Body of Sin

Body of Sin. (Rom 6:6). If the body is the Prophetic Word, can it be said of sin? In a sense, yes, but not in the way the reader might imagine. The Word does not provide a perfect vision of transcendence, only an adequate one, just as the body is an adequate analog of the resurrection body.

Our present adequate, imperfect visual body is the body of potential misapplication, opacity of meaning, and struggle for meaning that is the result of the fall. It set for destruction. “Sin” is evil in the sense of implacable organic and behavioral obstacles to God that cannot be entirely reformed before the resurrection. It is also used in a less severe sense of noetic and scriptural static that interferes with a full apprehension of Christ that can otherwise be improved before the resurrection. The figure “body of sin” is then given to contrast the present body to the resurrection body rather than an implacable evil. The impulses of the body are destroyed so as not to tempt the individual to serve “body,” or that sin. The resurrection body is a pure, perfect “prophetic body” in the sense that it is a thing predicted by God’s word and is sure to become realized. Our teaching about sin through the “body” symbol is then not only about genetic sin, behavioral sin, and its removal from a resurrection body, but it is about the current difficulties of the prophetic scriptures as a necessary but inferior view of God.

The “body of sin” is a body transitory and limited, both positionally and organically, giving some clarity and some obscurity in comparison to the beatific vision of God and the final state of God’s economy  (1 Co 13:12). The PW provides us with an adequate vision, a partial one, quite like the infirmities of the physical body and carnal mind which are a constant challenge to our hunger for a complete revelation.  Paul’s use of “body” is primarily about the carnal mind (8:6–7), not the body itself, the word “flesh” (sarx, v.8) covering both the carnal mind and body. Ours is mostly a noetic infirmity. Paul is being proleptic in saying, “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Now if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (Ro 6:5–7). This applies not only to the Person of Christ but to a perfect revelation of Christ that is now obscured by a fallen body.

If the spirit of Christ is in us, the power fo the carnal body, and the bondage of carnal thinking, although still operational, is counted dead because of sin (v.10). But it can be “quickened.” Abbot says this quickening means “sanctify,” but most put it as a future promised bodily resurrection by the Spirit. Both seem to apply. That is, it is not now destroyed, but counted as already destroyed by the assurance of the coming prophetic realization. Imputation is a proleptic concept As no aspect of the PW or the body are counted as evil, but only “in part,” we are not to allow its God-given challenges to command our passions for truth, but overcome them and build on its present opportunities for better vision of our love, Messiah, and His glory.