Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul's Greatest Letter

by Tom Wright

for Paul, the resurrection body is not sarx but soma. Soma, which we normally render ‘body’, is for Paul the bridge term. Paul’s anthropological terms are best approached as ways of referring to the whole human being but from one particular angle or with one particular aspect, rather than supposing they refer to different parts of the same human. Thus the Greek word soma denotes our whole public personal reality – the whole self, the body, in fact almost what we mean by the ‘person’. This soma can still give in to sin. That is why, perhaps surprisingly, Paul can speak in verse 13 of the need to ‘put to death the deeds of the body’. But it can also be the locus of our ‘living sacrifice’ as in Romans 12.1–2. The ‘body’, the whole self, is what we are to give in service to God and to our neighbour. And, decisively, the body, not the ‘flesh’, is what will finally be raised from the dead, as in verse 11.