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Gal_5:16. With the words “But I mean” (Gal_3:17, Gal_4:1) the apostle introduces, not something new, but a deeper and more comprehensive exhibition and discussion of that which, in Gal_5:13-15, he had brought home to his readers by way of admonition and of warning—down to Gal_5:26. Hofmann is wrong in restricting the illustration merely to what follows after ἀλλά ,—a view which is in itself arbitrary, and is opposed to the manifest correlation existing between the contrast of flesh and spirit and the ἀφορμή , which the free Christian is not to afford to the flesh (Gal_5:13).
πνεύματι περιπατεῖτε ] dative of the norma ( κατὰ πνεῦμα , Rom_8:4). Comp. Gal_6:16; Php_3:16; Rom_4:12; Hom. Il. xv. 194: οὔτι Διὸς βέομαι φρέσιν . The subsequent πνεύματι ἄγεσθε in Gal_5:18 is more favourable to this view than to that of Fritzsche, ad Rom. I. p. 225, who makes it the dative commodi (spiritui divino vitam consecrare), or to that of Wieseler, who makes it instrumental, so that the Spirit is conceived as path (the idea is different in the case of διά in 2Co_5:7), or of Hofmann, who renders: “by virtue of the Spirit.” Calovius well remarks: “juxta instinctum et impulsum.” The spirit is not, however, the moral nature of man (that is, ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος , ὁ νοῦς , Rom_7:22-23), which is sanctified by the Divine Spirit (Beza, Gomarus, Rückert, de Wette, and others; comp. Michaelis, Morus, Flatt, Schott, Olshausen, Windischmann, Delitzsch, Psychol, p. 389), in behalf of which appeal is erroneously (see also Rom_8:9) made to the contrast of σάρξ , since the divine πνεῦμα is in fact the power which overcomes the σάρξ (Rom_7:23 ff., Rom_8:1 ff.); but it is the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is given to believers as the divine principle of the Christian life (Gal_3:2; Gal_3:5, Gal_4:6), and they are to obey it, and not the ungodly desires of their σάρξ . Comp. Neander, and Müller, v. d. Sünde, I. p. 453, ed. 5. The absence of the article is not (in opposition to Harless on Eph. p. 268) at variance with this view, but it is not to be explained in a qualitative sense (Hofmann), any more than in the case of θεός , κύριος , and the like; on the contrary, πνεῦμα has the nature of a proper noun, and, even when dwelling and ruling in the human spirit, remains always objective, as the Divine Spirit, specifically different from the human (Rom_8:16). Comp. on Gal_5:3; Gal_5:5, and on Rom_8:4; also Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 78.
καὶ ἐπιθυμίαν σαρκὸς οὐ μὴ τελέσητε ] is taken as consequence by the Vulgate, Jerome, Theodoret, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Estius, Bengel, and most expositors, including Winer, Paulus, Rückert, Matthies, Schott, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, Wieseler, Hofmann, Reithmayr; but by others, as Castalio, Beza, Koppe, Usteri, Baumgarten-Crusius, Ewald, in the sense of the imperative. Either view is well adapted to the context, since afterwards, for the illustration of what is said in Gal_5:16, the relation between σάρξ and πνεῦμα is set forth. But the view which takes it as consequence is the only one which corresponds with the usage in other passages of the N.T., in which οὐ μή . with the aorist subjunctive is always used in the sense of confident assurance, and not imperatively, like οὐ with the future, although in classical authors οὐ μή is so employed. “Ye will certainly not fulfil the lust of the flesh,—this is the moral blessed consequence, which is promised to them, if they walk according to the Spirit.” On τελεῖν , used of the actual carrying out of a desire, passion, or the like, comp. Soph. O. R. 1330, El. 769; Hesiod, Scut. 36.