Canter Bridge

For a man as determined as he is to safeguard the Christian’s freedom from any moral and legal encumbrance that does not align itself with the logic of Jesus’ cross, the apostle Paul is shockingly severe with regard to those who breach moral boundaries:

I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The apostle makes this fear-inspiring warning with regard to those who practice ‘the works of the flesh’. Paul bifurcates the existential energy available to humankind. For him, there are just two: spirit and flesh.

He is concerned to remove any presumption that there can be concord between the works of the flesh and that regenerating power that is evidence of God’s (S)pirit. Sliding precariously close to the very moralism he finds antithetical to Christian liberty, Paul names the enemy:

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

Christian liberty, one gathers, is not equivalent to moral laxity. Whatever that elusive and precious liberty turns out to be, it does not flatter itself with a casual grin when life- and community-destroying behavior insinuates its way onto life’s menu of options.

The loss of all that matters—forever—lies that way.