New Testiment Studies

Look at the word ‘body’. It really does mean ‘body’. It is the same word as we shall find the Apostle using in verse 12 where he says, ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body’, and so on. In other words, we shall find that the Apostle in this entire section, chapters 6 and 7, has a great deal to say about the ‘body’. And I suggest that when he talks about ‘the body’ he always means the same thing. Unless you have a very good reason for saying that the term ‘the body’ does not mean the same thing in every case, then you must assume that it does mean the same thing in every case. And I fail to see any good reason for varying the meaning here.

Let us look at some of the verses in which the Apostle uses the term ‘body’. Take verse 12: ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body’. In verse 11 he begins to apply the doctrine he has been laying down; he begins making appeals to us. This is the appeal: ‘Reckon ye also yourselves therefore to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Then verse 12: ‘Let not sin therefore reign.’ Where? ‘In your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.’ Then go on to verse 13: ‘Neither yield ye your members.’ He means there the members of our body, the parts and portions of our body. ‘Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members (parts of your body) as instruments of righteousness unto God.’ Then go on to verse 19 and you will find this: ‘I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh; for as ye have yielded your members (parts of the body) servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members (these same members, parts of your body) servants to righteousness unto holiness.’ There you have the uses of the word ‘body’ in various forms in chapter 6.

Then in chapter 7, starting at verse 17, this is the context: ‘If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me’. You notice the distinction? ‘It is no longer I that do it’ — what is it then? — ‘it is sin that dwelleth in me’, Go on to verse 18: ‘For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.’ Go on to verse 20: ‘Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it.’ What is it then? It is ‘sin that dwelleth in me’. That is a repetition, more or less, of verse 17. And Paul continues: ‘I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law.’ Where is it? ‘In my members’ — in parts and portions of my body — ‘warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members’. And then, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ — this body, the members of which are doing this to me, and dragging me down. ‘Who shall deliver me from this body of death?’ Thus we have very striking uses of this word ‘body’ which we have here in this sixth verse of the sixth chapter.

But we have not yet finished. Go on now to chapter 8 and start at verse 10: ‘If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’ The contrast is between the body and the Spirit. Verse 11: ‘But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you’. How wonderful, he says, that even your mortal body is going to be quickened and raised eventually! Then in verse 12 he goes on: ‘Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh’; and in verse 13, ‘For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’ He really means ‘body’ there; he is not talking about sinful flesh, he uses the term ‘body’ and means ‘body’. Go on to verse 23, where he is looking forward to the final consummation, and he says: ‘And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption.’ What is that? ‘To wit, the redemption of our body’.

You notice that in this great section, chapters 6, 7, and right on to 8, the Apostle is very concerned about the body. My suggestion is that the meaning of the word ‘body’ in verse 6 is identical with the meaning of the word ‘body’ in all those other verses. Take one further example, chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. Here we have an example of a great exhortation that follows in the light of all the doctrine he has been expounding. He says, ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God’. Again Paul means the literal body. I argue, therefore, that the use of this word ‘body’ here in chapter 6, where he talks about ‘the body of sin’ is identical with the use of the term body in all those other verses.

What then does the term ‘the body of sin’ mean? It means the body, our physical body, of which sin has taken possession. Otherwise stated, ‘the body of sin’ means ‘sin as it dwells in us in our present embodied condition’. We must be quite clear about this. The Apostle is not referring to the body as such, in and of itself, but he is referring to the body as the sphere in which sin and death still reign in us.

Here is the vital distinction as I see it, the distinction between ‘I myself as a personality’ and ‘my body’. The meaning of the term ‘the body of sin’ is, that sin still reigns and rules, not in me, not over me, but it tends to do so over my body. We are treading here on delicate, not to say dangerous ground; and you will find that some of the great commentators are afraid to say what I have just said. The reason is that they feel that if they say that, they will be exposing themselves to the charge of saying, ‘If we say that, are we not saying that sin is something material?‘. There are false teachings, Hinduism and similar teachings, which teach that sin is material, and that it dwells in our bodies; and that therefore our bodies are essentially evil. Their teaching is that the body is the source of all sin and evil. Salvation therefore means the liberation of the spirit from the body; and so they regard death as the way of salvation. Some of them talk about ‘Reincarnation’. There are people who call themselves Christian who believe that kind of thing in these days. That is what such religions teach, that the body is essentially sinful, that sin is something material which dwells in a man’s body, that the whole trouble with our lives is that we have these evil, sinful bodies, and that we should long to be liberated out of them.

