You must all watch, and pray that you may not be exposed to trial! One's spirit is eager, but flesh and blood are weak!"

For the physical cravings are against the Spirit, and the cravings of the Spirit are against the physical; the two are in opposition, so that you cannot do anything you please.

Jesus answered, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for human nature has not disclosed this to you, but my Father in heaven!

So the Word became flesh and blood and lived for a while among us, abounding in blessing and truth, and we saw the honor God had given him, such honor as an only son receives from his father.

about his Son, who was physically descended from David,

I use these familiar human terms because of the limitations of your nature. For just as you before gave up the parts of your bodies in slavery to vice and greater and greater license, you must now give them up in slavery to uprightness, which leads to consecration.

For when we were living mere physical lives the sinful passions, awakened by the Law, operated through the organs of our bodies to make us bear fruit for death.

so that the requirement of the Law might be fully met in our case, since we live not on the physical but on the spiritual plane. People who are controlled by the physical think of what is physical, and people who are controlled by the spiritual think of what is spiritual.

For to be physically minded means hostility to God, for it refuses to obey God's law, indeed it cannot obey it. Those who are physical cannot please God. read more. But you are not physical but spiritual, if God's Spirit has really taken possession of you; for unless a man has Christ's spirit, he does not belong to Christ.

So, brothers, we are under obligations, but not to the physical nature, to live under its control,

No one can deny the profundity of the divine truth of our religion! "He was revealed in flesh, He was vindicated by the Spirit, He was seen by the angels, He was proclaimed among the heathen, He was believed in throughout the world, He was taken up into glory."

Many will say to me on that Day, 'Lord! Lord! Was it not in your name that we prophesied, and by your name that we drove out demons, and by your name that we did many mighty acts?' Then I will say to them plainly, 'I never knew you! Go away from me, you who do wrong!'

Jesus answered, "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for human nature has not disclosed this to you, but my Father in heaven!

You must all watch, and pray that you may not be exposed to trial! One's spirit is eager, but flesh and blood are weak!"

in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, a message from God came to Zechariah's son John in the desert.

His mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not get near him, on account of the crowd. And the word came to him, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside; they want to see you." read more. He answered, "My mother and my brothers are those who listen to God's message and obey it!"

The Spirit is what gives life; flesh is of no use at all. The things that I have said to you are spirit and they are life.

You judge by material standards, but I am judging nobody.

Yet it is only the truth when I tell you that it is better for you that I should go away. For if I do not go, the Helper will not come to you, but if I go I will send him to you.

So you, too, are sorrowful now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will be happy, and no one will rob you of your happiness.

just as you have done in giving him power over all mankind, so that he may give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

Then what are we to say about our ancestor Abraham?

for we know that Christ, once raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no more hold on him. For when he died, he became once for all dead to sin; the life he now lives is a life in relation to God. read more. So you also must think of yourselves as dead to sin but alive to God, through union with Christ Jesus.

For consider, brothers, what happened when God called you. Not many of you were what men call wise, not many of you were influential, not many were of high birth.

But if you do marry, there is no sin in that. And if a girl marries, it is no sin. But those who marry will have worldly trouble, which I would like to spare you.

I am not trying to recommend myself to you again. I am giving you cause to be proud of me, to use in answering men who pride themselves on external advantages and not on sincerity of heart.

and he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. So from that time on, I have estimated nobody at what he seemed to be outwardly; even though I once estimated Christ in that way, I no longer do so. read more. So if anyone is in union with Christ, he is a new being; the old state of things has passed away; there is a new state of things.

You look at things externally. If anyone is sure he belongs to Christ, let him think again and understand that I belong to Christ just as much as he.

Since many are so human as to boast, I will do it also.

Those who were regarded as the leaders??hat they once were makes no difference to me; God takes no account of external differences??he leaders contributed nothing new to me.

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. The life I am now living in the body I am living by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

There is no room for "Jew" and "Greek"; there is no room for "slave" and "freeman"; there is no room for "male" and "female"; for in union with Christ Jesus you are all one.

We are the true circumcision, who worship God by his Spirit, priding ourselves only on Christ Jesus, and not relying on physical advantages, though I at least am entitled to rely on them. If anyone thinks he can rely on his physical advantages, still more can I! read more. I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a descendant of Israel. I belong to the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Hebrew, and the son of Hebrews. As to the Law, I was a Pharisee; as to my zeal, I was a persecutor of the church; and by the Law's standard of uprightness, no fault could be found with me. But for the sake of Christ I have come to count my former gains as loss. Why, I count everything as loss compared with the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have lost everything, and think it rubbish, in order to gain Christ and be known to be united to him, with any uprightness I may have not based on law but coming through faith in Christ??he uprightness that comes from God through faith. I want to know him in the power of resurrection, and to share his sufferings and even his death,

"You must not handle," "You must not taste," "You must not touch"??22 referring to things that are all meant to be used up and destroyed? This is to follow mere human rules and regulations.

