Romanos 7:18

‘For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing, for to will is present with me, but to do what is good is not.'

While up to this point what he has been describing has been of the flesh (‘I am fleshly') and not of the Spirit (‘the Law is spiritual'), technical terms have been avoided. But now he begins to introduce them. Initially he speaks of ‘my flesh' as something in which nothing good dwells (thus confirming that ‘fleshly' means ‘of the flesh', and therefore that ‘spiritual' means ‘of the Spirit'). As a consequence of what he has said, Paul recognises that in his flesh, that part of him which is carnal, there dwells no good thing. He recognises that within himself is a fleshly tendency which has nothing good about it. That is why, at times, even when he wills to do good he finds himself not doing it. He can will to do what is good, but finds it impossible to do it all the time. And this is because of his ‘desires which spring from the flesh'. The ‘flesh' is not his body as such. It is the principle of illicit desire which lies within him which affects the whole of him (‘in me'). Thus up to now with a casual reading we might have thought that Paul was simply ‘fleshly'.

However, he now makes clear that ‘the flesh' is not all that there is to him. ‘In me,  that is in my flesh, there is no good thing.' He may be fleshly (Romanos 7:14), and no good thing might dwell in his flesh, but the qualifying phrase ‘that is, in my flesh' indicates that we must watch out for other aspects of what he is which have not up to this point been dealt with. And he will now begin to describe these. The flesh does not have all its own way. This makes it clear that in his analysis he is concentrating on different aspects of his behaviour as they are affected at times by his make-up and situation, not with a chronological sequence. He wants initially to establish his fleshliness so that he can then deal with what counters that fleshliness.

So up to this point the thought has been based solely on the contrast between ‘spiritual' and ‘fleshly' (Romanos 7:14), with the emphasis being on the effects of his own fleshliness. As a whole Paul has studiously avoided supplying any technical word to describe what is in him which is contrary to ‘the flesh', (the whole passage is based on Paul's fleshliness - Romanos 7:14). The first instances to the contrary will be found in Romanos 7:22 where he speaks of ‘the inward man' (Romanos 7:22), followed by references to ‘the mind' (Romanos 7:23; Romanos 7:25).