the flesh profiteth nothing - Much of His discourse was about “flesh”; but flesh as such, mere flesh, could profit nothing, much less impart that life which the Holy Spirit alone communicates to the soul.
the words that I speak ... are spirit and ... life - The whole burden of the discourse is “spirit,” not mere flesh, and “life” in its highest, not its lowest sense, and the words I have employed are to be interpreted solely in that sense.