That is not what I am saying. It is a false teaching which I utterly reject. What then do I mean? When man sinned, when Adam sinned, sin obtained complete mastery over him. We have seen that clearly in chapter 5 verses 12 to 21. Sin dominated man’s life — the whole of him, body, mind and spirit. But, in particular, it had this effect — and this is true still of every man who is not a Christian, this is true of every one who is still in Adam — that his life was dominated by the body, by these powers, these ‘instruments’ these ‘members’ that are in the body. They control him whereas he should control them. That is man ‘in sin’, that is man ‘in Adam’. Sin is in control; he is under the dominion of sin, the rule and the reign of sin. Man in sin is, as it were, upside- down. The material, animal part of him is controlling him; his body is supreme and he is governed by it. As this Apostle puts it, in writing to the Ephesians, ‘We all had our conversation in times past’ in that way, obeying the lusts of the flesh, ‘fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind’ (Chapter 2: 2, 3). That is the kind of life that is lived by all who are not Christian, all who are in sin, all who are in Adam.

But in Christ that is no longer the case. What is the position of the Christian? It is this. Let me put it in the first person singular. I myself — because of my union with Christ, because I have died with Him, because I have been buried with Him, because I have risen again with Him — I myself am dead to sin as a realm and reign, I have finished with it, it has nothing to do with me. But though that is its relationship to me, it still has a good deal to do with my body. I myself am already in Christ, ‘seated in the heavenly places’ with Him. That is what I am told about myself. I died with Him, I was buried with Him, I have risen with Him, I have ascended with Him, I am seated with Him in the heavenly places. I am. The old man has gone. I am no longer that man; I am a new man in Christ Jesus. That is what is true about me. But though that is the truth about me, it is not yet the truth about my body, my mortal body. Sin is still in my mortal body, in my members, working as ‘a law in my members’, having its effect upon my ‘instruments’, ‘my members’, the parts of my body.

That, I suggest, is what the Apostle means by the term ‘the body of sin’. Sin remains in its influence upon the body. I myself as a being, a spiritual being, am entirely and eternally outside the realm of sin’s influence; but it has pleased God in His eternal wisdom to leave sin in the body. There is a kind of parallel with this in the Old Testament. God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt. He took them across the Red Sea, through the wilderness, across Jordan, and gave them the promised land. But He left certain of the nations in that promised land, and His people had to struggle with them. It seems to me that we have a very wonderful parallel there between God’s way of dealing with His ancient people on that level, and God’s way of dealing with His people now on the spiritual level. The body is not yet delivered from the effects of sin and the Fall — but I am delivered. So the Apostle takes us on from step to step and stage to stage.

I trust that it is clear that I am not teaching that the body is essentially and inherently sinful. That is not what I am saying. What I am asserting is that sin which formerly governed the whole of my personality is now only governing — or trying to govern — the bodily part of me. I in spirit, I as a soul, I as a personality am delivered; I am dead to sin. That was the Apostle’s original proposition, you remember: ‘How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?’ This is a most vital and essential distinction. Let us be clear about the body. The body in and of itself is not sinful. The body has these various parts and portions — Paul calls them its ‘members’ — the instincts, the propensities, and so on. Now there is nothing sinful in that, in and of itself. Look at the Lord Jesus Christ, He had a body. Let us never forget that the Lord Jesus Christ in His body as a man had the same body as we have, He had the same instincts, every one of them. If it had not been so, He would not have been truly a man. We are told that He ‘was tempted in all points like as we are’. In other words, the devil tried to tempt Him along the line of all His natural instincts. We sometimes do not realize that. But I repeat, ‘He was tempted in all points like as we are’. And what the devil does is to come to us, and to tempt us along the line of our natural instincts, and the various drives and urges and powers of our body.

We must draw this distinction therefore. There is nothing wrong in the body itself as such; there is nothing wrong with all these instincts — nothing! There have been false teachers in the past who have said that some of these natural instincts are sinful. There have been those who have regarded the sex instinct, for instance, as inherently and essentially sinful. It is not so. It is God who put it in us as a vital part of the body. There is nothing wrong in sex. Wrong comes in when sex dominates the whole person, instead of being kept in its right position, and put to its right use. The same is true with regard to the hunger instinct, and all these instincts. If you eat too much it is equally sinful; but do you condemn the fact that you feel the need of food simply because some people eat too much and make gluttons of themselves. It is equally monstrous to do that with respect to sex. Let us not forget that the Lord Jesus Christ was truly a man with a real body, that he had all the powers and propensities and faculties of a male human being, and that ‘He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.’ [Hebrews 4:15].

What then was the difference between the Lord Jesus Christ in the body and every one of us? It was this, that we are born in sin, and ‘shapen in iniquity’ [Psalm 51:5]. He was born holy — ‘that holy thing which shall be born of thee’ [Luke 1:35]. Every one of the instincts, and all His powers and faculties and propensities, were in the right proportion and kept in their right places; hence the devil could not succeed when he tempted Him to sin. But it is otherwise with us. We are born with a wrong bias, we are born with the bodily elements predominating, tyrannizing over us, running away with us. We therefore have to contend with lust. Our Lord never had to contend with lust, there was no evil lust in Him. The devil tried to tempt Him to lust but he never succeeded. But we are creatures of lust, we are born such; and that is because we are born ‘in Adam’ and because we inherit his fallen nature.

