A strong theology of creation permits Paul—like the recorders of the Bible’s wisdom traditions—to trace the way of things by long, thoughtful observation. Even in a letter shot through with reflection upon the spirit-flesh dichotomy, Paul is simply to describe with organic language and as both promise and warning the way things work:
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up.
Paul mines what are to him the evident continuities in life with pastoral intent. He does not want the Galatian Christians to forge with their attitudes and behaviors a future that turns out to look and smell not like blessing but rather like a curse. His desire for them is that they should invest life and energy in projects and a way of life that cultivates the soil that gives—eventually and enduringly—a sustaining harvest.
So, on the back of an argument that counterposes the way of the Spirit to the way of the flesh, the apostle urges them to opt for the former with a view fixed firmly on the far horizon.
This is very much the Pauline way, dealing energetically and even angrily with an immediate crisis while working out a framework that honors the long view. Flesh and Spirit are constituent components of that long horizon. Indeed they serve—again the parallels to wisdom thinking are evident—as competing destinations. One selects one of them, not two, and then journeys long in that direction.
Canter Bridge 
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