Such practices pass for wisdom, with their self-imposed devotions, their self-humiliation, and their ascetic discipline, but they carry with them no real distinction, they are really only a catering to the flesh.

You must all watch, and pray that you may not be exposed to trial! One's spirit is eager, but flesh and blood are weak!"

Look at my hands and feet, for it is I myself! Feel of me and see, for a ghost has not flesh and bones, as you see I have."

owing their birth not to nature nor to any human or physical impulse, but to God. So the Word became flesh and blood and lived for a while among us, abounding in blessing and truth, and we saw the honor God had given him, such honor as an only son receives from his father.

about his Son, who was physically descended from David,

about his Son, who was physically descended from David, and decisively declared Son of God in his holiness of spirit, by being raised from the dead??esus Christ our Lord,

We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am physical, sold into slavery to sin.

Thank God! it is done through Jesus Christ our Lord! So mentally I am a slave to God's law, but physically to the law of sin.

For though it was impossible for the Law to do it, hampered as it was by our physical limitations, God, by sending his own Son in our sinful physical form, as a sin-offering, put his condemnation upon sin through his physical nature, so that the requirement of the Law might be fully met in our case, since we live not on the physical but on the spiritual plane.

It is a physical body that is sown, it is a spiritual body that is raised. If there is a physical body, there is a spiritual body also. This is also what the Scripture says: "The first man Adam became a living creature." The last Adam has become a life-giving Spirit. read more. It is not the spiritual that comes first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man is of the dust of the earth; the second man is from heaven. Those who are of the earth are like him who was of the earth, and those who are of heaven are like him who is from heaven, and as we have been like the man of the earth, let us also try to be like the man from heaven. But I can tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot share in the Kingdom of God, and decay will not share in what is imperishable.

But I can tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot share in the Kingdom of God, and decay will not share in what is imperishable.

So since we have promises like these, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves of everything that can defile body or spirit, and by reverence for God make our consecration complete.

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. The life I am now living in the body I am living by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

I mean this: Live by the Spirit, and then you will not indulge your physical cravings.

idolatry, sorcery, enmity, quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party-spirit,

We all lived among them once, indulging our physical cravings and obeying the impulses of our lower nature and its thoughts, and by nature we were doomed to God's wrath like other men.

No one can put you in the wrong by persisting in studied humility and the worship of angels, being absorbed in the visions he has seen, and groundlessly conceited over his mere human mind.

If, then, you have been raised to life with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are where Christ is, above, seated at God's right hand.

May God himself, the giver of peace, consecrate you through and through. Spirit, soul, and body, may you be kept sound, and be found irreproachable when our Lord Jesus Christ comes.

Therefore since these children referred to have the same mortal nature, Jesus also shared it, like them, in order that by his death he might dethrone the lord of death, the devil,

And all mankind is to see how God can save!"

So the Word became flesh and blood and lived for a while among us, abounding in blessing and truth, and we saw the honor God had given him, such honor as an only son receives from his father.

Whatever owes its birth to the physical is physical, and whatever owes its birth to the Spirit is spiritual.

For though it was impossible for the Law to do it, hampered as it was by our physical limitations, God, by sending his own Son in our sinful physical form, as a sin-offering, put his condemnation upon sin through his physical nature,

Those who are physical cannot please God. But you are not physical but spiritual, if God's Spirit has really taken possession of you; for unless a man has Christ's spirit, he does not belong to Christ.

Flesh is not all alike; men have one kind, animals another, birds another, and fish another.

For the physical cravings are against the Spirit, and the cravings of the Spirit are against the physical; the two are in opposition, so that you cannot do anything you please.

for no one ever hates his own person, but he feeds it and takes care of it, just as Christ does with the church, for we are parts of his body. read more. Therefore a man must leave his father and mother and attach himself to his wife, and they must become one.

You must all watch, and pray that you may not be exposed to trial! One's spirit is eager, but flesh and blood are weak!"

And all mankind is to see how God can save!"

in the hope of making my countrymen jealous, and thus saving some of them.

So since we have promises like these, dear friends, let us cleanse ourselves of everything that can defile body or spirit, and by reverence for God make our consecration complete.

Are you so senseless? Did you begin with the Spirit only to end now with the flesh?

The things our physical nature does are clear enough??mmorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party-spirit, read more. envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you as I did before that people who do such things will have no share in the Kingdom of God.