belonging to flesh and blood: either the ordinary bodily side of life or the self-serving human nature that runs a life without God's Spirit
Greek can turn almost any noun into an adjective meaning "having to do with" it, and that is all this word is at bottom: flesh related. The noun behind it, "flesh" (σάρξ), already stretches from meat on a bone all the way to human nature at its weakest and most self-serving, and the adjective inherits that whole reach. Which end of the range is in play is decided by what the word is set against.
Placed beside "spiritual" (πνευματικός) in a discussion of money and support, it carries no blame at all. Paul argues that a church which received spiritual blessings from its teachers owes them help of the flesh and blood kind in return, meaning food, money, and practical care (Romans 15:27; 1 Corinthians 9:11). The word is simply marking the bodily half of a fair exchange.
Everywhere else the contrast is with what God himself supplies, and the word becomes a verdict on how someone is living:
- Believers who split into rival parties are still operating at that level (1 Corinthians 3:3).
- Paul insists his dealings have not been run on cleverness of that sort (2 Corinthians 1:12).
- Weapons of that sort, he says, cannot win the fight he is actually in (2 Corinthians 10:4).
- Peter warns that cravings of that sort wage war on a person (1 Peter 2:11).
What holds the two ends together is that the word names a sphere rather than a substance. It says where something belongs, and the contrast it stands in supplies the moral weight: opposite spiritual gifts it means the plain bodily goods of life, and opposite God's Spirit it means a life running on nothing but itself.