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σάρξ (Sarx): The Flesh in Opposition to the Spiri · Reformed Thinking

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Usually when we talk about a medical diagnosis, there is a
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clear expectation of precision. Right, like engineering.
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Yeah, it's like engineering. You break your arm, the X-ray
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shows a jagged white line, and the doctor just points at the
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film and says there it is. Broken or not?
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Broken or not broken, it is clean.
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It is binary. And you know, it brings a weird
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sort of comfort. We like things to be visible and
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easily categorized. We really do.
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But then you step into the world of biblical theology and
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suddenly that X-ray machine shatters.
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We start looking at a diagnostic landscape of the human heart and
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the categories get incredibly murky.
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They get very murky. So welcome to this deep dive on
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Reformed thinking for you listening right now.
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The mission for our time together is a comprehensive
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linguistic and theological analysis of the Greek word
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sarks, which is commonly translated in our English Bibles
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as flesh. And we are setting a very
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specific lens for this study. Yes, as adherence to the
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Westminster Confession, we are going to examine how the
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historical definition of this word perfectly frames the
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biblical doctrine of humanities, fallen nature, and our complete
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reliance on divine grace. It's a huge topic.
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It is we are going to progress from ancient Greek medical texts
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to Old Testament poetry, into the Dead Sea desert communities,
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and finally into the staggering theology of the Apostle Paul.
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Which is where it all comes together.
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Right. By the end of this, you are
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going to be equipped with a much sharper theological vocabulary
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to understand your own condition.
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The diagnostic waters are definitely murky until you trace
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the history. That is what makes this an
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incredibly necessary conversation.
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I mean, when we hear the word flesh in a modern 21st century
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context, we immediately jump to a couple of very specific,
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usually negative conclusions. Oh for sure.
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We either think of the literal physical body in a scientific
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sense, or we jump straight to specific types of immorality.
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Usually sexual sins or gluttony. Yeah, those are the big ones.
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But to grasp what the biblical authors meant, we have to
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completely strip away those modern assumptions.
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We. Really do.
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We need to rewind the clock and look at the earliest Greek uses
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of sarks. If we go back to the dawn of
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Western literature, to Homer's epics like The Iliad and The
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Odyssey, sarx was a strictly anatomical term.
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So it had 0 moral baggage. None at all.
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It literally meant the muscular part of a human or animal body.
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It was just the meat. Like literal physical meat, Yes.
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When Homer describes A spear piercing a warrior on the
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battlefield of Troy, he describes the bronze point
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tearing through the Sarx. Oh wow.
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Yeah, it is just the physical substance of the Organism, and
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this neutral descriptive use carried right over into early
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science. You mean like medical texts?
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Right, if you read the medical treatises of Hippocrates, Sark
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specifically describe the layer of tissue sitting between the
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skin and the bones. It's just a biological layer.
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Just a layer. The earliest Greek thinkers
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often use the plural form sarkies to describe the masses
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of muscle that allow a body to move.
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Or the actual animal meat that was butchered and prepared for a
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feast, I assume. Yes, it was a completely neutral
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biological substance, but as Greek civilization developed, a
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massive philosophical shift occurred that changed how
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humanity viewed itself. The philosopher stepped in.
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They did. Thinkers like Plato began
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setting up a sharp contrast within the human person.
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They started dividing humanity into two distinct competing
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parts. The physical versus the mental.
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Essentially, yes. You had the physical corruptible
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sarks on one side, and the incorruptible mind, the Gnos or
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the soul, the psyche on the other.
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I want to stop right there and look at that split because
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setting the physical material against the mind creates a
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massive cultural debate that we are still dealing with today.
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It really does. Plato essentially teaches that
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the body is a tomb. He uses the phrase somasima.
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The body is a grave. That's a dark way to look at
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biology. It is.
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For Plato, the physical material of the body was something heavy,
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something that decayed and broke down.
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Meanwhile, the true essence of a person was the immaterial soul
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that was longing to escape its physical confines.
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To return to the realm of pure forms.
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Yes, that was the goal. And here is where the
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philosophical landscape gets chaotic.
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You have this philosopher Epicurus who steps onto the
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scene and flips Plato script upside down.
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Epicurus really shook things up. He did.
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He viewed the flesh, the sarks, as the primary seat of feeling
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and desire, which the Greeks called hedon.
