In order to form a correct judgment regarding the nature of the passage in the Epistle, we must carefully examine the context. In chapter v. the author is speaking of the manners of Christians, and he says that they are not distinguished from others either
by country or language or by their customs, for they have neither cities nor speech of their own, nor do they lead a singular life. They dwell in their native countries, but only as sojourners [———], and the writer proceeds by a long sequence of antithetical sentences to depict their habits. "Every foreign land is as their native country, yet the land of their birth is a foreign land" [———], and so on. Now this epistle is in great part a mere plagiarism of the Pauline and other canonical epistles, whilst professing to describe the actual life of Christians, and the fifth and sixth chapters, particularly, are based upon the epistles of Paul and notably the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, from which even the antithetical style is derived. We may give a specimen of this in referring to the context of the passage before us, and it is important that we should do so. After a few sentences like the above the fifth chapter continues: "They are in the flesh, but do not live according to the flesh. They continue on earth, but are citizens of heaven "
[———].(1)
It is very evident here, and throughout the Epistle, that the Epistles of Paul chiefly, together with the other canonical Epistles, are the sources of the writer's inspiration. The next chapter (vi) begins and proceeds as follows: "To say all in a word: what the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world. The soul is dispersed throughout all the members of the body, and Christians throughout all the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body but is not of the body, and Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. [———]. The invisible soul is kept in the visible body, and Christians are known, indeed, to be in the world, but their worship of God remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul and wages war against it, although in no way wronged by it, because it is restrained from indulgence in sensual pleasures, and the world hates Christians,
although in no way wronged by them, because they are opposed to sensual pleasures [———]. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and the members, and Christians love those who hate them "[———]. And so on with three or four similar sentences, one of which, at least, is taken from the Epistle to the Corinthians,(1) to the end of the chapter.
Now the passages pointed out as references to the fourth Gospel, it will be remembered, distinctly differ from the parallels in the Gospel, and it seems to us clear that they arise naturally out of the antithetical manner which the writer adopts from the Epistles of Paul, and are based upon passages in those Epistles closely allied to them in sense and also in language. The simile in connection with which the words occur is commenced at the beginning of the preceding chapter, where Christians are represented as living as strangers even in their native land, and the very essence of the passage in dispute is given in the two sentences: "They are in the flesh, but do not live according to the flesh" [———], which is based upon 2 Cor. x. 3, "For we walk in the flesh, but do not war(2) according to the flesh" [———], and similar passages abound; as for instance, Rom. viii. 4... "in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit; 9. But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit [———]: 12...
So then, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, that we should live after the flesh" [———] &c., &c. (Cf. 4, 14.). And the second: "They continue on earth but are citizens of heaven" [———], which recall Philip, iii. 20: "For our country (our citizenship) is in heaven" [———].(3) The sense of the passage is everywhere found, and nothing is more natural than