C12) Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh. We have here an example of what the rhetoricians call meiosis, where less is said than is intended. So far from being debtors to the flesh, the very reverse is the case. This passage is an inference from the exhibition of the nature and tendency of the flesh, or the carnal mind, as hostile to God and destructive to ourselves, vs. 5, 8. As this is its nature, and believers are no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit, they are under the strongest obligations not to live after the one, but after the other.
(13) The necessity of thus living is enforced by a repet\tion of the