Erga tes Sarkos: Works of the Flesh

Christians have always been taught to avoid sin.  That’s a given.  But sometimes I think we trip ourselves up by not really understanding what the Bible calls “sin.”  We assume that we know what we aren’t supposed to do.  Murder, steal, lie, covet (that one is kind of vague but it’s on the list), use God’s name in vain – we could add a few more from memory. Unfortunately, we tend to generalize sins with a “don’t hurt anyone” morality.  We don’t spend much time actually understanding the details of what we are fighting.  Since we usually don’t commit those “big” ones (murder, stealing, adultery, lying – well, maybe not lying), we don’t give much thought to the rest of the list.

There are several very specific lists of sins in the Bible.  These are detailed descriptions of the actions that God wants us to avoid at all costs.  Paul gives us one of these lists in his letter to the Galatians (5:19-21 KJV):

“adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such like”

These actions are so serious that he goes on to give us a dire warning.  If you practice these things, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. Could the warning be any stronger?  I don’t think so.  Paul is saying that if you repeatedly perform (the word is prassontes – it means “to do over and over”) these actions, you and God will part company.

These are high stakes.  Wouldn’t it make sense to know exactly what Paul’s list means?  Would you ever go into a life and death battle without doing some “intel” on the enemy’s behavior?  I don’t think so.  Yet many Christians seem oblivious of the true scope and depth of any of these actions.  It’s about time we learned something more about the “works of the flesh.”

Before we look at the description of each of these actions, we need to notice some patterns.  Four of the seventeen actions are about sex.  Two are about sorcery.  Six are about anger.  Only one is about beliefs.  Two are about inappropriate intoxicated behavior.  Only four have obvious connections to the Ten Commandments.  On this basis alone, problems with anger and sex outweigh all other concerns.  Of course, Paul is not suggesting a ranked order of sins, some less important than others.  He clearly says that the practice of any of these will break fellowship with God.  But it is interesting that the ones he lists most often are inter-personal sins.  They are sins about how we act toward each other.  Apparently God thinks that behavior between human beings is pretty important.

Let’s take a look at the details to see what’s on Paul’s mind.

Adultery – the word Paul uses is moicheia.  This word does not appear in most modern translations. That’s because the current best scholarly edition of the Greek text from the oldest manuscripts does not have the word moicheia in it.  That word is found in the Textus Receptus, the Greek text available when the King James Bible was translated.  So, if you compare the King James to modern translations, you will see this difference.

But even if it was added to the text later, it has quite an important history.  It is the same word Jesus uses when he speaks of the evil that proceeds from a man’s heart.  In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it is the word found in Jeremiah and Hosea when the prophets tell the people of God that they have whored after other gods.  It is a very strong and fairly clear word.  It means exactly what we think it means – illicit sex with someone who is married to another.  However, the range of this word is a little bigger than the act of intercourse.  It also means “to seduce” or “to be seduced” and it carries the sense of using deception and cunning to get control of someone.  Here the word describes one of the actions of a larger class of actions called porneias.  This larger group of actions is the next word in our list.

In order to understand why Jesus and Paul include adultery in the list of sins that separate us from God, we have to know a bit more about the contemporary culture of the first Century.  The Greeks viewed adultery as a one-sided affair (pun intended).  The prohibition against illicit sex with a married person applied basically only to women.  Men were more or less expected to have sex with other single women and these actions were commonplace in the Greek and Roman world. In fact, the proliferation of sexual relations outside marriage became so great that one of the Roman Emperors actually passed a law against it – a law that had almost no effect on curbing the practice.

The Old Testament has a lot to say about adultery.  God’s commandment against adultery establishes the commitment of partners in marriage as one of the most important foundations of community life.  Jesus refers to God’s intention when he is confronted by the Pharisees on the issue of divorce.  The reason for demanding fidelity in marriage is not only to protect the family.  Marital fidelity is also a symbolic representation of exclusive loyalty to God.  How we respect our vows with another person is a reflection of how we respect our commitments to God.  This is the reason that prophets use the symbols of fidelity and adultery to point out the apostasy of Israel.

But even in the Old Testament, the focus of adultery is on the adulterous woman.  Obligation for fidelity rests on her.  However, when Jesus and Paul used this word, they made it clear that the proper context involved both male and female partners in a marriage.  For the first time in thousands of years, women were granted the same responsibility and the same respect as men.  Neither party had license to pursue sexual relations with another person.  God’s ideal of monogamous commitment was re-instated.  In addition, Jesus amplified the requirement by teaching that the lustful desire for another was equivalent to the act of sexual exploitation.  Adultery was not confined to the physical sexual act.  It was a matter of the heart.  In a culture that regarded sexual relations as commonplace as any other physical pleasure, this requirement radically separated early Christian believers from their contemporaries.  Women were to be no less respected than men when it came to the unconditional divine command to love as Christ has loved.  Women were not property and were not to be treated as such.  Men were called to exhibit the same exclusive loyalty to their spouses that they would show to their God.  The consequences for violating God’s intention were clear:

Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Heb. 13:4)

Now that adultery is no longer the special burden of women alone, believers are told quite clearly that engaging in the attempt to seduce, being seduced, considering and contemplating seduction and, of course, completing the act of seduction is a direct affront to the God who created us male and female.  It circumvents His sovereignty by proclaiming (usually in secret) that I have the right to do what I wish with my body.  That, says Paul, is entirely wrong.  God gave you your body.  It is His right to tell you how you are to treat it.

King David seduced Bathsheba.  He violated God’s sacred intention.  When he was confronted and he repented, he did not go first to Bathsheba to ask forgiveness.  He went to God.  He knew that his sin was in God’s face.  Adultery is about our desire to dictate to God how we will use our bodies.  That is a “right” we do not have.

The next word is fornication – porneias.  We already know this word.  It is the root word of pornography (graphe means “writing”).  It comes from a word that means “to sell.”  In the Greek world, slaves were often the targets of sexual abuse.  This word describes selling slaves who were used for sex, in other words, prostitutes.  The word was expanded to cover all sorts of sexual abuse including intercourse with either female or male prostitutes, sexual favors with or without actual intercourse, and homosexuality.  A great deal of this activity was conducted under religious sanctions.  The temple of Aphrodite had more than 1000 temple prostitutes.  Surprisingly, brothels were not known in ancient Greece.  This is because there was no prohibition against masters using their slaves for sexual encounters.  Later, a change in Greek law that denied foreigners civil rights forced many women to make money through sex.  But the biggest issue contributing to prostitution and sexual promiscuity in Greece was the Greek view of life.  Sex outside marriage was considered as natural as eating and drinking.  Only excesses were censured.  No moral stigma was placed on sexual behavior.

This cultural view was the completely opposite of the Hebrew idea of sexual activity.  Prostitution existed in the Hebrew culture but sexual involvement with prostitutes was strictly condemned.  The basis of sexual behavior was found in the idea of a pure and holy God.  Sexual activity was a reflection of the divine activity of creation and as such was under the direct command of God.  The Hebrew nation was surrounded by cultures that practiced religious prostitution in fertility cults.  Many fertility cults believed that having sex within the religious community would insure prosperous crops.  God’s law made strict provisions for separating the Hebrew people from these practices.  God Himself was the provider of prosperity.  No action of man, sexual or otherwise, was allowed to diminish the acknowledgement of God’s rule over the earth.

In addition, God used marriage as a symbol of His choosing a people of His own, just as a husband chose a bride.  The choice belonged to God, not to the people.  Their conduct was supposed to reflect the same faithfulness and loyalty prescribed for marriage.  Marriage was raised from a merely social institution to a sacred portrayal of God’s election.

