When I say flesh I am speaking of this body and all it is.
If I take your statement literally at this point here is my conclusion.
50 years ago if one took a dead body, boiled it down, the chemicals in the body would be worth about $1.98. Yep, that was the worth of a man.
Today many donate their organs.
If you were to die today and someone got possession of your body on the black market, they could scrupulously sell various parts of your body for thousands of dollars. You are probably worth more dead than you are alive to many many people. The going rate for body parts is very high.
My point is "flesh" = "sarkos," that is, the meat of the body and that is all.
That is one definition of the word. We define words by the context in which they are used. People who believe that one word always has one definition to fit all passages in the Bible lack in their understanding of the Bible.
The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, this is all part of the flesh. This body/flesh is fallen as well as our souls and the soul needs to be born agaian and the flesh needs to be replaced with a new body.
The Bible says we wait for the redemption of our bodies. That new body will not come until the rapture or until Jesus comes again.
Until then we live in a corrupted body that nothing, not even a new birth can do anything about. It is subject to decay, to sickness, sorrow, to sinful desires, and at the end of it all it finally succumbs to death. The flesh will never be replaced. Perhaps if you are a donor recipient and receive a new heart in a heart transplant that one part of you is replaced, but alas it will still be a fleshly heart. You are still in the flesh and always will be as long as you are in this earth, whether born again or not. There is nothing you can do about that.
As long as you are in that body you will have a sin nature. When you are born again, God will give you a new nature. Actually the Holy Spirit will come and live within you, but the sin nature will not move out. It is still there and always will be until this body is redeemed completely and we will receive a new body, a celestial body. Thus you have a war going on in your body--the spirit against the flesh. Paul describes that battle here:
(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
--It is not carnal, but spiritual.
Cast down your imaginations. Bring every thought into captivity unto the obedience of Jesus Christ. There is a battle going on in your mind. If you deny that you not only deny the Word of God, I think you deny that you are human.
Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
Born of a virgin, conceived of the Holy Spirit. The sin nature is passed through the male. Jesus did not inherit the sin nature as he was born of a virgin.
I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.
As believers this is what we must try to do. It is a goal
Romans 6:11 puts it this way:
"Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin."
The word "reckon" simply means "consider". We are to act as if we are to dead to sin. We aren't but we are to act that way. The WEB puts it this way.
Thus also consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:11)
The flesh is ours to control. We cannot control a nature. We are no longer held captive to the flesh.
No, you can't control cuts, bruises, your hair turning grey, the wrinkles in your face, your bones becoming brittle with age, etc. You can't control the flesh. You can control the nature to some degree for the mind controls the nature. Submit yourself to God and you will have control over your nature. It is a sin nature. You do battle with it. Do you win. If you yield yourself to your carnal nature, your sin nature, you will lose every time and sin.
And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:1)
For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? (1 Corinthians 3:3)
--They had carnal natures. They acted foolishly, as babes in Christ.
Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and
were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. (Ephesians 2:3)
Our natures are sinful from birth onward. By nature we are the children of wrath. We are born that way. It is in our nature.
[There is] therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit
Most versions omit the last part of the verse.
That being said what does it mean?
OSAS is still being taught. The phrase is not conditional (if), it is qualitative (who). That means it describes the kind of people of whom there is no condemnation.
The kind of walk the believer walks is not after the flesh--that old sin nature, but rather after the Spirit of God which dwells in him. Yield yourself to God's Spirit not to the sin nature that dwells in you.
All Christians walk after the spirit or they are not Christians.
Not true. Then no Christian would sin. Even the Bible says that is not possible and condemns those that say or hold to such philosophy:
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)
If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:10)
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
And so he did. The law could never save, but Christ came and did.
We do not have two natures. While lost our nature is to seek after the things of the flesh. Once saved our nature is to seek after the things of the Spirit.
Are you then sinless? If you are not, you have a sin nature whether you like it or not.