The human body is a complicated item due to the fall of man in the garden of Eden as recorded in Genesis 3. Prior to man's fall, Adam and Eve enjoyed a "shell" that contained the important parts of man's being: the soul and the spirit. The body was just a container, like a glove containing the hand. Their bodies were wonderful vessels without defect and in the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26). There bodies were physical requiring nutrition so the Lord placed them in a beautiful garden full of fruit producing trees. God said that they could partake of any trees in the garden of Eden to enjoy, except a particular tree next to the Tree of Life in the middle of the garden.

God told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would surely die that day. The death experienced by Adam and Eve on the day they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not referring directly to their physical body, but to their human spirit. However, their body was changed drastically after their disobedience to God and it was condemned to death. Therefore, indirectly, their human bodies also died.

After man's fall, the body became man's flesh. This flesh was then propagated into Adam and Eve's offspring and eventually into all mankind. In Genesis 6, just before God called out Noah for His economy, the Lord regretted making man because man had become flesh. We know on one hand, that our physical body is called flesh. In greek the term is sarx. But the flesh denotes much more than just a physical body. The flesh which we now use synonomously with the body contains the infestation of the nature of Satan. Adam and Eve's bodies, though once pure, became infected with a sinful nature. As a result, death did, in fact, infiltrate our bodies. All of mankind is condemned by the flesh to eventually die. The Lord God took special precaution to limit man's flesh, man's transmuted body, after the garden of Eden so that man's flesh could not live indefinitely or eternally. He cast Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden and placed a Cheribim with a flaming sword to protect the garden from any entry and to keep man's flesh out. This was to ensure that man's flesh would not endure for eternity.

The apostle Paul addresses man's flesh in great detail from Romans 5:12 through 8:23. But the Lord Jesus Himself summed up the value of man's flesh in John 6:63: "It is the Spirit Who gives life, the flesh profits nothing: the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life."