In the first Century, the Greek and Hebrew cultural differences were in constant tension.  But the New Testament concedes nothing to the Greek view.  Jesus strengthened the view of the Old Testament by condemning all sexual activity outside of marriage, even if it was only in thoughts.  Paul reinforced this view in his battle against the predominant cultural values of the Roman Empire.  God’s people are called apart from the values of the world.  They are to practice holiness in every part of their lives.  Obviously, no activity is more important in this regard than sex.  The Old Testament foundation of God’s election and God’s sovereignty still stands as the reason for sexual purity, but the concept is now given explicit connection to the entire believing community.  No sexual impurity or vice has any part in the body of believers and if tolerated, brings guilt and condemnation on the whole group.  Paul ties sexual impurity to a lack of a pure heart (unclean) and on that basis is able to say that no one who practices such acts will be part of God’s kingdom.  In Revelation, John uses the word proneuo as a summary description of all of the sins encompassed by those who oppose God’s rule.

Today we live in a culture of pluralism and accommodation.  Gay rights, sexual freedom, and adult lifestyles permeate every part of our world.  Our contemporary culture is not significantly different from the non-believing culture of the first Century.  I recently read a best-selling novel.  In the book, the male hero had sexual encounters with several women, some married and some not.  At one point, the author put these words into the mouth of the hero:  “Sex is what adults do when they date.”  Unfortunately, today we need to re-write that line to remove the word “adult.”  Sex is the by-word of the culture (we will have more to learn about this with the next word).  Ethnic groups in our culture pride themselves on male conquest, but the truth is that every male is subject to the temptation of adultery.  Today we may have medical or social reasons to abstain, but none of these are sufficient to resolve the issue from God’s perspective.  Sex is about life and God says life is sacred.  Therefore, sex reflects a sacred relationship, a divine encounter blessed by the Creator.  Anything that treats it otherwise is suspect.

Some religious groups have tried to argue that homosexuality is prohibited only for those who act against their nature, that is, they are really heterosexuals but are engaging in homosexual acts.  The intention behind this argument is to further the claim that those people who are “born” homosexual or for whom homosexual behavior is “natural” are not under God’s judgment since they are behaving the way God made them.  There is a word for this kind of argument in Greek – a word that they seem to ignore.  It is moros and it means “without moral character.”  The argument is purely an attempt to justify what God clearly condemns.  I’m sorry, but God doesn’t care why or how you got involved in homosexuality.  He only cares that you repent and stop.  Does that seem harsh?  So is God’s wrath.  Of course, God does care about the homosexual.  He knows the struggles and defeats, the trauma and discouragement.  But the fact remains that this behavior is sinful.  And God promises that no temptation is too much for us to endure when we turn our lives completely over to His purposes.

Pornography, sexual promiscuity, titillation, seduction, homosexuality, indifferent attitudes toward sex, immodest behavior, careless disregard and uncontrolled actions are porneias.  The culture is immersed in all of this.  From billboards to movies, from radio shows to novels, we are afloat on a sea of porneias.  Most of us react against the gross indulgences.  But most of us allow the “minor” infractions.  We are so saturated that we begin to become immune to God’s claims of purity.  The reason is quite obvious.  Sex is one of the most powerful influences in life.  Good sex transports us into ecstasy (a Greek word that means “outside yourself”).  And we all want that.  We all want to leave the drudgery of the world behind and be moved to a better place, if only for a few moments.  The draw of sex is its combination of self-satisfaction and possession at the same time.  This is why the Greeks used the word eros when they spoke of sexual desire.  It is a desire that wants to possess the object of its affection.

God’s way is self-sacrifice.  Any sexual behavior that is focused on my fulfillment and my desires is skirting the edge of possession.  Paul tells us to be careful.  It is so easy to slip over the edge.  What do we tolerate that is laced with porneias?  Soap opera?  Romance novels?  Prime-time television?  Beer ads?  Not telling our children about the sacred rules of sexual conduct?  We could all make very long lists, I’m sure.  The task of the believer is to reclaim sex under God’s banner.  It is a lifetime job.

