(5) Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: (6) For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: (7) In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. (8) But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. (9) Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; (10) And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: (11) Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
I pray the Reader to observe with me, the particular expression of the Apostle, when he saith: mortify, therefore, your members which are upon earth. The word therefore is an inference from what went before; of a life hidden with Christ in God: meaning, as plain as words can render it, that from Christ, grace must be obtained, to subdue all the corrupt affections of our members, which are earthly; and which he enumerates. And this corresponds to what the Holy Ghost by Paul taught elsewhere. It is by the SPIRIT; believers mortify the deeds of the body, and live, Romans 8:13. And here, as in all other parts of the sacred writings, the Holy Ghost teacheth the Church, to consider the spirit, when quickened from the death of trespasses and sins, to be brought forth into a new, and spiritual life; and as such, to be perfectly holy in Christ, being made a partaker of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, 2 Peter 1:4. Whereas, the body remains the same, unregenerated, unrenewed, and as Paul himself found it to the last, and groaned under it accordingly; a body of sin and death, Romans 7:24. To mortify, therefore, this body by the spirit; is what is here commanded, and enjoined. These members are properly said to be upon the earth, meaning wholly earthly. And for the sins of which, in the unregenerate, or as is called here the children of disobedience, God' s judgment follows them. And these different characters are strikingly set forth, under the similitudes of the old man, and the new. But these things, are so plain, and self-evident, that I think it unnecessary to enlarge on them in this place.