The Dual Meaning of Scripture in Bodily and Spiritual Contexts

It might be objected that Scripture employs identical terms in dual senses—sometimes referring to physical realities, at other times to spiritual truths—just as the encounter with the Samaritan woman presents water and drinking in the same setting, now signifying bodily thirst, now the soul’s longing. Likewise, when heat is mentioned, the reference shifts according to context. Thus, it should not surprise us that the apostle declares we have died with Christ, not to the ordinary death shared by all, but to a death from which his dominion no longer extends—a death now termed the ‘middle’ death. Another interpreter may argue that the death in view here is the sovereign death that Christ overcame, none other than his adversary, whose foreshadowing appears in the great sea creature prophesied against Jonah and lamented by Job, which he nonetheless curses—the one destined to be seized by the hand of the coming deliverer. Moving toward that death in accordance with the season of the middle death, he spoke not because of that intermediate state, but because of the ultimate one: now my soul is shaken and deeply distressed, my soul drawing near to death. For as if entering his realm through those under his control, perhaps it was for this reason declared, ‘I brought you up from the dust of death.’ And he subjected himself to him, becoming obedient even unto death. Having been condemned in him, he condemned the sin residing in that death—just as a free person might enslave himself to the enemy commander, so that, by gaining access, he could liberate his people’s economic bondage from the threat posed by that foe, through ambush slaying the commander and his forces. For the one who acts thus is not regarded as a captive taken, but as one who employs wisdom with excellence. So too Christ gave himself into servitude, that none of his disciples, instructed by the word, might become enslaved to death. As Scripture affirms, he abolished the one who held the power of death, namely the devil, and what follows. Perhaps he also surrendered himself to death, about to be dominated, flowing to rescue those under his sway, and instead offering himself over, that afterward he might assume command and abolish death. Romans 6:12-14: Therefore, let sin not reign in your mortal body so as to obey its desires, nor offer your members as instruments of wickedness to sin; but present yourselves to God as those raised from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin will not have dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Earlier he said that just as sin once reigned in death, now he does not repeat that, but says, ‘Let sin not reign in your mortal body,’ teaching that just as a throne and kingdom belong to sin, so our mortal body is its domain. For the mind set on the flesh is hostility toward God, and again, the mind set on the flesh is death. Moreover, all sins are works of the flesh, which the apostle has explicitly named. Among them, he has enumerated and taught the choices, that these too are works of the flesh, to free us from distraction, so that we do not imagine some things are works of the flesh while others are sins not of the flesh but either of soul or mind. But if anyone inquires how these choices belong among the works of the flesh, let it be said that they arise from the mind of the flesh, concerning which Paul states somewhere that he enters empty and is inflated under the mind of his flesh, yet does not lift up his head. And perhaps, when we sin while sin reigns in our mortal body, we are nothing other than that mortal body and flesh; for he does not say that my spirit remains in these people into the age because they are flesh. And this soul indeed seems not to endure, but either to become flesh through wickedness or spirit through virtue. For when it unites with the prostitute, it becomes flesh—a single entity.