Uncleanness – The Greek is akatharsia.  This word comes from kathairo (we derive the English “catharsis”).  Here Paul makes it a negative, so the meaning is “not cleansed.”    The background of katharos is ritual cleansing.  It is not the same word that is used for the purity of holiness before God.  That word is hagnos (it comes from a word meaning “to stand in awe”).   Why would Paul speak of ritual cleansing rather than purity of heart?  This doesn’t seem to make sense.  After all, he was not writing to Jews.  His audience may not have known all the Jewish laws for ritual purification.  And he is trying to press the point of being separated from the sins of the world.  Wouldn’t he choose hagnos rather than katharos?

The answer lies in the Old Testament background of the word katharos.  The equivalent Hebrew word for “cleanse” is taher.  It is used more than 200 times in the Old Testament.  In almost every case, it is about ritual purity.  These are the actions that need to be taken before, during, and after religious events.  They included ritual washing of hands, preparations of sacrifices, prayers, and many other details.  But the intention of all of these actions is to point us toward God’s holiness, not to make us holy.  The Bible says over and over that no amount of ritual conformity on our part will ever make us holy and acceptable to God.  Only God can clean us up from the inside.  God will do the real cleansing.  He will wash away all the guilt and all the judgment.  He will forgive.

When Paul uses the Greek word akatharsia, he is saying that these people have not allowed God to wash them clean.  They are still practicing the art of self-justification.  They still believe that they can become pure on their own.  When we see this connection, the damnation that Paul brings upon his first century audience really hits home now.  Our present religious rituals like rote prayers, communion without consecration, baptism without commitment, Easter and Christmas celebrations, attending church, and any other actions that we do cannot replace what God has to do if we are to be His people.  Without God’s cleansing, none of the rest of this matters.  With God’s cleansing, all of it is a proclamation that we have been washed by our Creator.  Either way, it is not about us.  Being cleansed today is letting God remove the guilt and sin that has polluted my life.  It’s a job I can’t do for myself.

Paul is condemning those who think they can make it to God their way.

But he is also saying more than this.  He uses akatharsia in a sequence.  The sequence is “adultery, fornication, akatharsia, lustfulness” – four words that he groups into his comments about sex sins.  People who practice the art of self-justification also violate God’s sovereignty over their bodies.  They believe that they are in control.  They believe in the rights of human beings to decide their own fate.  Whether it is abortion or intercourse, they think that it’s up to them.  They have not understood the ritual of consecration to God.  So, akatharsia also belongs in the sex sins group.  It is the description of a life that serves itself.

There is still more.  Association with those who were impure violated ritual purity.  So it is with akatharsia.  If we associate with those who flaunt God’s sovereignty, we are tainted with their impurity.  We are unclean by contact and implicit endorsement.  If you aren’t standing up for God’s authority, you are lying down with the unclean.  This is why Paul says to the church in Corinth, “If you allow sexual misconduct in your group, all of you share in the guilt and blame.”  Impurity is a contagious disease.  It will spread wherever it is not resisted.

Lasciviousness – the last word Paul uses in this group is aselgeia.  Since Paul is speaking of sexual issues, here the word means sexual license, that is, sexual excess.  To get a picture of what Paul has in mind, we should notice that the same word is used to describe the moral condition of the people in Sodom and Gomorrah.  The story of Sodom is found in Genesis.  Reading it once will convince you that Paul certainly had insatiable desire for sex in mind when he used this word.  The men of Sodom were interested in only one thing – sexual satisfaction.  It made no difference to them if the victims were men or women.  Their goal was conquest and pleasure.

The judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah has fallen out of favor in today’s vocabulary.  Perhaps we need to resurrect it.  Dr. Patrick Carnes wrote a book called Out of the Shadows.  It is a study of sexual addiction.  He defines this addiction as a fixation on the mood-altering experiences of sexual stimulation.  The results are impaired thinking, sincere delusion, unmanageable behavior, and cyclical acceleration of the required experiences.  There are both physiological and psychological factors present in this kind of addiction.  Paul tells us that there are spiritual factors as well.  Carnes estimates that there are 25 million sexual addicts in the United States.  Most of these people never encounter the law.  They fight battles with affairs, prostitution, pornography, voyeurism, masturbation, exhibitionism, and multiple relationships.  If left undiscovered and unrestrained, this road always leads to serious sexual offenses.  By God’s grace, most addicts never get that far.  This is a spiritual warfare of incredible proportions that leaves its victims in despair and loneliness.  It is gender neutral.  Women who can’t find the right man in one relationship after another are just as susceptible as men who keep magazines on hand for a quick change in mood.  Satan has gained more ground with “socially acceptable” sexual indulgences than with all the murders in the world.  Anyone who has ever gone through this brutal battering of the heart and soul will attest to its power.

Paul tells us that those who are on this road are not traveling toward God’s kingdom.  This thought should strike terror in the hearts of those of us who are nearly helplessly ravaged by sexual compulsion.  They already feel a desert of emptiness inside.  To be told point-blank that God finds them guilty as charged is nearly a deathblow.  A priest I knew once told me that the only thing addiction did was keep him alive until God could rescue him from his hell.  The only alternative would have been suicide.  Thank God that no sin is beyond His grace to forgive and no soul beyond His power to renew.

Idolatry – Paul leaves behind the group of words concerning sexual sins and moves directly to eidololatreia.  This is the word for “idolatry” – a combination word made up of the word for servant and the word for an image or representation.  The choice of placement in his list is not accidental.  All sexual sin is a form of idolatry.  Left alone, all sexual sin turns inward, worshipping and serving the insatiable self.  It is idolatry in its most subtle form – hidden and never satisfied.  It is the idol of “just one more time”.  This is a logical bridge from a life that lusts.

In the culture of the first century, idols were often constructed as physical images of some god.  Certainly, Paul has this in mind.  But Paul knows that the real power of idolatry is not found in wood or stone.  It is found in the allegiance of the heart.  So, the word here is not just the word for an idol, it is the word for one who serves another god.

The Christian church has made a lot of this word.  We are often told about the sins of allowing something other than God to become our first priority.  Money is a favorite (for good reason).  Power, career, success, material possessions, even other relationships have all been decried for their potential to seduce us.  All of these can fall within the scope of idolatry.  But I wonder if we have overlooked the subtle elements in our identification of the obvious.

This word is used once in Colossians (3:5) and Ephesians (5:5).  In both cases, Paul equates covetousness with eidololatreia.  In other words, Paul is saying that the essence of serving an idol is the uncontrolled desire to want more – more power, more property, more prestige.  It is the desire to be better than others, to take by force, or to assert oneself.  The Greek is pleonexia.  It means “greed.”  We have to think carefully to see why “greed” is the basis of “idol serving.”  Serving an idol is motivated by the desire to control.  Idol worship is either appeasement of a god in order to gain favor or placating a god in order to be granted power.  In either case, the motive is to control my own fate for the express purpose of fulfilling my desires.  In other words, I serve an idol in order to get what I want.  Implied in that effort is the sin of coveting.  I don’t have enough.  I am not satisfied with my current circumstances.  I am not content with what God has given me or where He has placed me.  So, I turn to my own efforts to get more.

Behind the idol of money or power or success or material wealth or the latest look or the best body is the desire to have more than God’s provision.  That’s why it is idolatry.  Not because money, success, or a dozen other things are wrong, but because I succumb to the desire to tell God how my life should be lived.  It is the essence of greed – to have more than what God knows is the best for me.  And the enemy of the best is always “just a little better.”

Paul uses “servant of idols” because it bridges the thoughts from sexual sins (which are entirely the result of sexual greed) to the wider scope of all greed – the denial that God knows what He is doing in your life.

