Jesus said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Elsewhere He said, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."

Peter wrote, "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." "For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."

But buying for oneself is not quite so altruistic. Furthermore, as you do well for the stranded homeless motorist, you tempt the gas-selling restauranteur. Isn't there a way to help the needy without stumbling the greedy?

Those texts do seem to have a dualistic flavor.

It's interesting that prior to being exposed to Greek philosophies the concepts of flesh and spirit seemed so simple.

The flesh refers to our bodies with it's needs, tiredness, hunger, etc. etc. The spirit is the intelligent, thinking, and emotional part of the human -- basically the thinking processes of the mind.
One is dependant upon the other. The processes of the mind cannot function without the body. At death we are told, the thoughts perish -- that is the END. The body can somewhat live without the full function of the mind, but it's soon apparent that something is wrong, and if the mind shuts down completely, the body dies. Body and Spirit are both necessary for a fully functioning human being.

Spirit is also at times equated with "breath". The breath of life. It is this breath of life that enables the fleshly mass of our brains to think, plan, reason as well as send out all kinds of signals to our bodies so they function correction.

It really isn't so hard to understand unless one gets into the Greek perversions of reasoning, that somehow our thoughts and who we are isn't dependant upon the body that God created in such a marvelous way that we can reason, and think, and plan, and experience life.

Spiritualism has been around for most of earth's history, and it wants us to believe differently, so fallen angels can impersonate the dead.

Here Jesus is speaking of the work of the HOLY SPIRIT.
Our "spirit" is still our minds and thoughts,
We are willing (that refers to our wishes)
But the flesh is weak (natural inclinations keep us back)



Obviously this is not talking about a literal heart, Again it is talking about giving us a "new heart" or new sense of love for God and love for mankind (the very foundation of the ten commandments)-- our emotions are new, desiring to follow Christ.
A new spirit -- is new thought patterns, new way of reasoning that is not based on worldly norms.



Compare:
"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved" (Ephesians 2:4-5)

Jesus Christ who was sinless, died once on the cross for sinners, and was resurrected to reconcile sinners with God.

He died but He was raised to life by the Holy Spirit -- and we who dead in sins must be raised to spiritual life by the Holy Spirit.




When had the gospel been preached to them, while they were still alive or while they were already dead? The purpose of preaching to them was that they "live according to God in the spirit".
But apparently they kept "living in the flesh" in other words they were not "reborn" by the holy Spirit" thus they are judged according to men in the flesh.


You see this all the way through --
living according to the flesh is letting natural inclinations rule.
living according to the Spirit, is letting the Holy Spirit change our "spirit" our minds, our thoughts.

The belief in soul sleep is more foundational than many realize. Not only does it help us to avoid spiritualism but also the whole end time understanding rests rather heavily on this belief.

I just thought of something. Could this verse be talking about those who were physically alive but dead in sin?

It is a matter of the spirit versus the letter of the law. Do well on the Sabbath.

And that leads us to the debate over dualism. One of the biggest gripes against dualism is that it leads to the attitude that as long as the spirit is "right" the actions of the body are irrelevant. It also implies that He who wrote the letter of the law did not quite grasp the spirit.

In our context, you are saying that it is perfectly fine to be a spiritual stumbling block to store owner Steve and waiter Walter as long as you are spiritually helping homeless Harry. Perhaps the root of the problem is that you did not go to the store on Friday, leaving you with the avoidable problem of hurting one whle helping the other.

Furthermore, hungry homeless Harry neither explains nor excuses why Charlie church member and his family/friends eat at the restaurant after church.

Happy Sabbath.