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Hence the word hedonism. Right.
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Instead of seeing the immaterial soul as the highest good,
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Epicurus claimed that the desire of the belly was the root of all
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good. So he elevated the physical
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cravings. He built an entire philosophical
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system around the idea that avoiding physical pain and
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achieving equilibrium in the flesh was the highest possible
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human achievement. Which is a huge shift.
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He argued that since we experienced the world
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exclusively through our physical senses, the comfort and
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tranquility of the Sarcs must be the target goal of life.
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So hearing that, it prompts A clarifying question for me.
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Let's hear. Did the ancient Greeks invent
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the Christian idea of the sinful flesh?
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That's a fascinating question. Because listening to the
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Epicurean model, it sounds like they viewed the body as a
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biological machine that just blindly craves things.
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Food, sex, comfort. While the mind is just the true
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person trapped inside, forced to deal with these cravings.
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Yeah. If Epicurus says the desires of
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the flesh are the highest good, that sounds like a direct
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precursor to what Christians later called the sins of the
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flesh. The biological machine analogy
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captures the Greek mindset perfectly, but we have to be
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very careful not to map Christian theology directly onto
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their debates. So they didn't invent the
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concept. The Greeks did not invent the
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biblical concept of sinful flesh, no, though they certainly
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provided the vocabulary that later writers would adapt.
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What happened then? What happened was a
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philosophical civil war. The body as a craving biological
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machine with a captive mind is how many Hellenistic
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philosophers conceptualized human existence.
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And the reaction to Epicurus from other Greeks was swift and
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severe. Rival, particularly the Stoics,
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developed a fierce anti epicurean backlash.
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The Stoics were all about logic. Right.
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Yes. The Stoics believed in logic,
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reason, and living in accordance with the divine order of the
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universe. They were absolutely horrified
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by the idea that physical appetite should rule human
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behavior. I can see why that would bother
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them. Consequently, in these
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philosophical debates, the word flesh morphed into a derogatory
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catchword to the Stoics. Flesh became shorthand for
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unbridled sexuality, gluttony and a pathetic lack of
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self-control. The anti Epicureans argued the
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yielding to the Sarcs was degrading to the noble human
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intellect. You were acting like a beast
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rather than a rational philosopher.
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However, we had to draw a massive great line in the sand
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right here. Go ahead this Greek dualism, the
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idea that physical matter is inherently bad or lesser and the
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immaterial spirit is inherently good, is entirely foreign to the
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biblical worldview that. Is such a vital point.
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The biblical writers do not view the physical creation as an evil
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prison. We have to remember Genesis 1.
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God created the material world. Yes, he created physical bodies
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with physical appetites and he called it very good.
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So while the Greeks gave us the vocabulary and the concept of
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flesh as a seed of appetite, their underlying assumption that
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matter is bad is a Pagan philosophy.
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The biblical authors will actually push back against that
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dualism quite violently. That distinction is critical as
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we leave Athens and move over to Jerusalem.
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Let's make that shift. If we drop the Greeks
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philosophical baggage and look at the Old Testament, the
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landscape shifts entirely. The Hebrew equivalents for our
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word are basar, which means skin, flesh or meat, and sheer,
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which refers to the inner bloody flesh.
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And what do you notice looking at the Hebrew poets and
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prophets? Well, they're entirely
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unconcerned with players division between a pure mind and
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a dirty body. They just do not think that way.
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The Old Testament uses flesh to mean the whole living creature.
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It is a completely holistic view of humanity, right?
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When the Genesis flood narrative talks about all flesh being
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wiped out or saved on the ark, it means all humanity and it
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even includes all the animals. It is the totality of living,
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breathing creatures on Earth. And it also denotes kinship and
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family ties. Yeah, when Adam sees Eve for the
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first time, he does not praise her immaterial soul.
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He says she is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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He is not giving a clinical description of her muscular
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tissue. No, he is declaring a total
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inseparable union of life, family, and shared existence.
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The Hebrew mindset refuses to slice a human being into
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competing metaphysical parts like the Greeks did.
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You do not have a body in the Old Testament.
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You are a body. That holistic Hebrew mindset is
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the necessary framework for understanding everything that
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follows. Because the Old Testament does
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not divide man into a good soul and a bad body, the theological
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contrast it sets up is entirely different.