Witchcraft – From “idol servant” follows sorcery.  The word is pharmakeia.  Yes, that’s right.  We get the word “pharmacy” and “pharmaceutical” from this word.  The root word has the meaning we would expect – drugs.  Witchcraft, sorcery, magic, and the occult all used drugs to administer their trade in the first century.  It is not much different today.  Love potion #9 is still part of magic.  Paul says those who make efforts to manipulate and control the world in this way are on the path to hell.  Of course, what Patrick Carnes said about sex is no less true about drugs.  Mood altering is an attempt to manipulate the reality God has given.  It is turning to self-in-control (or out of control, as the case may be) instead of submitting to God in control.

So much has been said about the drug problem that it hardly bears mentioning, except to point out that it was a problem for the Christian church in the first century too.  But the issue behind all of these sins, from adultery to pharmakeia is the same – not being content with God’s provision for life.  And the method for solving that desire is also the same for all these sins – self deification – I will be my own god and the world will be the way I want it to be.

Hatred – Of course, whenever we decide that we should run the world and make it suit our tastes, we confront a problem. Other people.  That conflict produces the sin called enmity.  The Greek is echthrai.  It comes from the Greek word that means “enemy.”   It is the conflict that occurs when someone else does exactly what we do while we operate under the principle of self-deification.  They want to be god too.  And the world only has room for one God.  If I have given myself over to sins of pleasure and sins of manipulative control, I will always be confronted with those who don’t do what I want them to do.  When my way is frustrated, I will experience hatred toward them in the form of jealousy, malice, anger, or animosity.  Enmity is not a word that we use much today, but we are certainly aware of its results.  Civil unrest, racial tension, violence, fraud, genocide, bitterness, and slander make the news everyday.  One person against another.  One group opposed to another.  One nation at war with another.  All motivated by the need to control.  All following the pathway of power.  We have met the enemy and he is us.  Hatred is the result of too many gods.  Two is too many.  There is only one God and if we are not serving Him, we will find we harbor hatred for everyone who is not serving us.

Paul expands the meaning of this word with the next five nouns: variance, emulations, wrath, strife, and seditions.  All descriptions of enemies in conflict.

Eris is the word translated “variance.”  It really means fighting.  It is the word for strife and contention.  It covers a wide range, from arguing and body language to actual blows.  Enemies must be dealt with.  God’s way is to convert my attitude into submission to God so that an enemy becomes an opportunity for grace.  My way is to convert my enemy to submission to me.  That usually doesn’t happen without force.  Too many gods means a battle will result.  How many times in your life have you heard (or used) “My way or the highway”?  The recipe for strife begins with an attitude of quarreling.  Even if you’re right, you’re wrong.  My wife reminds me all the time that it is not the message that counts; it’s the tone of the delivery.  Christians are called to show self-sacrifice toward enemies.  That can only be done through God’s help.  It is not “natural.”  The natural way is the way of eris.

Emulations – The word is zeloi.  It means “to be hot, fervent.”  We get the word zealot from this Greek root.  When it is translated in the positive sense, it means favorable emotion.  The Bible tells us to be zealous about God’s purposes and God’s word.  That means we are to have strong feelings about what God wants for us and what He says to us.  The Bible also tells us that God is a jealous God.  This is the word used for that expression.  Now you can see that it means that God has intense feelings about you, sin and holiness.

But there is a bad sense of jealousy.  In this verse, it is used in the bad sense.  There are two ideas here.  The first is jealousy.  Jealousy is feeling evil intensity toward what appears to be good in someone else.  It is the fervent desire to take something away from another.  Jealousy is a fire that is only quenched by possession.  The implication behind jealousy is self-rule.  When I am jealous, I tell myself that what someone else has should really be mine.  I am the ruler of my world and what I want I get.  Jealousy is a sin against God.  Why?  Because God is the One Who decides the proper distribution of His possessions among His children.  He is the rightful Ruler.  So, if He gives someone money or power or fame or anything else, it is up to Him.  When I decide that what someone else has should be mine, I am telling God that He didn’t know what He was doing.  I could have run the universe better.  I want to be in control to serve myself.

