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GENERAL AUDIENCE OF 7 JANUARY
On Wednesday, 7 January, the Holy Father resumed his weekly
audiences which had been suspended because of the Christmas holidays.
Continuing his catechesis on the Christian concept of the world, John Paul
II delivered the following message....
Pauline theology of justification
1. What does the statement mean: "The desires of the flesh are against
the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh" (Gal
5:17)? This question seems important, even fundamental, in the context of
our reflections on purity of heart, which the Gospel speaks of. However,
in this regard the author of Galatians opens before us even wider
horizons. This contrast between the flesh and the Spirit (Spirit of God),
and between life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit,
contains the Pauline theology about justification. This is the expression
of faith in the anthropological and ethical realism of the redemption
carried out by Christ, which Paul, in the context already known to us,
also calls the redemption of the body. According to Romans 8:23, the
"redemption of the body" also has a "cosmic" dimension (referred to the
whole of creation), but at its center, there is man: man constituted in
the personal unity of spirit and body. It is precisely in this man, in his
heart, and consequently in all his behavior, that Christ's redemption
bears fruit, thanks to those powers of the Spirit which bring about
justification, that is, which enable justice to abound in man, as is
inculcated in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Mt 5:20), that is, to abound to
the extent that God himself willed and which he expects.
Effects of the lust of the flesh
2. It is significant that speaking of the "works of the flesh" (cf. Gal
5:19-21), Paul mentions not only "fornication, impurity,
licentiousness...drunkenness, carousing." This is everything that,
according to an objective way of understanding, takes on the character of
carnal sins and of the sensual enjoyment connected with the flesh. He
names other sins too, to which we would not be inclined to also attribute
a carnal and sensual character: "idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife,
jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy..." (Gal
5:20-21). According to our anthropological (and ethical) categories, we
would rather be inclined to call all the works listed here sins of the
spirit, rather than sins of the flesh. Not without reason we might have
glimpsed in them the effects of the lust of the eyes or of the pride of
life, rather than the effects of the lust of the flesh. However, Paul
describes them all as works of the flesh. That is intended exclusively
against the background of that wider meaning (in a way a metonymical one),
which the term flesh assumes in the Pauline letters. It is opposed not
only and not so much to the human spirit as to the Holy Spirit who works
in man's soul (spirit).
Purity comes from the heart
3. There exists, therefore, a significant analogy between what Paul
defines as works of the flesh and the words Christ used to explain to his
disciples what he had previously said to the Pharisees about ritual purity
and impurity (cf. Mt 15:2-20). According to Christ's words, real purity
(as also impurity) in the moral sense is in the heart and comes from the
heart of man. Impure works in the same sense are defined not only as
adultery and fornication, and so the sins of the flesh in the strict
sense, but also "evil thoughts...theft, false witness, slander." As we
have already noted, Christ uses here both the general and the specific
meaning of impurity (and, indirectly also of purity). St. Paul expresses
himself in a similar way. The works of the flesh are understood in the
Pauline text both in the general and in the specific sense. All sins are
an expression of life according to the flesh, which contrasts with life
according to the Spirit. In conformity with our linguistic convention
(which is partially justified), what is considered as a sin of the flesh
is, in Paul's list, one of the many manifestations (or species) of what he
calls works of the flesh. In this sense, it is one of the symptoms, that
is, actualizations of life according to the flesh, and not according to
the Spirit.
Two meanings of death
4. Paul's words written to the Romans: "So then, brothers, we are
debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you live
according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death
the deeds of the body you will live" (Rom 8:12-13)—introduce
us again into the rich and differentiated sphere of the meanings which the
terms "body" and Spirit have for him. However, the definitive meaning of
that enunciation is advisory, exhortative, and so valid for the
evangelical ethos. When he speaks of the necessity of putting to death the
deeds of the body with the help of the Spirit, Paul expresses precisely
what Christ spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount, appealing to the human
heart and exhorting it to control desires, even those expressed in a man's
look at a woman for the purpose of satisfying the lust of the flesh. This
mastery, or as Paul writes, "putting to death the works of the body with
the help of the Spirit," is an indispensable condition of life according
to the Spirit, that is, of the life which is an antithesis of the death
spoken about in the same context. Life according to the flesh has death as
its fruit. That is, it involves as its effect the "death" of the spirit.
So the term "death" does not mean only the death of the body, but also
sin, which moral theology will call "mortal." In Romans and Galatians, the
Apostle continually widens the horizon of "sin-death," both toward the
beginning of human history, and toward its end. Therefore, after listing
the multiform works of the flesh, he affirms that "those who do such
things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal 5:21). Elsewhere he will
write with similar firmness: "Be sure of this, that no fornicator or
impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any
inheritance in the kingdom of God" (Eph 5:5). In this case, too, the works
that exclude inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God—that
is, the works of the flesh—are
listed as an example and with general value, although sins against purity
in the specific sense are at the top of the list here (cf. Eph 5:3-7).
To set us free
5. To complete the picture of the opposition between the body and the
fruit of the Spirit—it
should be observed that in everything that manifests life and behavior
according to the Spirit, Paul sees at once the manifestation of that
freedom for which Christ "has set us free" (Gal 5:1). He writes: "For you
were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an
opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbor
as yourself'" (Gal 5:13-14). As we have already pointed out, the
opposition body/Spirit, life according to the flesh/ life according to the
Spirit, deeply permeates the whole Pauline doctrine on justification. With
exceptional force of conviction, the Apostle of the Gentiles proclaims
that justification is carried out in Christ and through Christ. Man
obtains justification in "faith working through love" (Gal 5:6), and not
only by means of the observance of the individual prescriptions of Old
Testament law (in particular, that of circumcision). Justification comes
therefore "from the Spirit" (of God) and not "from the flesh." Paul
exhorts the recipients of his letter to free themselves from the erroneous
carnal concept of justification, to follow the true one, that is, the
spiritual one. In this sense he exhorts them to consider themselves free
from the law, and even more to be free with the freedom for which Christ
"has set us free."
In this way, following the Apostle's thought, we should consider and
above all realize evangelical purity, that is, the purity of the heart,
according to the measure of that freedom for which Christ "has set us
free."
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