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And frankly, much more realistic about the human condition.
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The massive theological shift in the Hebrew through text is that
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bazaar represents human frailty, mortality and weakness.
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But it represents those things specifically when compared to
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the eternal omnipotent Creator. Fletch is not evil matter, it is
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created finite matter. A perfect example of this is
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Isaiah 31.3. Oh, where the prophet is warning
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the nation of Israel not to rely on military alliances with
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foreign powers. Yes, Israel was constantly
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tempted to look to Egypt for cavalry and Chariots to save
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them from the Assyrians. Isaiah says the Egyptians are
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men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit.
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Isaiah is contrasting the weak, passing, vulnerable nature of
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the Egyptian army with the eternal, invincible nature of
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God. Notice he calls the horses
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Bissar. The horses are not morally evil.
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They are not committing sins of the flesh.
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They're just horses. They bleed, they tire, they get
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spooked, and eventually they die in battle.
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They are not spirit. They are not divine.
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This is a contrast of status, not a contrast of moral goodness
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versus moral evil. To be flesh in the the Old
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Testament is simply to be a creature whose breath is
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borrowed and whose days are numbered.
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Job says remember that my life is but a breath.
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That is the essence of bizarre. I used to hear an analogy for
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this Old Testament concept that being flesh is like being a
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fragile clay pot. Like a Potter and clay
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situation. Right.
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The idea was that the pot is not evil, it is just breakable and
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it is completely dependent on the Potter who shaped it.
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If the pot cracks, it is not because the clay is actively
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malicious. It is because the clay is
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fundamentally fragile. But honestly, as I look at texts
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like Isaiah and Job, that Sunday school analogy feels a bit too
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passive. It misses the tragedy of the
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human condition. Yes, we are fragile like clay,
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but basar also carries the sense of fade and glory.
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Like in Isaiah 40. Yeah, all flesh is grass, and
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all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
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The grass Withers, the flower fades when the breath of the
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Lord blows on it. It is not just that we are
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breakable. It is that our entire existence,
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our greatest achievements, our strongest military horses, are
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painfully temporary. But as we move from the Old
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Testament prophets into the intertestamental period, the
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roughly 400 years between Malachi and Matthew, that
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definition of frailty undergoes a massive pressure cooker phase.
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We hit the Crucible of Judaism. And the text we find at Qumran,
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the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. This is where I start to get
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confused because suddenly the temperature gets turned up.
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The scholars out in the desert writing the rule of the
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community and the Thanksgiving hymns start using flesh with a
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distinctly moral tone. It is no longer just about being
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a fading flower. How does pristine Hebrew frailty
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suddenly turn into a moral failing?
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The socio political and religious pressure of that
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intertestamental period is what causes that shift.
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You have to remember what happened to the Jewish people
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during those 400 years. They were subjected to wave
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after wave of Hellenistic cultural imperialism.
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Alexander the Great sweeps through, and later rulers like
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Antiochus Epiphanes try to force Greek culture, Greek religion,
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and Greek philosophy down their throats.
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The Maccabion revolt erupts specifically because Greek
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culture was obsessing over the physical body in the gymnasiums
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in Jerusalem, and faithful Jews were appalled.
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In response to this cultural trauma, splinter groups like the
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Essenes retreated into the desert at Qumran to live lives
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of extreme purity. When we examine their documents,
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specifically sectarian texts like one QS, which is the rule
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of the community, and one QH, the Thanksgiving hymns, we see
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the concept of flesh taking on a heavy moral weight.
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In these documents, flesh becomes associated with human
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hubris. The writers refer to the flesh
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of iniquity. They use the term to describe
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the natural blindness of mortals to divine mysteries.
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For the Qumran community, being flesh did not just mean being
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weak or temporary, it meant being stubbornly blind to the
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truth of God. It meant being trapped in a
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state of rebellion by virtue of your creaturely limitations and
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your corrupted will. They develop developed a
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theology of two spirits, the spirit of light and the spirit
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of darkness, warring within humanity.
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Flesh became the domain where that darkness operated.
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And while the Essenes are out in the desert weaponizing the term
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against human hubris, you see a parallel shift happening in the
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mainstream rabbinic literature as well.
