Gold Tried in the Fire - Robert J. Wieland

through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin
in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might
be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but
after the Spirit." Romans 8:3, 4.
Christ has won the battle! Paul makes crystal
clear what kind of flesh God has sent His son in—
"the likeness of sinful flesh." The problem of
entrenched sin is not in material things, but "in the
flesh" of mankind. There is the lair where the
beast, sin, has taken up his residence, where Christ
must slay the dragon. This was no paper triumph,
for He "condemned sin in the flesh," the flesh in
which He came—our fallen nature.
Paul's word likeness cannot mean unlikeness,
for it would be a monstrous fraud for Christ to
profess to condemn sin in the flesh, the flesh in
which Paul says we are "sold under sin" where "the
law of sin" operates, if He counterfeited His
incarnation by taking only what appeared to be our
sinful flesh but which was not the real thing at all.
It would leave Satan shouting "Foul!" to high
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