If you mean wrestling with flesh and spirit,.. even though Jesus never sinned,.. does that count when He was tempted by the devil that He was still having that battle going on inside Him even though He still didn't listen to Him? A bit off topic, but now that you brought it up I'm curious.
Biological death was not the plague that befell Adam.
Certainly to the Hebrew writers, death was a biological phenomenon, but it was also a spiritual one. To be sure, life in the Spirit was more purposeful to the ancients than life in the flesh was. Life in the Spirit was their
raison d'être, their reason for life in the flesh. When Ephraim (Israel, or the ten Northern tribes) worshipped Baal, he died. Death came to Israel through idolatry. This dead people did not repent but instead sinned more and more (
Hos 13:1-2), which they did as living, breathing biological organisms. When Ephraim died, he did not die in the flesh. Idols portended death for him.
Likewise with the Pharisees, who, like whitewashed tombs, knowing not the Father, were the walking dead, full of dead men’s bones (
Mt 23:27). Strangers to God, they were dead. Apart from the spirit, the body is dead (
Jas 2:26) “It is the Spirit who gives life,” Jesus said. “The flesh is no help at all.” (
Jn 6:63)
Death was separation from the Father, or condemnation, and the continuous procession of false gods that foreigners introduced to the holy people illustrated the proclivities of this favored group toward idolatry and consequently their endless and often desperate groping for some connection to their tree of life.
While death in the minds of the Israelites was condemnation, belief led to life. This is precisely what Paul said to the Roman Christians, that “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” (5:18)
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