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The Rabbi's begin to drift away from the holistic Hebrew word
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basar and start leaning heavily on the word gup, which
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specifically means the body. Often with the connotation of an
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empty vessel or a container. We find detailed Talmudic
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speculations arguing that the soul comes down from heaven pure
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and pristine, while the body comes from the dull, lifeless
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earth. The Rabbi's are starting to
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adopt A dualistic framework that was entirely foreign to early
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Hebrew poetry. Sounds suspiciously like those
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Greek ideas leaking across the cultural border and infecting
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Jewish theology. And we see that leakage
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explicitly in figures like Philo of Alexandria.
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Philo was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher trying to make
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Judaism sound respectable to elite Greek thinkers.
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Philo fully embraced that cosmic dualism.
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He looked at the flesh and saw a burden.
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He literally described the body as a coffin that the soul must
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escape in order to truly know God.
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For Philo, the physical world world was an anchor dragging
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down the intellect. But looking at our Westminster
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Confession framework, this historical shift is highly
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significant for a Reformed thinker.
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Why is that? Because while Philo goes off the
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rails into Pagan Greek philosophy, the Quran texts are
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actually starting to point toward the Reformed biblical
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doctrine of radical corruption. The Essenes are grasping the
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reality that the human creature, in its natural fleshly state, is
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totally unable to direct its own steps without divine
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intervention. They recognize a pervasive
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spiritual blindness that clings to our mortal nature.
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This feels like the exact groundwork for the New
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Testament's diagnosis of total depravity.
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The Qumran community was absolutely laying that
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groundwork. They recognized that our frailty
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was not just physical, it was moral and spiritual.
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We are completely incapable of saving ourselves or generating
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our own righteousness. And that realization brings us
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to the absolute shockwave of the New Testament.
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Specifically, the scandal of the Incarnation.
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To appreciate how massive the shockwave was, we first have to
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establish the synoptic baseline. When we read the Gospels of
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Matthew, Mark and Luke, they mostly stick to the traditional
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Old Testament view of flesh. They use the idiom of flesh and
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blood to mean human limitation. Think of the pivotal moment in
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Matthew 16 when Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the
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Son of the living God. Jesus responds.
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Blessed are you Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not
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reveal this to you, but my Father, who is in heaven.
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Jesus is saying, Peter, your natural human intellect, your
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finite creaturely capacity, did not figure this out on its own.
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Your base R is blind. This required a supernatural
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divine revelation. It is the classic distinction
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between the limited human sphere and the limitless divine sphere.
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But then we turn to the Gospel of John, and the theological
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landscape is permanently altered in a single sentence.
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John drops a theological bomb in the prologue of his Gospel.
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John 1.14 says the word became flesh.
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Sark's Geneto. Let's pause and consider how
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offensive that was to the ancient ear.
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For a Greek thinker or a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher
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like Philo who thought the body was a coffin, that sentence is
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physically repulsive. It is scandalous.
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John is taking the concept of the Logos, the divine reason,
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the organizing principle of the universe, the uncreated and
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perfectly pure eternal mind, and slamming it into the meat of the
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human body. Eternal God did not just put on
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a human in disguise. He did not hover above the Earth
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projecting a hologram of a man. He became Sark's.
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He assumed the totality of fragile, vulnerable, bleeding,
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sweating, dying human nature. That completely destroys the
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Greek idea that physical matter is inherently evil or lesser.
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If the eternal God can become flesh, then flesh itself, the
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physical creation, must be capable of bearing the divine
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glory. But this raises a really
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difficult issue. What's the issue?
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Later in John's Gospel in chapter 6, we hit the Bread of
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Life discourse. Jesus stands in front of a crowd
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and commands his followers to eat his flesh and drink his
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blood if they want eternal life. The crowd is horrified.
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And frankly, if you are a 1st century Jew listening to this,
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it sounds like he is demanding cannibalism and violating every
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levitical law regarding the consumption of blood.
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Does sound like that. So what is Jesus actually
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demanding here? Because he cannot be talking
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about a literal magical property in his physical muscle tissue,
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right? It is arguably the most
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provocative discourse in the entire New Testament.
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And we have to read it carefully to avoid gross misunderstanding.
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Many of his followers abandoned him that very day because they
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took him hyper literally. Jesus is not teaching that his
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physical cells contain a magical saving property.
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He's not teaching cannibalism. He actually clarifies his own
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provocative statement a few verses later in John 6.63.
