Prayer: Lord, You know how much we need You. We need You so that we can live You. Even tonight we need You so that we can understand You. We need You so that we can see You. Thank You, Lord, You are not only our life, but also our person. Lord, we do have You as our person living in us and with us as one. Now we trust in You for the utterance, for the seeing, while we will be speaking. Lord, do show us Your vision through Your speaking and cover each one of us. We thank You for Your precious blood, and we thank You for Your anointing. Your anointing is our trust. Lord, do anoint every one of us. Amen.
In this message we will still be on Romans 8:10: “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is life because of righteousness.” In the last message we pointed out that in Romans 8:10 you could see two histories: the history of the flesh and the history of our spirit. Of course, the word “flesh” is not used in Romans 8:10; rather, it speaks of the body being dead because of sin. But every verse from verse 3 through verse 9 speaks of the flesh.
Two other verses, 2 Corinthians 4:10-11, also speak of the body and the flesh: “Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be manifested in our body. For we who live are always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be manifested in our mortal flesh.” These two verses refer to the same thing: that the life of Jesus might be manifested. Verse 10 says that the life of Jesus might be manifested in our body, and verse 11 says that the life of Jesus might be manifested in our mortal flesh. Here you have to admit that body and flesh are synonyms referring to the same thing. But whenever you would consider these two as synonyms referring to the same thing, you must add a word: death or dead or mortal. For example, in Romans 8:10, it says that the body is dead. In 2 Corinthians 4:11, it says the mortal flesh. Mortal means dying or death.
Then Romans 8:11 speaks of mortal bodies. This means that without the designation of death, the body is not a synonym with the flesh. The body is the body created by God; flesh is something corrupted. God did not create a flesh; He only created a body. But Satan came into the members of this body. Romans 7:23 tells us clearly that the law of sin is in the members of our body. When Adam ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that fruit entered into the members of his body. Whatever we eat enters into the members of our body. When it enters into the members of our body, it enters into our body, because our body is composed with the members. So the body is created by God, but sin as a personified matter, Satan himself, entered into man, into his body. Since then man’s body created by God became corrupted and ruined. That corrupted and ruined body is the flesh. The body originally created by God is not dead, but the corrupted body is dead. The dead body which is corrupted is flesh.
Romans 8:3-9 are a full description of the flesh. If you would know what is the flesh, you have to know these seven verses. Many Christians who read these seven verses, however, haven’t seen the description of the flesh. They read the verses, but they don’t see the real central figure. They don’t see the personified person. In those seven verses, the writer speaks of the flesh again and again, but when he comes to verse 10 he suddenly interchangeably uses another word for flesh—the dead body or the mortal body. It is not the created body. The created body is not dead; the created body is very good. But the mortal body is the corrupted one. This mortal and corrupted body has another term, which is its proper term. That is the flesh. Flesh is the proper term for the dead body, because the dead body is flesh. The mortal body is flesh. You have to realize that if our body had never been ruined and corrupted, our body would not be mortal and our body could never be dead. It is not the good body created by God that is synonymous with the flesh, but it is the mortal body, the dead body, that is a synonym to the flesh.