The Flesh and The Spirit

Genesis 2:7 Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

God created a physical body for man to contact the physical world and to recieven and contain the physical things, like food. God created man's body in a pure way, without sin or evil. but in Genesis chapter 3, we see that Satan, the evil one injected himself with all his evil elements into man, by causing man to partake of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The result is that man's body become corrupted and contamintated, and was transmuted into the flesh. 

Romans 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves;

Romans  7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?

the Bible mentions the body as the body of sin, and the body of death. since it is written in the bible that the wages of sin is death, the issue of sin is death. Therefore, our body, which now has the element of sin, which is the devil himself within us, is the body of sin and the body of death. no matter how good, how kind, or how gentle our being is, our body, which has become the flesh, with all its evil lusts, is always with us, and can never be improved. we need to realise that our body is now just the flesh. our flesh is just the flesh, with no good dwells in the flesh. 

we may have a question. if the flesh is so evil and cannot be improved, then why does God not take away the flesh from us when we believe into Him? actually, God leaves the flesh with us for our good, becasue the flesh helps us and forces us to turn to the Lord, to call on His name, and to pray to Him in a desperate way. 

2 Timothy 4:22 The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.

the bible tells us that the Lord Jesus is with our spirit. when we believe into the Lord, He entered into us as the Spirit, and He will never forsake or leave us. but the problem is that, though we have the knowledge that the Lord is with us, with our spirit, we always forget to apply Him. we have been too used to living in our flesh. through the Lord is in our spirit, He actually, is a kind of "stranger" to us in our daily life. Therefore, the Lord has to use our flesh as a reminder, to force us to turn to the One who is in our spirit, to force us to learn to apply Him in everything. God's intention is to work Himself in Christ into our beging, so He gives us such an ugly helper, the flesh, to help us to keep turning to our spirit all the time. this is not a matter of being good or bad, but a matter of gaining Christ. 

a very helpful illustration we can see in the Bible is Jacob, the son of Isaac. Jacob began as a heel holder, a supplanter. but his whole life was under the constant dealing of the Spirit, by means of every person, and every event happening in his life, to transform him into Israel, the prince of God. Jacob had a lot of mistakes and failures, but all these things helped him to turn to the Lord, to not have confidence in his flesh, but to learn to submit to and trust in God. at the end of his life, he could say that God was the One who shephered all his life. this shows us that, because of God's wisdom, the flesh still remains with us, to force us to turn to the Lord, so that through all these conversations and fellowship, we will be gaining more and more of God. 

the two steps taken by the Lord

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality.

1 Corinthians 15:45 So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul”; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.

the first step the Lord took was for Him to become flesh. the bible does not say He became a man, but says He became flesh. just as the Lord said in John 3:14, typified by the bronze serpent made by Mose in the wilderness, the Lord took the form of flesh, but He did not know sin, and He condemned sin in the flesh on the cross. 

the second step took by the Lord was that, in resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit. when we believe into the Lord, this life-giving Spirit entered into our spirit, and dwells in our spirit. 

this Spirit who indwells our spirit has a purpose, which is shown in Ephesians 2:22, which says "In whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit." so we, referring to all the believers, are being built together into God's habitation in spirit. how does this building happen? it is by our growth in life. and our growth in life is caused by our eating and drinking of Christ in our spirit. we grow in our physical life by having meals everyday. our spiritual growth is also the same. Christ is our spiritual food and drink. in John 6, the Lord said that His flesh is our food; in John 7, the Lord cried out for all those who are thirsty to come to Him and to drink. so this is our primary and urgend need, to eat and drink, of Christ. study doctrines cannot help us grow. outward religious practices cannot help us grow. eating and drinking is the way. when we grow, we are being built into the dwelling place of God in spirit.