J. B. Lightfoot on Colossians 3:4-5

^5Νεκρώσατε οὖν τὰ μέλη τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς· πορνείαν, ἀκαθαρσίαν, πάθος, ἐπιθυμίαν κακήν, καὶ τὴν πλεονεξίαν, 5–11. ‘So then realise this death to the world; kill all your earthly members. Is it fornication, impurity of whatever kind, passion, evil desire? Or again, is it that covetousness which makes a religion, an idolatry, of greed? Do not deceive yourselves. For all these things God’s wrath will surely come. In these sins ye, like other Gentiles, indulged in times past, when your life was spent amidst them. But now everything is changed. Now you also must put away not this or that desire, but all sins whatsoever. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, filthy abuse; banish it from your lips. Be not false one to another in word or deed; but cast off for ever the old man with his actions, and put on the new, who is renewed from day to day, growing unto perfect knowledge and refashioned after the image of his Creator. In this new life, in this regenerate man, there is not, there cannot be, any distinction of Greek or Jew, of circumcision or uncircumcision; there is no room for barbarian, for Scythian, for bond or free. Christ has displaced, has annihilated, all these; Christ is Himself all things and in all things’. 5. The false doctrine of the Gnostics had failed to check sensual indulgence (ii. 23). The true doctrine of the Apostle has power to kill the whole carnal man. The substitution of a comprehensive principle for special precepts—of the heavenly life in Christ for a code of minute ordinances—at length attains the end after which the Gnostic teachers have striven, and striven in vain. νεκρώσατε οὖν] i.e. ‘Carry out this principle of _death_ to the world (ii. 20 ἀπεθάνετε, iii. 3 ἀπεθάνετε), and kill everything that is mundane and carnal in your being’. τὰ μέλη κ.τ.λ.] Each person has a twofold moral personality. There is in him the ‘old man’, and there is in him also ‘the new’ (vv. 9, 10). The old man with all his members must be pitilessly slain. It is plain that τὰ μέλη here is used, like ἄνθρωπος in ver. 9, not physically, but morally. Our actual limbs may be either τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς or τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐράνοις, according as they are made instruments for the world or for Christ: just as we—our whole being—may identify ourselves with the παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος or with the νέος ἄνθρωπος of our twofold potentiality. For this use of the physical, as a symbol of the moral of which it is the potential instrument, compare Matt. v. 29 sq. εἰ δὲ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου ὁ δεξιὸς σκανδαλίζει σε, ἔξελε αὐτὸν κ.τ.λ. I have ventured to punctuate after τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. Thus πορνείαν κ.τ.λ. are prospective accusatives, which should be governed directly by some such word as ἀπόθεσθε. But several dependent clauses interpose; the last of these incidentally suggests a contrast between the past and the present; and this contrast, predominating in the Apostle’s mind, leads to an abrupt recasting of the sentence, _νυνὶ δὲ_ ἀπόθεσθε καὶ ὑμεῖς _τὰ πάντα_ in disregard of the original construction. This opposition of ποτέ and νῦν has a tendency to dislocate the construction in St Paul, as in i. 22 νυνὶ δὲ ἀποκατηλλάγητε (or ἀποκατήλλαξεν), i. 26 νῦν δὲ ἐφανέρωθη: see the note on this latter passage. For the whole run of the sentence (the parenthetic relative clauses, the contrast of past and present, and the broken construction) compare Ephes. ii. 1–5 καὶ ὑμᾶς ... ἐν αἷς ποτέ ... ἐν οἷς καὶ ... ποτε ... ὁ δὲ Θεός ... καὶ ὄντας ἡμᾶς συνεζωοποίησεν. With the common punctuation the interpretation is equally awkward, whether we treat τὰ μέλη and πορνείαν κ.τ.λ. as in direct apposition, or as double accusatives, or in any other way. The case is best put by Severianus, σάρκα καλεῖ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν, ἧς καὶ τὰ μέλη καταριθμεῖ ... ὁ παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν τὸ φρόνημα τὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας, μέλη δὲ αὐτοῦ αἱ πράξεις τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων; but this is an evasion of the difficulty, which consists in the direct apposition of the instruments and the activities, from whatever point they are viewed. πορνείαν κ.