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Saying it is the spirit who gives life.
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The flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you
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are spirit and they are life. He is explaining that his
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visible earthly appearance alone, the mere physical fact of
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his human body standing in front of them, cannot save anyone.
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Many people saw his physical flesh, touched him, heard him
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speak, and still crucified him. The flesh counts for nothing in
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terms of generating faith. To eat his flesh and drink his
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blood is a vivid metaphorical command to totally consume,
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internalize, and trust in his sacrificial death.
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You must receive the truth of His divine origin through faith,
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which is a gift to the Holy Spirit.
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The physical matter of his body is not a magic potion, it is the
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necessary instrument of his atoning sacrifice.
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The physical sacrifice had to happen.
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But the physical flesh counts for nothing if you do not have
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the spirit to grant you the faith to see who He truly is and
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what that sacrifice accomplished.
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That clarification from Jesus in John 6 is the perfect bridge
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into the most critical section for Reformed theology.
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We are moving into the Apostle Paul's theology of the flesh,
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and this is the absolute heart of the discussion.
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Paul uses sarks in multiple, highly nuanced ways.
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And if we mix up his definitions, we end up with a
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wildly distorted view of the Christian life.
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Paul is not a one trick pony when it comes to vocabulary.
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He uses flesh neutrally, he uses it historically, and he uses it
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in a negative theological sense. Let's look at the neutral uses
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first, because he does not always mean something sinister
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when he says sarks. Paul frequently uses sarks in a
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completely neutral biological or historical sense, very much in
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line with the Old Testament concept of bizarre.
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Like when he talks about his physical ailments in Galatians
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or Corinthians, he calls them his thorn in the flesh.
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He's just talking about his physical body suffering from a
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malady. When he talks about his Jewish
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heritage in Romans 9, he refers to his kinsmen according to the
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flesh, or the people of Israel according to the flesh.
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He simply means natural earthly descent.
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He is tracing A biological family tree.
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And he uses it to describe the general sphere of human
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existence. When he tells the Galatians that
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the life he now lives in the flesh, he lives by faith in the
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Son of God. He means he is still walking
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around on planet Earth in a mortal body.
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In all these instances there is 0 moral judgement attached to
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the word. It is simply the condition of
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being a human being living in history.
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The danger arises when readers take Paul's deeply theological
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negative use of the word and mistakenly apply it to his
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neutral descriptions of the physical body.
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That is how you end up with Christians hating their own
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physical bodies, which is a total misreading of Paul.
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And that theological negative use is what we have to nail down
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because Paul introduces a concept in Philippians chapter 3
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that radically challenges our modern assumptions.
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He talks about putting confidence in the flesh.
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Let me pose A crucial distinction here.
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When we hear the phrase sins of the flesh today, we usually
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think of wild frat parties, gluttony, or gross sexual
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immorality. We think of those epicurean
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appetites running wild. But when Paul lists the things
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that constituted his flesh in Philippians 3, he does not list
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a bunch of scandalous vices. He lists his flawless resume as
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a Pharisee. He lists his strict obedience to
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the law, his zeal for religion, his pristine moral track record,
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and his perfect pedigree. He was circumcised on the eighth
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day of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.
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He was the best of the best in the religious world.
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So for Paul, the flesh is not just our biological appetites
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acting up. It is any human effort, any
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natural advantage, any religious achievement we use to justify
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ourselves before God. The flesh is our attempt to save
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ourselves. It is DIY salvation.
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The concept of DIY salvation hits the exact nerve of Paul's
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theology. The flesh is the realm of human
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self-reliance. It is the unregenerate human
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nature attempting to establish its own righteousness entirely
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independent of God's grace. This is why in Romans 8IN
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Galatians 5, Paul elevates sarcs into something much more
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sinister than a physical body. It becomes an active, rebellious
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principle in fallen humanity. It represents the unregenerate
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human will that actively refuses to submit to God's law.
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In Roman 8.7, Paul says for the mind that is set on the flesh is
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hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.
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Indeed it cannot. This is the Reformed doctrine of
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total depravity in its clearest scriptural expression.
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The fleshly mind might be highly religious and might go to church
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every Sunday. It might be highly moral by
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human standards. But if it is relying on itself
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rather than the grace of Christ, it is in a state of absolute
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hostility toward the Creator. It cannot submit because
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submitting means admitting absolute bankruptcy.
