Galatians 5:20,21

The second class of sins are those which concern religion idolatry and sorcery, or witchcraft. The word -idolatry" is probably to be understood here in its literal sense, the worship of false deities, and not in the metaphorical and wider sense in which it is employed by St Paul, e.g. Ephesians 5:5, a passage which is, however, strikingly parallel to this. Comp. Colossians 3:5; 1 Corinthians 5:11. The connexion with -sorceries", as in Revelation 21:8, seems to limit the meaning to the superstitious worship of the heathen.

The word rendered -witchcraft" originally meant -the use of drugs", then, in a bad sense, -poisoning". Those who -used curious arts" (Acts 19:19) combined demonology or witchcraft with the use of drugs as philtres, &c. For an illustration of this compare the well-known 5th Epode of Horace.

The next eight -works of the flesh" are those which are directlyopposed to love of our neighbour or Christian charity. Translate, -enmities, strife, rivalry, angers, factions, divisions, sects, envyings". The first four of these are enumerated in the same order, 2 Corinthians 12:20.

heresies Rendered rightly -sects" by Wiclif, Tyndale, and Cranmer, and also in the Rhemish N. T. The Vulgate has -sectæ". It means the formation of -distinct and organized parties" a further development of -divisions"; see 1 Corinthians 11:18. It is applied to the Sadducees, Acts 5:17; to the Pharisees, Acts 15:5; to the Nazarenes, Acts 24:5.

murders Possibly this should be omitted with R.V. There is an alliteration between the Greek words rendered -envyings, murders", which is lost in a translation. They occur together Romans 1:29. See the reference to Jerome in note on Galatians 5:19-21.

drunkenness, revellings Probably no better rendering can be found for the latter of these words. In Classical Greek it is used of those nightly revellings in which the wealthier young men indulged, when after an evening spent in debauchery they disturbed the quiet of the streets by ribald songs and noisy violence. Readers of the Spectatorwill remember that such -revellings" were common enough in London at the beginning of the last century to provoke the rebuke of the moralist: Spectator, No. 324; Macaulay, Hist. c. 111. p. 360. Drunkenness may be secret, or it may result in orgies or riot. Ephesians 5:18.

and such like = -such things" in the following clause. The catalogue, terribly large as it is, does not specify every form of working under which the flesh manifests itself. -Man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit". Art. ix.

I tell you before … in time past In respect of which I forewarn you, even as I forewarned you, when I was present with you.

they which do R.V. who practise. Exclusion from the Kingdom of Heaven is denounced not against all who have at any time committed any of these sins (for who then can be saved?) but against all who remain impenitent, and who do not -through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body". In two other Epistles (1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Ephesians 5:5), St Paul uses nearly the same terms as to the sins which disinherita man from -the Kingdom of God". The Kingdom is not the visible Church, in which the tares and the wheat grow together: neither is it the Gospel dispensation a sense in which it is sometimes used, e.g. Matthew 3:2; Luke 7:28 but that Kingdom for whose Advent we pray in the Lord's Prayer, which has been the hope of loyal hearts from early days, the theme of Psalmist and Prophet, the vision of the beloved disciple in Patmos not heaven, though - ofheaven", not earth, though -on the earth" the Kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world for the beloved of the Father, the adopted -sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty".