Wind Driven (Part 6)
Works vs Fruit
“Works” (in the plural) are attributed to the “flesh,” because they are divided, and often at variance with one another, and even when taken each one by itself, betray their fleshly origin.
witchcraft—sorcery; prevalent in Asia (Ac 19:19; compare Rev 21).
hatred—Greek, “hatreds.”
variance—Greek, “strife”; singular in the oldest manuscripts.
emulations—in the oldest manuscripts, singular—“emulation,” or rather, “jealousy”; for the sake of one’s own advantage. “Envyings” (Ga 5:21) are even without advantage to the person himself [BENGEL].
wrath—Greek, plural, “passionate outbreaks” [ALFORD].
strife—rather as Greek, “factions,” “cabals”; derived from a Greek root, meaning “a worker for hire”: hence, unworthy means for compassing ends, factious practices.
seditions—“dissensions,” as to secular matters.
heresies—as to sacred things (see on 1 Co 11:19). Self-constituted parties; from a Greek root, to choose. A schism is a more recent split in a congregation from a difference of opinion. Heresy is a schism become inveterate
But the “fruit of the Spirit” (Ga 5:23) is singular, because, however manifold the results, they form one harmonious whole. The results of the flesh are not dignified by the name “fruit”; they are but works (Eph 5:9, 11). He enumerates those fleshly “works” (committed against our neighbor, against God, and against ourselves) to which the Galatians were most prone (the Celts have always been prone to disputations and internal strifes): and those manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit most needed by them (Ga 5:13, 15). This passage shows that “the flesh” does not mean merely sensuality, as opposed to spirituality: for “divisions” in the catalogue here do not flow from sensuality. The identification of “the natural (Greek, ‘animal-souled’) man,” with the “carnal” or fleshly man (1 Co 2:14), shows that “the flesh” expresses human nature as estranged from God