We have seen that the first cause of man's third fall was the mingling of evil spirits with humanity. Let us now consider the second cause. The second cause of this fall was that man had become flesh. Genesis 6:3 says, "And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for that he indeed is flesh" (Heb.). In the first fall, man did not exercise his spirit. In the second fall, he overexercised his soul. Cain knew nothing about his spirit, but overexercised his soul, inventing a new religion. In the third fall, man abused the fallen body and became flesh. Man not only failed to care for the spirit, but did not even care about his soul. Man neglected the intellect and reason in his soul.
Many people are in the same situation today. They do not care for the spirit, for the presence of God. Neither do they care for their soul, for their intellect or reason. They only fear the police. If you were to remove the National Guard or the police department, the flesh would come to the surface, caring nothing for the spirit, for human intellect or for man's reason. People would simply abuse their flesh and act nearly the same as animals. When man is in this condition, he has almost fallen to the uttermost. The first fall exposes man's not using the spirit, and the second fall exposes his overuse of the soul. Because of the overexercise of the soul, man fell further and began to abuse his body. Thus, man wholly became flesh.
The Bible reveals that the strongest and most evil enemy of God is our flesh. We see this unveiled in the book of Romans, especially in chapters seven and eight. The flesh is thoroughly and absolutely hated by God. God will not tolerate it. In a sense, God may tolerate our mistakes and transgressions, but He will never tolerate the flesh. Anything that issues out of our flesh is an insult to Him. At the time of the third fall, the entire human race became flesh. Thus, God stepped in and told His servant Noah that He was going to destroy that whole generation.
The process is not difficult to understand. The first step in the process was the fulfilling of the lusts of the flesh. When a person becomes flesh, he has no choice but to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. The result of fulfilling the lusts of the flesh is that man becomes evil and corrupt to the uttermost (6:5, 11-13). Although the Bible is very economical, not wasting any words, Genesis 6 a number of times says that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence (vv. 11-13). In the eyes of God, the earth was corrupt. It was not only evil, but corrupt to such a degree that God could not tolerate it any longer.