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So when Paul sets up his famous contrast between the flesh and
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the spirit, which he does constantly in his letters,
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especially in Galatians, he is not setting up a Greek cage
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match between your physical body and your immaterial soul.
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He is not saying your physical arms and legs want to do bad
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things, but your ghost spirit wants to do good things.
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He is absolutely not saying that, and that is the most
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common disastrous misinterpretation of Paul in the
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modern. Church for Paul, flesh versus
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spirit is not physical matter versus immaterial ghost.
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It is the old fallen, self reliant human nature versus the
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Holy Spirit. It is the realm of human
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weakness, pride and rebellion contrasted with the realm of
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divine power and grace. A person can be sitting quietly
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in an empty room, completely physically, still not indulging
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any physical appetite whatsoever, and be entirely
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consumed by the flesh. Because their mind is steeped in
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pride, self righteousness, and hostility toward God.
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Conversely, a person can be eating a feast, enjoying the
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physical creation, and be entirely in the spirit.
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Because they are doing it with a heart full of gratitude and
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reliance on Christ. The conflict in Galatians 5 is
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between two domains of power, the dominion of the old Adam and
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the dominion of the Spirit of Christ.
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Which brings us to a text that gives a lot of believers A
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tremendous amount of anxiety. Galatians 5.24 says, And those
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who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
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passions and desires. Paul writes that in the past
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tense. They have crucified it.
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It is a done deal. But any honest Christian knows
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they still struggle with sin every single day.
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The desires are still there, the pride is still there.
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So how do we process that through the lens of our
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confession? We have crucified the flesh, yet
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we are still fighting it daily. How does the Westminster
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Confession help us? Makes sense of this brutal daily
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reality. The Westminster Confession
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handles this tension with absolute pastoral brilliance in
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its chapters on justification and sanctification.
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It teaches that in justification the dominion of sin is
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definitively broken. The old unregenerate nature of
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the flesh as a ruling dictatorial power has been
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crucified with Christ on the cross.
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You are no longer a slave to it. It no longer holds the ultimate
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title deed to your life or your eternal destiny.
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The confession also insists that the residual habits, the
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remaining corruption of that fallen nature, continue to wage
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war within the believer. The ruling general has been
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decisively defeated and stripped of his authority, but the
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guerrilla fighters are still hiding in the hills, causing
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chaos. Sanctification is the daily
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grinding process of mortification, putting to death
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those residual habits of the flesh by the power of the
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Spirit. We fight the flesh not to earn
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our salvation. We fight because the flesh has
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already been crucified and we are now empowered to sweep out
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the remaining pockets of resistance.
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It is the battle of a victor cleaning up occupied territory,
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not a prisoner trying to earn his way out of a cell.
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That is a massive comfort. The war is one, but the daily
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skirmishes continue. Now, unfortunately, the early
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church did not always hold on to that balanced biblical tension.
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As we move out of the New Testament era and into the post
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Apostolic period, the Church had to face heretics, apologists and
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a massive bitter fight over the resurrection of the body.
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We encounter the Gnostic threat. The Gnostics, which included
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groups like the Manichaeans and the authors of texts like the
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Gospel Autonomous, took that old Greek hatred of the physical
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world and dialed it up to maximum volume.
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They claimed the physical flesh was an evil prism created by a
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wicked, incompetent lesser God whom they called the Demiurge.
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They believed the true Supreme God would never touch gross
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physical matter. For a Gnostic, salvation meant
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acquiring secret knowledge so you could permanently escape the
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physical body and return to a pure spiritual realm of light.
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The physical world was an embarrassing mistake that needed
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to be discarded. The Gnostic threat was the
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single greatest existential crisis the early Church faced.
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Because it attempted to destroy the core historical tenets of
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the Christian faith. The physical incarnation of
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Christ, the physical crucifixion and the physical resurrection.
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If matter is inherently evil, as the Gnostics claim, then the
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Word could not truly become flesh.
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Christ only appeared to have a body, a heresy known as
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dorsatism. And if he did not have a real
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physical body, he did not really shed physical blood in a cross,
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and he certainly did not bodily rise from the grave.
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To combat this spiritualizing poison, the Orthodox defense led
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by the post Apostolic Fathers and apologists like Ignatius of
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Antioch and Justin Martyr had to fight fiercely.