Jealousy brings on malice.  Malice is a term used in legal settings today.  But it has much wider application.  It means to harbor vindictive feelings that express themselves in evil acts and intentions toward someone.  You can see why jealousy and malice are connected.  When I live according to my rule, jealousy tells me that I deserve to have what you have.  As I let that jealousy work in my life, it produces feelings of hatred toward you.  My soul burns with the desire for what you have.  I start to think about how I can take what you have.  And, of course, the only way to take what you have is to act with evil intention toward you.  If I discover that I can’t take it from you (a reminder that I am not God), then another form of malice takes over.  I want to get even.  I will become vindictive.  You have it but I can’t get it.  So, I will hurt you some other way.  How much evil comes from not acknowledging God’s right to place possessions in our care?

The consequence of quarreling, jealousy, and malice is wrath.  The Greek word is thumoi.  Wrath is not a very good translation here.  The word usually translated wrath in the New Testament is orge.  Thumoi is the word for outbursts of anger.  It comes from the idea of an explosion, a sudden violent movement.  Isn’t that exactly what happens when we let the attitude of arguing take over?  We fight with words.  Then we want to get even.  Then, suddenly, we just can’t hold it back anymore.  We explode.

Once I worked in a juvenile prison.  The kids who were sent there by the court came with big attitude problems.  They hated the system for catching them.  They hated the staff for controlling them.  They hated themselves for corrupting them.  All of that intensity could erupt at any moment.  One day one of the girls sat on a desk in the office taking about her life.  She seemed calm and controlled but as she talked about her experiences she suddenly exploded in anger.  She smashed her arm through a glass window, blood splattering everywhere.  Then she picked up a broken piece and turned toward the staff person.  “I just want to kill you,” she screamed.  That is thumos (thumoi is the plural).

 Rivalries – The next word is eritheiai.  This is a plural word, just like thumoi.  “Rivalries” is an old way to translate this word.  Today we would say, “self-interest.”  The picture behind this word is about work.  The word describes someone who works for hire but with a purely selfish motive.  They are only interested in what’s in it for them.  Work is a sacred assignment under God’s rule, to be carried out with His holiness in mind.  Erithetai is entirely focused on self-interest, pitting my desires against yours.  It is the employee who takes advantage, the partner who defrauds, the company that cheats.  Personal gain is more valuable than honesty and self-sacrifice.  It is a word that describes the attitude that I am more important than others.  “Watching out for Number One” is the motto of this person.

Seditions – Now Paul introduces two words that show how the creation of enemies spills over into God’s intention for unity among believers.  The first word is dichostasiai. It means “division.”  It comes from two words: dicha which means “separate” and stasis which means “place.”  Those who are enemies divide themselves into separate places.  They experience dissension.  They can’t agree so they move away.  Even if their separation is not physical, it can be a separation of words, a failure to agree on what they believe.  This is haireseis (heresy).  It means “to choose, to have a contrary opinion.”  It is not schisma which is an actual separation but rather a separation in belief that stays within the group but creates antagonism.  Sins between individuals become sins between groups, separating and dividing what God intended to be joined.  Here we see the pattern of adultery working its way out in the life of an entire assembly of people.  God wants harmony, unity, and solidarity.  Capitulation to the desire for pleasure will lead inevitably to separation.  In marriage, it is called divorce.  Between groups it is called alienation.

Paul concludes this list with four words that describe the behavioral expression of the inner rage when I want to play god in a world that doesn’t belong to me.  The first is phthonoi (envy). It means “envy, jealousy, and malignity at the sight of excellence in others.”  We translate this word “envy” but it also means “ill-will, malice, jealousy.”  Why would Paul use this word when he has already used the word zeloi, a word that also means “envy”?  The answer is this:  zeloi is a word that has both a good and a bad sense.  It can mean the intense good feelings I have for God and His grace, or it can mean the intense bad feelings I have toward someone that I hate.  But phthonoi never has a good sense.  It is always evil.  Just like eritheiai, it is explosive.  It is the deep feeling of despising someone because you can’t control him.  It’s the “I just can’t help it” feeling when you feel real pain because someone else is happy but you aren’t.  There is a good reason that we say, “Misery loves company”.  Envy is behind this saying.  If I can’t be happy, then I don’t want you to be happy either.

