4 thoughts on “The Spirit is Willing but the Flesh is Weak”

  1. The linked post reminds me of my favorite Book of Mormon scriptures (Mosiah 3:19) which deals with the relationship between our bodies and our spirits:

    For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of
    Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings
    of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh as a
    saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child,
    submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to
    all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a
    child doth submit to his father.

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  2. Hmmm. The phrase “natural man” bugs me here, because as I said in another post recently, man isn’t sinful by nature; it’s a condition that afflicts everyone, but it’s by no means “natural”. In general, though, I agree.

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  3. I would suggest the phrase “natural man” as used in Mosiah 3:19 should be read in the same sense that Paul uses it in 1 Corinithians 2:14:

    But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

    Looking at the 1913 Webster’s definition of natural (since that is the dictionary the Unix dict utility queries first 🙂 I think you are troubled (and rightfully so) to a reading that adopts the first definition:

    Fixed or determined by nature; pertaining to the constitution of a thing […]

    The eighth definition, however, is the sense I believe most appropriate to the teachings of both Paul and Mosiah:

    Of or pertaining to the lower or animal nature, as contrasted with the higher or moral powers, or that which is spiritual; being in a state of nature; unregenerate.

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