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For the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh.
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They insisted that God created the material world, called it
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good, and promised to redeem it. Ignatius vehemently argued that
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Jesus suffered in the flesh and rose in the flesh, and therefore
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our physical bodies have eternal value.
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Justin Martyr wrote extensively to defend the idea that our
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actual physical flesh will be raised from the dirt on the last
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day. They refuse to concede an inch
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to the Gnostic hatred of biology.
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But the apologist had a massive textual problem on their hands,
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and the Gnostics love to point it out.
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If Paul wrote in First Corinthians 15.50 that flesh and
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blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, how did the early church
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apologists successfully argue for the resurrection of the
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physical flesh? Because on the surface, reading
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that one verse in isolation, it sounds like Paul agrees with the
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Gnostics. It sounds like he is explicitly
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saying no physical bodies in heaven.
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How do we reconcile Paul's statement with the orthodox
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doctrine of a physical resurrection?
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The Gnostics weaponize that verse relentlessly, but the
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apologists and modern reformed exegesis resolve the tension by
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paying close attention to Paul's use of idiom in First
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Corinthians. When Paul says flesh and blood
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cannot inherit the Kingdom, he's using a common Hebrew idiom for
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our current corruptible and mortal state.
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He is describing humanity in its current condition of weakness,
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subject to disease, decay and death.
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He is not condemning physical matter itself as evil.
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He is saying that these current bodies, which are breaking down
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and dying, cannot inherit an eternal imperishable Kingdom.
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They would not survive. They must be changed.
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They must be glorified. The early church insisted on a
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physical resurrection because God created matter, declared it
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good, and redeemed it through Christ's physical resurrection.
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Christ did not leave his physical body in the tomb, He
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transformed it. Therefore, the resurrection of
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the flesh means that our material bodies will be rescued
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from corruption, glorified by the power of the Spirit, and
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made fit to live forever in an eternal physical new heavens and
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new earth. The Gnostics wanted to abandon
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the physical world. Orthodox Christianity demands
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its total restoration. That brings our progression full
29:39
circle in such a satisfying way. Let's briefly recap the ground
29:43
we have covered today. We started with the classical
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Greeks, who looked at sarcs as mere anatomical muscle in meat.
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But eventually developed a philosophy that pitted the pure
29:52
mind against the craving biological machine of the body.
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Then we looked at the Hebrew poets who use basar to describe
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the holistic frailty of the human creature standing before
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an eternal Creator. We saw the Crucible of Judaism
30:06
at Qumran shift that frailty into a recognition of moral
30:10
hubris and spiritual blindness. We marvelled at the scandalous
30:13
shockwave of John's gospel, where the eternal Word actually
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became flesh. Validating the physical creation
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while demanding we look past the physical to trust His Spirit.
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We unpacked Paul's massive theological framework, realizing
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that the flesh is not just our biological appetites.
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But our rebellious, self justifying human nature trying
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to establish its own righteousness apart from God's
30:36
grace. And finally, we saw how the
30:38
early apologists had to defend the goodness of the physical
30:41
body against the Gnostics, securing our hope in a physical,
30:44
glorified resurrection. Tracing that conceptual shift
30:48
across centuries of history appears that taking the time to
30:51
understand the linguistic background of a single word
30:53
opens up the entire theological framework of the Bible.
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It protects us from falling into ancient Pagan errors that still
30:59
circulate heavily in modern Christian culture today.
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And that leads me to a final provocative thought for you, the
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listener, to Mull over as we close this session.
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When you fall into sin. When you lose your temper with
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your kids, or act out of pride at work, or fail to love your
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neighbor and you shrug your shoulders and blame the flesh,
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what do you actually mean? Are you accidentally acting like
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an ancient Gnostic, blaming your physical body, your biology,
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your hormones, or your tiredness, as if the physical
31:28
machine is the real culprit? Or are you willing to look
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deeper utilizing the reformed lens we apply today?
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Recognizing that the true flesh is not your physical body at
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all, but your own heart. Stubborn desire to rule yourself
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instead of submission to the grace of God.
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It is a diagnostic question that changes how you fight your SIN
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entirely. Thank you for joining us for
31:49
this deep dive on reformed thinking.
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Keep reading, keep asking hard questions, and we will see you
31:53
next time.