BODY AND FLESH

I am currently wrestling with the way Paul uses the Greek word "soma" (usually translated as "body") and the word "sarx" (usually translated "flesh"). And I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the use of the two words in Colossians - to say nothing of their appearances in other books. 

It would be nice if there was a clearcut difference, but they often seem interchangeable. For instance, Paul says in Col 2:5, "Though I am absent in body (but sarx!), yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ."

And although "body" seems to have a generally positive connotation, "flesh" seems neutral OR negative.

Or maybe it's accurate to say that "flesh" is neutral but has the capacity for truly negative influence on a person.

Here's a neutral use: Col 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

In 2:1, Paul speaks of those in Colossae who have not seen him "face to flesh"!

Some Bible versions like to translate sarx/flesh as "sinful nature". But in Colossians, Jesus has a sarx!

Col 1:22 [Jesus] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

So it can't be the flesh in and of itself that is the problem.

In Colossians 2:11-13, the problem seems to be having a flesh which is uncircumcised. 

Col 2:13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.

One website puts it this way:

"To walk by the flesh (sarx), is to walk by what we see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. It is living by our senses rather than trusting the Spirit within us. It is basing our attitudes and actions on old earthy habits rather than basing them upon what God says is true." (Larry Eiss)

If that is accurate, then walking by the "flesh" is more or less equivalent to what Adam and Eve unleashed by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - in essence deciding for themselves which is which. 

So when Scripture says it is impossible for those who walk according to the flesh to please God, it is simply stating a logical implication contained within the center of the overall narrative flow of Image--> Broken Image --> Restored Image.