Galatians 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,… Try to enter into the solid and broad meaning which St. Paul attaches to this, his favourite term for the root-principle of human sin — "the flesh." Obviously, it is much more to him than the mere matter of animal passions. It expresses to him the typical nature, the essential form, of all that can be set in antithesis to spirit. It includes the pride and the falsity of intellect. It embraces the disorder and stubbornness of the will. What, then, is this "flesh?" How can we describe and define it?... "The flesh" represents all that a man is, when he is his own aim, his own end. His power of self-observation, that Divine gift, in possessing which he is the image of his God, has about its use this terrible risk — that he may cease to observe himself as he is in God, as he is in God's ordered world, set to fulfil an office in combination with his fellows, the member of a vast body, pledged to a peculiar or disciplined service; he may forget all this, and only observe himself, himself just as he stands, with his own private appetites, likes, gifts, feelings. And, so observing, he may separate himself off from all else, hold himself up before his own eyes, and fasten upon himself all his interest, all his thought, and his imagination, and his pains; and may spend his every effort in scheming how best to serve, in richness of pleasurable experience, this self, who has become his idol, and before which he bows himself to minister as to a god. This he may do; and that which a man has then in front of him as his aim or end whether it be low and gross, or whether it be delicate and intellectual — that is "the flesh." And the life that he lives in obeying its behest, that is "the life after the flesh"; that is "minding the things of the flesh"; that is "walking after the flesh." And the end of that walk is Death. (Canon Scott Holland.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, |
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