When the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He was crucified in His flesh. The flesh, to which the Triune God was joined, implies a lot. This flesh implies all of us. All of us are flesh. Therefore, the New Testament says that no flesh can be justified by the works of the law (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16). No flesh here means no man, no person. As long as we are a descendant of Adam, we are flesh. The entire human race is flesh.

We need to consider the use of the word flesh in the Bible. After God created Adam, He put Adam to sleep, took a rib out of his side, and built that rib into a woman. When Adam awoke, he saw Eve and declared, "She is flesh of my flesh." Adam was saying that she was flesh and that he also was flesh. She was not something separate from Adam. Thus, both the male and the female are flesh. At that time, the flesh did not have any sin; it was pure and clean. But by the time of Genesis 6, the Lord said that man's sin had become very great and that man had become flesh (vv. 5-7, 12). In Genesis 6, flesh is not used in a positive sense but in a negative sense. From Genesis 6 the word flesh throughout the Bible mostly refers to the negative sense.

In 1 Corinthians Paul used the words fleshy and fleshly (3:1, 3). Fleshy is worse than fleshly. The Corinthians became not only fleshly but also fleshy. Fleshy denotes being made of flesh; fleshly denotes being influenced by the nature of the flesh and partaking of the character of the flesh. The apostle considered the Corinthian believers to be totally of the flesh, to be made of the flesh, and to be just the flesh. We may not be fleshy, but much of the time we are fleshly. This is because we live, act, and walk not according to our spirit but according to our flesh.

John 1:14 tells us that the Lord Jesus became flesh. Paul in Romans 8:3 said that God sent His Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin. By the time of Genesis 6, man had become flesh, something utterly sinful. Man became the flesh of sin. Christ became flesh, yet He was only in the likeness of the flesh of sin. Sin was not within Him (2 Cor. 5:21). In His flesh, in His humanity, there was no sin. He was only in the likeness of the flesh of sin. We thank the Lord for this revelation in Romans 8:3.

When Christ as the divine person became incarnated, He joined Himself in His divinity with us, the flesh. When He became flesh, He started His union with man. He identified God with man. This means that He brought God into union with man. He brought God into humanity. Incarnation brought divinity into humanity.