So I am not teaching that the body is essentially evil, or that Sin is something that resides in the body only, and that the body as such is sinful. Not at all! But I am saying that sin still has its Power over the body even in the man who is ‘in Christ’. The man himself is delivered, but his body is not yet delivered, and that is Why the Apostle says, ‘We are waiting for the adoption’, ‘we are longing for the adoption’. What is it? ’…to wit, the redemption of our body’ [Romans 8: 23]. That is yet to come; it has not yet been experienced by us.

Let me put it in yet another way. I suggest that this term ‘the body of sin’ means the same as the term ‘the flesh’ which we shall find the Apostle using later. ‘The flesh’ does not mean the body in and of itself; but it does mean the body as it is being used and tyrannized over by sin. It means the body as it is possessed by sin and evil; it is the body as sin dwells in it during this earthly life. We can therefore express the Apostle’s teaching in this way. ‘Knowing this, that our old man, our old humanity, was crucified with him, that — this is one of the results and one of the purposes and the objects — that this hold of sin upon us, even in the body, might be rendered null and void and ineffective.’ This is a tremendous conception.

What is the object of salvation? It is that we may be rid entirely and completely of sin and its effects. Adam was once perfect. There was no sin in him at all; and Adam in his state of innocence was able to use all the instincts of his body in a natural and normal manner without being sinful. But as the result of his rebellion and sin he became un-natural, no longer balanced, and the body began to predominate and to tyrannize and to control, so that we, his offspring, do not even think straightly. The mind, after all, is one of the functions of the body. It is through the brain that it works; and all these things have been affected by sin and are governed by it. But the object of salvation is to deliver us from the tyranny of sin — every part of it. The body itself is going to be emancipated and set free. That is what the Apostle is saying — ‘that the body of sin might be destroyed’, might be made inert, might be annulled, might be rendered ineffective, might be reduced to a condition of impotence. So he does not mean that the body is going to be destroyed. He is saying that this is something that can happen to us now. The object of salvation is that even while we are yet in this world we may more and more approximate to the condition that Adam was in before he fell, to the condition that is to be seen in our blessed Lord and Saviour Himself, that we may live even while still on earth more and more as the Lord Jesus Christ lived in the body while He was here on earth. It does not mean that our bodies [have got] to be destroyed before we can [essentially] be fully redeemed. [No, no,] the Apostle says this should be evident more and more while we are still here.[1] Actually it will not happen to us completely and perfectly until our bodies have been glorified. That is why he says that we look forward to this ‘adoption’, that is ‘the redemption of our body’.

The Apostle was so much concerned about this that he refers to it in other places. Take, for example, the thrilling statement at the end of the third chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians ‘Our conversation is in heaven’: ‘our citizenship is in heaven’ [verse 20]. ‘I myself’, he says, ‘though I am still alive in this world, am a citizen of heaven. That is where I belong, that is where my citizenship is. I am a stranger here.’ We as Christians are ‘a colony of heaven’; this world is not our homeland; and from heaven we also ‘look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ’. Why do we look for Him and await His coming? We are there with Him in spirit, seated with Him in heavenly places; our citizenship is there, but now here on earth we are looking for His coming. Why? For this reason: ‘Who shall change our vile body’ — and this is not a figurative expression; Paul really does mean the physical body, as is always the case when he uses this term — ‘Who shall change our vile body’ — or if you prefer the translation, ‘Who shall change this, the body of our humiliation’ — ‘that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body’ — ‘like unto the body of His glorification’ — ‘according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself’. There is a day coming, says the Apostle, when even my body shall have been delivered from the final effects and influences of the reign and the rule of sin. Not yet! but it is coming. Even here and now, as I understand this, the evil effect of sin upon my body should be lessening, but finally I shall have a glorified body. I myself, in Christ, am already glorified — ‘Whom he hath called, them he hath also justified, and whom he hath justified, them he hath also glorified’ [Romans 8:30]. I am glorified, and a day is coming when my body shall be glorified. That is the argument.

So in this sixth verse of the sixth chapter the Apostle is really explaining the ultimate objective behind my ‘old man’ being crucified with Christ. My old man was crucified with Him, that I might be entirely delivered even in the body where sin still reigns. How monstrous it is, therefore, he says, to suggest, as some are doing, that we continue in sin that grace might abound! The Whole object of grace and of salvation is to deliver us from sin in every part — in personality, and finally even in the body. How can anyone suggest, therefore, that this is a teaching which says ‘Let us continue in sin that grace may abound’?

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