Ver. 13. ὡς ἐν ἡμέρᾳ: as one walks in the day, so let us walk εὐσχημόνως. The same adverb is found with the same verb in 1 Thess. iv. 2: A.V. in both places ‘honestly’. The meaning is rather ‘in seemly fashion,” ‘ becomingly ”’; in r Cor. xiv. 4ο it is rendered “' decently,”’ where also regard for decorum (the zsthetic side of morality) is in view. κῶμοι and µέθαι are again found con- joined in Gal. v. 21; ἔρις and ζῆλος in Gal. v. 20 and 1 Cor. iii. 3. W.and H. following B. put ἔρισι καὶ ζήλοις in margin ; the plurals in this case as in ‘the others would indicate the various acts or manifestations of excess, whether in self- indulgence or self-will.
Ver. 14. ἀλλὰ ἐνδύσασθε τὸν K. ’I.. Χριστὸν. ἀλλὰ emphasises the contrast between the true Christian life and that
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κ Acts xviii. 26; Ch.
Ξ , b mA χν. 7; t ly ay διακρίσε ς ’ διαλογισμῶν Vv. 10, 17. b Ch. i. 21.
which has just been described. The Christian puts on the Lord Jesus Christ, according to Paul’s teaching, in baptism (cf. Gal. iii. 27), as the solemn deliberate act in which he identifies himself, by faith, with Christ in His death and re- surrection (chap. vi. 3). But the Christian life is not exhausted in this act, which is rather the starting-point for a putting on of Christ in the ethical sense, a ‘‘ cloth- ing of the soul in the moral disposition and habits of Christ’? (Gifford); or as the Apostle himself puts it in vi. 11, a reckoning of ourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Every time we perform an ethical act of this kind we put on the Lord Jesus Christ more fully. But the principle of all such acts is the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us (chaps. vi.-viii.), and it is the essential antagonism of the spirit to the flesh which determines the form of the last words: καὶ τῆς σαρκὸς πρόνοιαν μὴ ποιεῖσθε els ἐπιθυμίας. It is to inquire too curiously if we inquire whether σάρξ here is used in the physiological sense =the body, or in the moral sense = libidinosa caro (as Fritzsche argues): the significance of the word in Paul depends on the fact that in experience these two meanings are indubitably if not insepar- ably related. Taking the flesh as it is, forethought or provision for it—an in- terest in it which consults for it, and makes it an object—can only have one end, viz., its ἐπιθυμίαι. All such interest therefore is forbidden as inconsistent with putting on the Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. CHAPTER XIV. 1-XV. 13. One sub- ject is before the Apostle’s mind through- out the whole of this section—the rela- tions of ‘“‘the strong” and ‘‘the weak” in the Church at Rome. It is connected in a variety of ways, which are felt rather than expressed, with what precedes. Thus it is pervaded by the same sense of the supreme importance of mutual love among Christians which charac- terises chaps. xii. and xiii. It makes use, in much the same way as chap. xiii. 11-14, of the impending judgment (xiv. 1ο), to quicken the sense of individual and personal responsibility. Possibly, too, there is a more formal connection with chap. xiii. Paul has been warning against the indulgence of the flesh (xiii. 14), and this prompts him, by contrast,