My entire vile flesh has been in need of rectification from the moment I was born and will be until Christ returns and fashions my vile body to be like unto His glorious body.
No, your flesh - your physical body - is neither good nor evil, it's just tissue. What would happen to your flesh (i.e. body) if you were in a coma for, say, six months? Would your flesh go out and commit adultery, or rob a bank, or lie, or gossip? No. Your flesh would just lie in the hospital bed, inactive (except for its natural autonomic functions necessary for it to remain alive). But when your
consciousness awakens, it isn't long before the sin-stuff begins, right? So, then, what of this (gnostic) idea that your flesh is entirely vile? It isn't; YOU are.
Your body is, essentially, a tool, a "tent" the apostle Paul called it (
2 Cor. 5:1-4), and, on its own, no more capable of evil than a garden hoe, or a rubber boot. The source of all the evil you engage your flesh in committing, is your "old Self" (
Ro. 6:6), the person you are apart from God, rebellious and sinful, bound under the power of the world and the devil, and unable to regulate the impulses of the body in the way God intends (
Eph. 2:1-3; Tit. 3:3; Ro. 8:5-8, etc.).
The nature of your "old Self" is disregulation, inordinate pursuit of self-interest, sensuality and self-rule that produces sin (and death). The "old Self" can't be remediated, it can only be replaced, which is what God has made possible through Christ. Just read
Romans 6,
Romans 8:9-14, Colossians 3:1-11, Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14, etc.
"The me I see is the me I'll be," a wise man has said. If you see yourself as the person you've described above, your life will reflect what you see. But God says in His word that His children are "new creatures in Christ, old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new" (
2 Cor. 5:17); they are priests (
Rev. 1:6; 5:10), joint-heirs with Christ (
Ro. 8:16), seated with Christ in heavenly places (
Eph. 2:6), "dead unto sin but alive unto God" (
Ro. 6:11), and so on. When you begin, by faith, to stand upon the truths of who you are in Christ and learn to live in constant submission to the will and way of the Holy Spirit, your "vile body" will come under the control of your Maker, as it was made to be, and sin will begin to decline in your living, in time becoming the exception rather than the rule.
An outright atheist can live a moral life, be a great neighbor, be extremely kind to others, etc., etc., etc.
What the Bible describes of life in the Spirit has no parallel in the life of any unbeliever.
Now, should I try to be a better person? YES!!!!
Galatians 3:3
3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
Read
Philippians 1:6; 2:12b-13, 4:13, Ephesians 3:16; Galatians 5:16, 25, Isaiah 40:28-30; Romans 6:11, 13; 8:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, Jude 1:24-25, etc.
But there is no salvation in such a "cleaning" up my vile flesh to some extent, as no amount of improvement will EVER equal the standard of perfect righteousness that is Christ Jesus my Lord. Thus, I do not look to some "improvement" in my vile flesh no matter how much or how little, as evidence of salvation, or as a means to claim some credit before God.
Then you don't understand the nature of sin and its terrible impact upon your daily experience of God and the Church. You don't "clean up" for "brownie points" with God, but in order to properly enjoy Him every day (
He. 12:14b; 1 Pe. 3:12-14), to be useful to Him (
2 Ti. 2:21), and to protect others from the corruption and death of your sin (
1 Cor. 5:6; Gal. 5:9). Your sanctification, then, is a vital work of the Holy Spirit, marking his presence within you. If you are not increasingly changed, made progressively like Christ (
Ro. 8:29) by the Spirit, you are a constant detriment to the Church, a source of poisonous "leaven" within it, progressively hardening into sin (
He. 3:13), growing blinder and deafer to God's Truth (
Rev. 3) and your own carnality, grieving and quenching the Spirit (
Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19). This is what your statement above is making room for in your life.
Galatians 6:7-8
7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.
8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption...
Hebrews 10:26-31
26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”
31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.