Word became a human being”. Flesh in this sense is good: the Son of God took it on.
A spectrum of senses
Some scholars, James Dunn among them, describe Paul’s use of the word as a spectrum. At one end it is neutral: the body, or human life as such. In the middle it is human life in its weakness, or human standing as people measure it. At the other end it is human life under the power of sin, set against God’s Spirit. Paul can move along the spectrum within a few verses. Here is how the records read the main points on it.
The body and ordinary human life. Galatians 2:20 is the clearest case:
I am no longer the one who lives; Christ lives in me. Whatever life I still have in the flesh is a life lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and handed himself over for my sake.
The meaning decision reads “flesh” here as ordinary bodily, mortal human life, and lists “the sinful human nature” as the reading it rejects. The Readable level says “I still live in this human body”, so that no reader takes it as the sinful self.
Family descent. In Romans 1:3 the Son “came from the seed of David according to the flesh”. In Romans 9:3 and 9:5 Paul’s fellow Jews are his kinsfolk “according to the flesh”, and the Messiah comes from them “according to the flesh”. The meaning decision at 9:5 reads this as physical descent, birth and family line, not the sinful self. Balanced says “by human descent” in all three places, and Readable says “as a human being” or “by birth”.
Human weakness. In 1 Corinthians 15:50, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”. The record reads this as a common expression for human beings as they now are, mortal and weak. Paul is not saying there will be no bodies in God’s kingdom. He is saying that bodies subject to decay must be changed (verses 51–53). Readable says “our bodies of flesh and blood, as they are now”.
Human standards and credentials. In 2 Corinthians 10:3 Paul plays on the word: though we walk “in the flesh”, we do not wage war “according to the flesh”. The record treats the two phrases differently. The first means simply being human; the second means working by human standards, without God. Literal keeps “flesh” both times so the wordplay can be traced. Balanced says “We do live as human beings, but we do not fight our battles by merely human standards”.
Philippians 3:3–4 goes further. Paul says believers put no confidence “in the flesh”, though he himself has reason for such confidence, and then he lists his birth, his circumcision, his tribe and his record under the law. The meaning decision reads “the flesh” here as human status and achievement, what a person is and does apart from God. The word fits because circumcision is cut in the flesh, but the point is not the body. Rudolf Bultmann described life “according to the flesh” in very much these terms, as trusting in what one is and can achieve rather than in God. Balanced says “human credentials”, and Readable “who we are or what we have done”.
Human life under sin’s sway. At the far end of the spectrum are Romans 7–8 and Galatians 5. Here the flesh has desires, produces works and fights against the Spirit:
For the flesh desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, for these are opposed to one another, so that you do not do whatever things you want.
That is the Literal level. The meaning decision for Galatians 5:13–24 reads the word as human life apart from God and turned against him, and gives the evidence from the passage itself: the flesh has desires (verses 16–17) and works (verse 19), and it can be crucified (verse 24). The decision rejects two other readings: “the physical body”, and “human nature as merely weak”. The record adds that the word keeps a link with the circumcised flesh that Paul’s opponents boast in at the end of the letter (6:12–13).
Romans 7 and 8
Romans 7:18 shows how precise Paul can be:
For I know that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, [anything] good; for the wanting is present with me, but the doing of the good is not;
The Greek has “in me, that is, in my flesh”, ἐν ἐμοί, τοῦτ’ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου. A meaning decision notes that the second phrase limits the first. The speaker does not say there is nothing good in him at all, since he wants the good. He means in the flesh, the part of him that sin rules. Another decision adds that this is not the body as such.
Romans 8:3–9 then sets the flesh against the Spirit. The meaning decision for 8:3 sums up how the records read these chapters: “flesh” is human life in its weakness, under sin’s sway and set against God’s Spirit. Paul does not mean the body as such, which God will raise to life (8:11). The law was good, but it “was weak through the flesh”: it could not change people whose flesh was ruled by sin.
Then comes a verse where the word could not mean “sinful nature” without doing damage. God sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh”. The record’s theology decision says that “likeness” lets Paul say two things at once: the Son came in real human flesh, the flesh in which sin rules in everyone else, and yet he did not sin. It lists two readings it does not accept: that he only seemed human, and that he shared a sinful nature.
Finally Paul says to the believers in Rome:
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, if God’s Spirit really does live in you.
The decision at 8:8 explains why this cannot mean “you do not have bodies”. Paul still lives in a body (Galatians 2:20). “In the flesh” here is the old state of life ruled by sin; “in the Spirit” is the new life where God’s Spirit lives and rules. Romans 7:5 speaks of the same state in the past tense: “when we were in the flesh”. For Paul, the flesh in this sense is less a part of a person than a whole way of existing, an old order that believers have left behind, though they must still refuse it (8:12–13; 13:14).
