Galatians 5:16

Galatians 5:16. Paul returns to the warning in Galatians 5:13, not to abuse the freedom for an occasion to the flesh.

Walk by the Spirit, according to the rule and direction of the Holy Spirit who is the higher conscience and controlling principle of the Christian. Comp. Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:2.

And ye shall in no wise fulfil the lust of the flesh. The Holy Spirit and the sinful flesh are so antagonistic and irreconcilable that to follow the one is to resist and defeat the other. The ‘flesh' is here, as in Galatians 5:13; Galatians 5:17; Galatians 5:19, and often in Paul (also John 3:6), used in a moral sense, and designates the fallen, carnal, sinful nature of man. It is not confined to sensuality, but embraces also the evil dispositions of the mind (Galatians 5:20). It must not be confounded with ‘body;' it uses and abuses the body as its organ, but the body is good in itself, and intended to become the organ of the regenerate spirit of man and the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; comp. Galatians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 6:16. (Comp. Excursus on Romans 7, and the elaborate discussion of Wieseler on Galatians 3:13, pp. 442-455.) The antagonism between the carnal nature of man and the Holy Spirit of God is one of the fundamental ideas in Paul's psychology. The Gnostics and Manichaeans carried it to the extreme of dualism between mind and matter; but this is a heretical perversion. Paul's antagonism is moral, not physical, and rests on the recognition of the body as substantially Rood and redeemable by the same power of God which redeems the soul.