Flesh

Flesh (basar in Hebrew; sarx in Greek) is a richly layered biblical term with at least four distinct usages. In its most basic sense it denotes a part of the body — muscle, tissue — or the whole body of a person or animal (Genesis 2:21; Psalm 102:5). Extended, it describes humanity as a whole in its creaturely, mortal aspect: "all flesh" means all living creatures, especially all human beings in their weakness and transience before God (Genesis 6:12; Isaiah 40:6: "All flesh is grass"). In a narrower social sense, "my flesh" means a close blood relative (Genesis 29:14).

The New Testament's use of sarx in Paul carries the additional and important sense of the human nature as the site of opposition to God — not the body as such, but the whole human personality oriented away from God, under the power of sin. "Flesh" in Romans 7–8, Galatians 5, and Ephesians 2 describes the anti-God principle in fallen human nature — "the desires of the flesh" opposing the Spirit. John's Gospel uses "flesh" differently: the incarnation is God's Word becoming flesh (John 1:14), taking on the full creaturely, mortal human condition — a use that stands in striking tension with the Pauline negative sense and guards both against docetism and against a purely negative evaluation of embodied humanity.