For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that you cannot do the things that you would.
All Commentaries on Galatians 5:17 Go To Galatians 5
John Chrysostom
AD 407
The body as such does not cause motion but is moved. It is not an agent but is acted upon. For desire is not of the body but of the soul…. How then does Paul say “the flesh struggles against the spirit?” By “flesh” he means not the physical body but the evil choice. … What then? Ought one to suppress the flesh? Was not the one who said this himself clothed with flesh? … By “flesh” here he means earthly thoughts that are apathetic and heedless. This is not a condemnation of the body but a reproach of the apathetic soul. For the flesh is an instrument, and no one repudiates and hates the instrument as such, but only the one who handles the instrument badly…. Yet, one may argue, even this is a condemnation of the body, to call the faults of the soul by the name of the flesh. Now I agree that the body is less precious than the soul, yet it is itself good as created. For what is less than truly good may remain proximately good. Evil is not less than the good but opposed to it…. The eucharistic mysteries too, and the whole church, are customarily called by the name of “flesh” in Scripture, which is called “the body of Christ” … But if he says “the flesh struggles against the Spirit,” he is speaking of two opposing ways of thinking. The things that oppose each other are virtue and wickedness, not the soul and the body. For if the latter are opposed, each is the destruction of the other … but if the soul cares for the body … and the body serves the soul … how can they be contraries and at war with one another? Homily on Galatians