Murders – The word Paul uses is phonoi.  It comes from phonos.  It means murder, but especially slaughter.  Lots of killing without mercy or consideration.  It might look like killing just for the pleasure of it, but we now know that it is the result of thinking that the world should be what I want it to be no matter what.  And when I discover that the world does not bend to my will, the ultimate solution is to destroy what doesn’t conform to me.

Thankfully, most of us are not murders.   We all agree with Paul that this form of self-in-control is reprehensible and intolerable.  But maybe we all haven’t seen that murder is connected with a list of sins that goes back to adultery.  How can murder be connected to adultery?  Adultery is the murder of the “one” unit God made in a marriage.  It destroys that unity.  It is murder by sex instead of murder by the sword.  But it destroys something God made.  It destroys God’s image in plural – two become one.

Murder destroys God’s image in singular.  God is very clear about the sacred quality of that image.  It is His reflection and the representation of Himself.  We do not have the right to erase it.

We can trace the chain of sin.  The desire for pleasure (the sins of sex) leads to the desire for power (the sins of control) that leads to the creation of enemies (sins of conflict).  The next step in this line of self-deification is the destruction of those who will not submit (sins of subjection).

Drunkenness – The word is methai.  It comes from a word that means “boundary or limit.”  The Bible does not tell us that alcohol is forbidden.  The decision to drink alcohol is an individual choice to be made before God.  This sin is not about consumption.  It is about not knowing your limits.  Think of it as the sin of going too far.  It could be about alcohol, but it doesn’t have to be when we consider it in the context of limits.  God has placed proper limits on all behavior.  Violating those limits is sin.  James reminds us that sin is knowing what is right and not doing it.  There are limits on drinking but there are also limits on eating, working, spending, talking, driving, choosing, even on thinking.  If we see this word in its root sense, we will see that sin is always going beyond the border set by God.  Someone once told me that God’s rules are like fences.  They set the boundaries.  What we do inside the fence God leaves up to us.  But God puts the fence there to protect us, not to keep us in.  There is plenty of freedom inside the fence.  There is danger outside.  Methaiis a question of boundary control.  If you don’t have it, you will be in grave danger.  Life inside the fence is blessed, joyful, and secure.  Life outside is treacherous.  You might find someone outside that fence who has decided to be god and doesn’t want you in the world.

Finally, Paul ends the list with revellings.  The Greek word is komos.  It is the natural extension of the word for drunkenness.  Komos was the word used for festivals in honor of the Roman god Bacchus, the god of wine.  At these festivals, men and women exhibited all kinds of “borderless” behavior.  Today we call them drunken orgies, but if we knew what the Greek word orge really meant, we might have a different view of the party.  Komos is an apt description of the “party” mentality.  Anything goes.  It is MTV on Spring Break.  You get the picture.

Paul tells us that we have come full circle.  What started as a desire for someone else has ended in a disregard for our own limits and the safety and security of everyone else.  We have thrown away those moral laws that govern God’s universe.  He won’t forget.

Sins of pleasure led to sins of power.  Sins of power led to sins of conflict.  Sins of conflict led to sins of subjection.  And sins of subjection lead us to sins of trespass.  We trample over God’s borders and arrive back where we started – seeking sins of pleasure.  It is a vicious cycle.  Once you get on board, you will not get off until you stop the train.  And this train only stops when you die.

So, you can die now, throw your life off the train and into God’s hands, or you can ride to the end where you will derail and die in the flames of disaster.

Topical Index: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, Galatians 5:19-21