Where Western Christianity has tended to interpret sarx as a depraved and congenital “sin nature,” the Orthodox see sarx as mortality—our corruptibility and perishability in the face of death. And it’s this vulnerability, Paul explains, that makes us susceptible to sin. The idea here is that we are less wicked than we are weak. As sarx—as mortal animals—we are playthings of the devil, who uses the fear of death to push and pull our survival instincts (our fleshly, sarx-driven passions) to keep us as “slaves to sin.”
