A better way to speak of the power of sin comes directly out of Paul. He speaks of the flesh* and its passions and desires. By using such language, we can speak accurately about sin and also discover concrete ways to defeat sin since we will know what it is.
We sometimes speak about our sinful nature. Which of course we have. The law of sin uses our flesh to further its aims (Rom 7:25). Yet one possible liability with using the phrase “sinful nature” entails what Paul Dirks recently described as a competition of opposing natures.
I would add that the phrase sinful nature implies that sin has a substantial nature. In other words, it would mean that sinful natures have a created existence because the only things that exist are those created by God. God did not create sin, and therefore it is impossible for sin to have substantial existence. Rather, sin only corrupts God’s good creation like rust on metal. It is not a thing but a corrosion of things.
A better way to speak of the power of sin comes directly out of Paul. He speaks of the flesh* and its passions and desires. By using such language, we can speak accurately about sin and also discover concrete ways to defeat sin since we will know what it is.
Speaking of a sinful nature as such can often obscure sin’s real power by making it sound like a dualistic force that we have to fight in a battle like in the ancient teaching of Manichaeism.
That is not the case. And here is why.
Flesh
Paul writes, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (Rom 7:5). Here, the apostle speaks about “living in the flesh” (that is, before the Spirit comes). He notes that when “sinful passions” encounter God’s standards for life, they entice us to choose evil over good.
It is worth pausing here for a moment to consider what a human person is, or else it will become almost impossible to grasp what Paul here means. At the most basic level, body and soul unite together in a human person. We have flesh, bones, nerves, and reflexes in our flesh. We have a mind, consciousness, and will in our soul. Yet since body and soul unite irreducibly in a human person, our whole person shares in both body and soul.
We can recognize a certain kind of hierarchy here, however. If we hunger, we can deny ourselves by our minds and wills. It may be hard to resist the experience of hunger, caused by hormones in our bodies, but we can.
The harmonious agreement of body and soul, however, fell into disarray when two humans decided to gain the attribute of choice between good and evil—to be like God. Through eating of the tree of good and evil, Adam and Eve did gain the ability to know both. They gained a new freedom, but that freedom only led to corruption and death and misery. God exiled them from the tree of life so that they would enter into death.
Since death never means the cessation of life, but only the cessation of one mode of existence into another, death in Genesis meant something like corruption (cf. 1 Cor 15:42). It meant separation from the tree of life, from divine life itself. Hence, eternal life in Jesus Christ restores to us what Adam lost (e.g., John 17:3).
All that to say, our wills can now choose evil—we gained the so-called gnomic will. And through gaining, we have lost much. Since the seeming cause of our ability to choose good and evil lies in our corrupt flesh with its passions, we really have gained by loss.
In short, our flesh lives in corruption which means a state of death (Eph 2:1, 3). The ability to choose evil over good means that humans, when confronted with the law of God, have the choice and the desire to disobey. Now, we need to understand the passions and desires of the flesh for a fuller understanding of the human person and our relationship with sin.
Passions and Desires
Paul uses two words for the passions of the flesh. The first word is pasxein, and it signals that passions afflict us—it also means suffering. The second word is epithumia, which refers to our desires. Both words have a neutral sense but often associate with sin because the passions and desires within our flesh prefer evil over good. We can thank Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve for this.
In Romans 1, Paul provides a threefold description of sin through echoing the Genesis 3 Fall story. First, he shows how mankind turned away from God and so their hearts become darkened and reason turned futile (Rom 1:21). God therefore gave them over to their heart’s epithumiais (desire; 1:24). He adds that God also handed them over to “dishonorable passions” (1:26).
In the same verse, he notes that such passions are contrary to nature. This is because God did not create us to have a gnomic will that could choose between good and evil. Rather, we gained that as a loss through Adam’s Fall.
In sum, humankind reasons futilely, lacks light in their hearts, and enjoys desires and passions that conflict with God’s law.
When Paul later speaks about human existence and again echoes Genesis 3, he explains, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (Rom 7:5). In Romans 7:8, Paul uses epithumia to communicate the idea of “coveting.” He explains, “But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness [epithumian]. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.”
