Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] You will find the apostle everywhere of this same character: denouncing what the flesh does in a manner that makes it look as though he condemns the flesh as such — but you must not think so merely on the prompting of other, loosely connected impressions. [2] For when he states that those existing "according to the flesh" are unable to satisfy God, he immediately steers that skewed reading back toward the full truth by adding, "But you do not exist according to the flesh, rather according to the spirit." [3] By refusing to those he had just termed "according to the flesh" the claim that they truly stood "according to the flesh," he was making clear he meant they were not living "by the deeds proper to the flesh" — and that, ultimately, it is not people existing in bodily form who are unable to satisfy God, but those conducting themselves in a carnal fashion; while those who, though placed in the flesh, walk according to the spirit, do please God. [4] And again he says the body indeed is dead — but on account of transgression, just as the spirit is life on account of righteousness: and by opposing life to death, both located in the flesh, he undoubtedly promised life there from righteousness in the very place where he had marked out death from transgression. [5] For it would be pointless for him to oppose life to death unless that life exists exactly where the thing he opposed it to exists, in order precisely to drive that death out of the body. Further, if life drives death out of the body, it cannot accomplish this unless it penetrates into the very place where the thing it is expelling resides. [6] Why should I tie myself in knots when the apostle states it so plainly? "If the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus dwells in you, he who raised up Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit who dwells in you": [7] so that even if someone insists the "mortal body" here means the soul, since he cannot deny that this applies to the flesh as well, he is forced to admit the resurrection of the flesh too, in keeping with its shared condition. [8] And the passage that follows still teaches you that it is the flesh's deeds standing condemned, not the flesh in itself: "So then, brothers," he says, "we owe nothing to bodily existence, that we should conduct ourselves by its standard: for if you conduct yourselves by the standard of the flesh you are bound to die, yet if through the Spirit you put an end to the practices of the body, you will live." [9] Further — to answer point by point — if salvation is promised to those placed in the flesh who nevertheless live by the spirit, then it is no longer the flesh that stands opposed to salvation, but the activity of the flesh; and once that activity of the flesh, the cause of death, is excluded, the flesh itself is shown to be safe, free of the cause that brings death. [10] "For the rule of the life-giving spirit found in Christ Jesus," he says, "has released me from the rule of wrongdoing and of death" — the very law which, he had already told us, dwells in our members. So then our members will no longer be held by the law of death, since they are no longer held by transgression, from which they have been set free. [11] "For what the law was unable to accomplish, hindered as it was by the weakness of the body, God did — sending his own Son bearing a form like our sin-tainted flesh, and, on account of sin, passed sentence on sin within the flesh" — not the flesh in sin: for a house is not condemned along with its occupant; indeed, he said that sin "dwells" in our body. [12] But once sin is condemned, the flesh is acquitted — just as, had it not been condemned, it would have been held bound to the law of death and to transgression. Thus even where he called "the mind of the flesh" death, and further, "enmity against God," he never called the flesh itself that. [13] "To whom, then," you will ask, "is 'the mind of the flesh' to be charged, if not to the substance itself?" Certainly — if you can prove that the flesh has any thinking of its own. But if without the soul there is no sensation at all, you will understand that "the mind of the flesh" must be referred to the soul, only sometimes attributed to the flesh because it is exercised on account of the flesh and through the flesh. [14] And that is why he says sin "dwells" in the flesh: because the soul too, the source from which sin is introduced, is a tenant of the flesh — a flesh that has indeed been put to death, but under sin's name, not its own. [15] For elsewhere too he says, "How is it that you pass judgment as though still living in the world?" — writing not to the dead, but to those who ought to stop living according to the ways of the world.