Already and not yet
That double statement, that believers are no longer “in the flesh” and yet must still refuse it, runs through both letters, and the records keep both sides.
Galatians 5:24 says that those who belong to Christ “have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires”. A grammar decision notes that the verb is in a past tense that looks back on something done: when they came to belong to Christ, they took his side against the flesh once for all. It rejects the reading that this is a continuing effort to kill the flesh. Balanced keeps the picture vivid, “have nailed the flesh to the cross”, and Readable says “have put their sinful self to death on the cross”.
Yet the verses around it are full of commands: walk by the Spirit (5:16), do not use your freedom as an opening for the flesh (5:13). The decision at 5:13 notes that the word for “opening” was used of a base from which to launch a military attack. Freedom must not give the flesh a foothold.
Romans 8:12–13 makes the same turn. Believers are under obligation, “but not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh”, for if they live that way they will die, but if by the Spirit they put to death the deeds of the body, they will live. Notice that Paul switches words here, from “flesh” to “body”. The body is not the enemy; its “deeds”, the practices sin uses it for, are. Balanced keeps the two words apart: “live as the flesh dictates”, and “putting the body’s practices to death”.
“Sinful nature”
So should a translation say “flesh” everywhere, or say what the word means each time?
The New International Version of 1978, revised in 1984, chose “sinful nature” in many of the passages at the far end of the spectrum. The New Living Translation does the same. The aim was clear: to most English speakers “flesh” means skin and muscle, or sexual desire, and a reader might think Paul was against the body.
The choice drew criticism, on three grounds.
- It decides too much. Paul can use the word in the middle of the spectrum, for human weakness, as well as at the far end. “Sinful nature” puts every borderline case at the far end.
- It suggests the wrong picture. “Nature” sounds like one component inside a person, alongside a better component. Paul’s “in the flesh” and “in the Spirit” describe two realms or two ways of existing, each with its ruling power, as the decision at Romans 8:9 puts it.
- It breaks the thread. Paul’s argument often depends on hearing the same word. In Galatians, the circumcised flesh of 6:12–13 and the flesh that wars against the Spirit in chapter 5 are not unrelated. With different English words, a reader cannot see the link.
The 2011 revision of the NIV went back to “flesh” in many of these places, while keeping “sinful nature” in a few. Translations such as the KJV, the ESV and the NRSV keep “flesh” throughout and leave the sense to the reader.
What each level does
Open Word Bible answers the question differently at each level, which is what its three levels are for. The meaning decisions are the same for every level and every language; only the wording changes.
Literal keeps “flesh” wherever Paul has the word, so that a reader can follow it across a chapter, a letter or the whole corpus. Where the sense is mild, such as Romans 1:3 or 2 Corinthians 10:3, the reader can tap the verse and see which sense the meaning decision gives.
Balanced keeps “flesh” where Paul’s argument turns on the word itself: Romans 7–8 and Galatians 5, where flesh and Spirit stand against each other, and Galatians 2:20. Where the sense is plain and “flesh” would mislead, it says what the word means: “by human descent” in Romans 1:3 and 9:5, “human credentials” in Philippians 3:3, “merely human standards” in 2 Corinthians 10:3, and “no human being” for the Hebrew-style “no flesh” of Galatians 2:16.
Readable says what the word means everywhere. At the far end of the spectrum it says “sinful self”: “nothing good lives in my sinful self” (Romans 7:18), “you will never do what your sinful self wants” (Galatians 5:16), “you are not ruled by your sinful selves” (Romans 8:9). The rendering decisions give the same reason each time: Readable says what “flesh” means here, and Literal and Balanced keep “flesh”.
This is a choice of the same kind as “sinful nature”, and Readable accepts the cost of it: a reader of that level loses the visible thread of a single word. The word it uses is “self”, not “nature”, which at least avoids the picture of a component inside a person. And in Romans 8:3, where “sinful self” would make Christ sinful, Readable does not use it: the Son came “as a real human being, with a body like the bodies of sinful people”.
A reader who wants to see the thread can switch to Literal; a reader who wants the sense can stay with Readable. Neither is hiding anything, because the meaning decision is the same underneath and is one tap away.
For the way Galatians 2:16 handles “no flesh will be justified”, see Faith in Christ, or the faithfulness of Christ?. Open Romans 8, Open Galatians 5 and Open Philippians 3 to see the records.