What Paul then rejects in 5:16 is not knowledge of the historical Jesus, or the usefulness of such knowledge for theology, but a particular mode of knowing the Messiah. ‘According to the flesh’ (kata sarka) is a regular Pauline phrase denoting, among other things, the status, attitudes and theology of Jews and/or some Jewish Christians.124 The sort of Messiah they had wanted would be one who would affirm and underwrite their national aspirations. Instead, the true Messiah, Jesus, had been obedient to a different messianic vocation, in which the ‘flesh’ dies in order to rise again. The reason
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