Flesh Versus Spirit (14th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Click here for this Sunday’s Readings

Click here for this Sunday’s Old Testament reflection (The Coming King)

In the passage just before our epistle reading, St. Paul has explained that man cannot come to God by his own nature, because the flesh is hostile to God and is incapable of submitting to Him. As he states in Romans 8:5-8:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

He then goes on to say in our reading that this no longer applies to Christians, because our minds have been changed by God’s Spirit, who makes obedience to God possible (See: One Body, One Spirit, and God’s Love)

Paul’s teaching on this point alludes to his teaching on the works of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:16-26. He begins there by telling believers that they should walk by the spirit, and not gratify the desires of the flesh, since those two are opposed to each other (vv. 16-18). After enumerating what the works of the flesh are (vv. 19-20), he warns that “those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God” (v. 21). He then contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit(vv. 22-23), and that Christians have crucified the flesh and its passions (v. 24). He ends by urging us to keep in step with the Spirit (vv. 25-26).

Let us, then, exult in God’s Spirit, and attune ourselves to His leading, so that we may live as those who walk by the Spirit, and not by the Flesh.

J. Luis Dizon