τ.λ.] The general order is from the less comprehensive to the more comprehensive. Thus πορνεία is a special kind of uncleanness, while ἀκαθαρσία is uncleanness in any form, Ephes. v. 3 πορνεία δὲ καὶ ἀκαθαρσία πᾶσα; comp. Gal. v. 19 πορνεία, ἀκαθαρσία, ἀσέλγεια, with the note there. Thus again πάθος, though frequently referring to this class of sins (Rom. i. 26, 1 Thess. iv. 5), would include other base passions which do not fall under the category of ἀκαθαρσία, as for instance gluttony and intemperance. πάθος, ἐπιθυμίαν] The two words occur together in 1 Thess. iv. 5 μὴ ἐν πάθει ἐπιθυμίας. So in a passage closely resembling the text, Gal. v. 24 οἱ δὲ τοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τὴν σάρκα ἐστάυρωσαν σὺν τοῖς παθήμασιν καὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις. The same vice may be viewed as a πάθος from its passive and an ἐπιθυμία from its active side. The word ἐπιθυμία is not used here in the restricted sense which it has e.g. in Arist. _Eth. Nic._ ii. 4, where it ranges with anger, fear, etc., being related to πάθος as the species to the genus (see Gal. l.c. note). In the Greek Testament ἐπιθυμία has a much more comprehensive sense; e.g. Joh. viii. 44 τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν θέλετε ποιεῖν. Here, if anything, ἐπιθυμία is wider than πάθος. While πάθος includes all ungovernable affections, ἐπιθυμία κακή reaches to all evil longings. Ἰδού, says Chrysostom, γενικῶς τὸ πᾶν εἶπε· πάντα γὰρ ἐπιθυμία κακή, βασκανία, ὀργή, λύπη. The epithet is added because ἐπιθυμία is capable of a good sense: comp. 1 Cor. x. 6 ἐπιθυμητὰς κακῶν. καὶ τὴν πλεονεξίαν] ‘_and_ especially _covetousness_’. Impurity and covetousness may be said to divide between them nearly the whole domain of human selfishness and vice; ‘Si avaritia prostrata est, exsurgit libido’ (Cypr. _de Mort._ 3). The one has been already dealt with; the other needs now to be specially denounced; comp. Ephes. v. 3 πορνεία δὲ καὶ ἀκαθαρσία πᾶσα ἢ πλεονεξία. ‘Homo extra Deum’, says Bengel (on Rom. i. 29), ‘quærit pabulum in creatura materiali vel per voluptatem vel per avaritiam.’ Comp. _Test. xii Patr._ Jud. 18 φυλάξασθε οὖν, τέκνα μου, ἀπὸ τῆς πορνείας καὶ τῆς φιλαργυρίας ... ὅτι ταῦτα ἀφιστᾷ νόμου Θεοῦ. Similarly Lysis Pythag. 4 (_Epistol. Græc._ p. 602, ed. Hercher) ὀνομάξαιμι δ’ ἂν αὐτῶν [i.e. the vices] πρᾶτον ἐπελθὼν τὰς ματέρας, ἀκρασίαν τε καὶ πλεονεξίαν· ἄμφω δὲ πολύγονοι πεφύκαντι. It must be remembered that πλεονεξία is much wider than φιλαργυρία (see Trench _N. T. Syn._ § xxiv, p. 77 sq.), which itself is called ῥίζα πάντων τῶν κακῶν (1 Tim. vi. 10). The attempt to give πλεονεξία here and in other passages the sense of ‘impurity’ (see e.g. Hammond on Rom. i. 29) is founded on a misconception. The words πλεονεκτεῖν, πλεονεξία, will sometimes be used in relation to sins of uncleanness, because such may be acts of injustice also. Thus adultery is not only impurity, but it is robbery also: hence 1 Thess. iv. 6 τὸ μὴ ὑπερβαίνειν καὶ πλεονεκτεῖν ἐν τῷ πράγματι τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ (see the note there). In other passages again there will be an accidental connexion; e.g. Ephes. iv. 19 εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ, i.e. ‘with greediness’, ‘with entire disregard for the rights of others’. But no where do the words in themselves suggest this meaning. Here the particles καὶ τὴν show that a new type of sin is introduced with πλεονεξίαν: and in the parallel passage Ephes. v. 3 (quoted above) the same distinction is indicated by the change from the conjunctive particle καί to the disjunctive ἤ. It is an error to suppose that this sense of πλεονεξία is supported by Clem. Alex. _Strom._ iii. 12 (p. 551 sq.) ὡς γὰρ ἡ πλεονεξία πορνεία λέγεται, τῇ αὐταρκείᾳ ἐναντιουμένη. On the converse error of explaining ἀκαθαρσία to mean ‘greediness’, ‘covetousness’, see the note on 1 Thess. ii. 3.