Flesh, spirit, body. What? In this passage, the words “flesh” and “body” are not interchangeable. To grasp what Paul is communicating, it is necessary to distinguish between the Greek words sarx and soma. Sarx translated into English as “flesh” and soma as “body.” The third operative term in this passage is pneuma or “spirit.”
What is confusing is not making this distinction. Such failure leads to bad teaching and bad teaching to bad, sometimes even harmful, praxis. After all, whether before or after the resurrection, to live “by the spirit” is to live in the body, that is, soma while not living in the flesh- sarx. The spiritual life is an embodied life. Otherwise, the Incarnation was in vain.
According to Saint Paul, those whose spirits are infused by the Holy Spirit are God’s children. As children, we can call God “Father.” Unlike Christ, we are not “begotten” of the Father. We are God’s children by adoption. Legally speaking, an adopted child is still a child and as such a coheir along with the begotten child. Hence, our inheritance is eternal life.
Prior to adoption, we were slaves to the flesh. But through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, we went from being slaves to sons and daughters. This is how God saves us.
At least in part, what it means to be enslaved to the flesh is to be enslaved to the inevitability of death and the fear it prompts. In terms of today’s Gospel, resurrection from the dead constitutes Christ’s ultimate healing. The fall was not merely the cause of physical death but also the cause of physical injury and illness.
Cistercians of Our Lady of Atlas Abbey, Algeria
By His death and resurrection, perhaps more than anything, Christ frees us from death and the fear of it. The importance of our freedom as God’s children is highlighted by Saint Paul’s repetition of this especially in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans.
Of Gods and Men is a 2011 movie about the Cistercian martyrs of Algeria. In the spring of 1996, nineteen monks from Our Lady of Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria, were abducted, tortured, and killed by Islamic extremists in the spring of 1996. In 2018, Pope Francis declared these 19 monks as “Blesseds,” the penultimate step before sainthood.
There is a scene in the film that serves as a beautiful example for the major theme of our readings for today. In the scene, Brother Luc, who is a medical doctor and a monk, provides medical services for the almost exclusively Muslim inhabitants of Tibhirine, Algeria, tells his abbot that he is committed to remaining at the monastery despite the danger of being killed by Islamic extremists or by the Algerian army.
“Throughout my career,” Frérè Luc tell his abbot, “I’ve met all sorts of different people. Including Nazis and even the devil.” He continues, “I’m not scared of terrorists, even less of the army. And I’m not scared of death. I’m a free man.”1 A bit later in the film, Brother Luc is shown embracing a mural of Jesus on the cross, the true sign of his freedom.
This is what is it looks like to live in what Saint Paul a few verses on in Romans 8 calls “the glorious freedom of the children of God.”2
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