For what was impossible to the Law because it
was weak through the flesh (δια
της
σαρκος)—God,
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (εν ομοιωματι
σαρκος
αμαρτιας) on account
of sin (περι
αμαρτιας), condemned
sin in the flesh (την
αμαρτιαν
εν
τη
σαρκι) (Romans 8.3)
This affirmation respecting the Son’s assumption
of “the likeness of sinful flesh” appears as the climax to the Apostle’s account
of the experience of “sinful flesh”:
I am fleshly (σαρκινος), sold under sin (υπο την
αμαρτιαν). . . . I
know that in me—that is, in my flesh (εν τη
σαρκι
μου)—no good
dwells. . . . O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of
death? (Romans 7.14, 18, 24)
The “sinful flesh” (σαρξ αμαρτιας, a
descriptive genitive) of which Paul writes chapter 8, the flesh assumed by God’s
Son, is the same flesh of which Paul complains all through chapter 7. According
to Saint Paul, that is to say, the flesh assumed by the Son of God was identical
to our own. Assuming our likeness (εν ομοιωματι), he took
on “the flesh of sin”—σαρξ
αμαρτιας.
In view of the New Testament’s insistence that
Christ was without sin—and that death, consequently, had no hold on him—Paul’s description
of the incarnation in this text of Romans seems unusually bold. It is valuable
for its clear assertion that the Son, in the incarnation, assumed our humanity with
the weaknesses and disadvantages of its fallen state. (Patrick Henry
Reardon, Romans: An Orthodox Commentary [Yonkers, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2018], 45-46)