The persons against whom he had determined to exercise this severity, were those who thinli of us, he says, as if toe loalked according to the flesh. The word flesh sometimes means the body, sometimes it expresses the secondary idea of weakness, sometimes, and most frequently in Paul's epistles, our corrupt nature. Beza gives it here the second of these meanings. He understands Paul as describing his opponents as those who regarded him as weak and cowardly, or, as invested with nothing more than human powers (non alio prsesidio freti, quam quod prse nobis ferimus), so that, as Bengel says, "they may despise us with impunity." But this is not only incon- sistent with the scriptural use of the word "to walk," which, in its figurative sense, refers to moral deportment, but also with the familiar use of the phrase {Kara crapKa), after the flesh. See the next verse, and Rom. 8, 1.4. 5. 13. The persons re- ferred to were those who regarded the apostle not only as an ordinary man, but as acting under the control of his corrupt nature, governed by selfish or malicious feelings, and relying on himself.
3. Por though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.
There is here, so to speak, a play on the word flesh, which is used in somewhat difterent senses. Paul did indeed walk in the flesh, he Avas a man, and a mere man, not only invested with a body, but subject to all the infirmities of human nature ; but he did not war after the flesh. What was human and worldly neither determined his conduct, nor was the ground of his confidence. The phrase to be in the flesh has vari- ous meanings according to the connection in which it is used. In 1 Tim. 3, 16, it is said, " God was manifested in the flesh," i. e. in human nature. In Rom. 8, 8. 9, to be " in the flesh," means to be in an unrenewed state. In Phil. 1, 22. 24, "to live," or, " to abide in the flesh," means to live, or abide, in the body. Here the phrase has substantially the same mean- ing, but with the accessory idea of weakness and exposure to temptation. ' Though he was a man, and therefore compassed with the infirmities incident to humanity, yet, &c.' "Hie," says Calvin, " Ambulare in came significat in mundo versari : quod ahbi dicit, habitare in corpore (suj^ra 5, 6). Erat enim inclusus in cor^joris sui crgastulo; sed hoc non impediebat