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Gal_5:24. After Paul has in Gal_5:17 explained his exhortation given in Gal_5:16, and recommended compliance with it on account of its blessed results (Gal_5:18-23), he now shows (continuing his discourse by the transitional δέ ) how this compliance—the walking in the Spirit—has its ground and motive in the specific nature of the Christian; if the Christian has crucified his flesh, and consequently lives through the Spirit, his walk also must follow the Spirit.
τὴν σάρκα ἐσταύρωσαν ] not: they crucify their flesh (Luther and others; also Matthies); but: they have crucified it, namely, when they became believers and received baptism, whereby they entered into moral fellowship with the death of Jesus (see on Gal_2:19, Gal_6:14; Rom_6:3; Rom_7:4) by becoming νεκροὶ τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ (Rom_6:11). The symbolical idea: “to have crucified the flesh,” expresses, therefore, the having renounced all fellowship of life with sin, the seat of which is the flesh ( σάρξ ); so that, just as Christ has been objectively crucified, by means of entering into the fellowship of this death on the cross the Christian has subjectively—in the moral consciousness of faith—crucified the σάρξ , that is, has rendered it entirely void of life and efficacy, by means of faith as the new element of life to which he has been transferred. To the Christians ideally viewed, as here, this ethical crucifixion of the flesh is something which has taken place (comp. Rom_6:2 ff.), but in reality it is also something now taking place and continuous (Rom_8:13; Col_3:5). The latter circumstance, however, in this passage, where Paul looks upon the matter as completed at conversion and the life thenceforth led as ζῆν πνεύματι (Gal_5:25; comp. Gal_2:20), is not to be conceived (with Bengel and Schott) as standing alongside of that ideal relation,—an interpretation which the historical aorist unconditionally forbids.
σὺν τοῖς παθήμ . κ . ταῖς ἐπιθυμ .] together with the affections (see on Rom_7:5) and lusts, which, brought about by the power of sin instigated by the prohibitions of the law (Rom_7:8), have their seat in and take their rise from the σάρξ , the corporeo-psychical nature of man, which is antagonistic to God; hence they must, if the σάρξ is crucified through fellowship with the death of the Lord, be necessarily crucified with it, and could not remain alive. Comp. on Gal_5:17; Rom_7:14 ff. The ἐπιθυμίαι are the more special sinful lusts and desires, in which the παθήματα display their activity and take their definite shapes. Rom_7:5; Rom_7:8. The affections excite the feelings, and hence arise ἐπιθυμίαι , in which their definite expressions manifest themselves; τῇ γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸν θυμὸν ἰούσῃ δυνάμει δῆλον ὅτι τοῦτο ἐκλήθη τὸ ὄνομα , Plat. Crat. p. 419 D. Comp. 1Th_4:5.