Life And The Flesh

Qui enim in carne sunt, Deo placere non possunt. Qui in carne confidunt, qui concupiscentias suas sequuntur, qui in eis habitant, qui earum voluptatibus oblectantur, qui in earum delectationibus beatam felicemque vitam constituunt, ipsi enim in carne sunt, Deo placere non possunt. Non enim intelligendum est, qui sunt in carne, quasi qui in ista carne vivunt, in qua multi viventes Deo placere meruerunt, qui in carne non fuerunt quamvis in carne vixerint. Portabant carnem, non portabantur a carne. Unde et subditur: Vos autem in carne non estis. Populo Dei dicit, Ecclesiae Dei dicit, Romanis scripsit; sed universae Ecclesiae dixit. Tritico dixit, non paleae; massae latenti, non stipulae apparenti. Unusquisque in corde suo cognoscat si ad eum pertineat. Guillelmus S Theodorici Abbas, Expositio In Epistolam Ad Romanos, Liber V Source: Migne PG 180.629a-b

Those who live in the flesh cannot please God. 1 Those who trust in the flesh, who follow its desires, who dwell in them, who are delighted by its pleasures, who establish the blessed and happy life in its joys, they are in the flesh and cannot please God. It must not be thought that those who are in the flesh are as those who live in this flesh, in which many living have merited to please God, those who lived in the flesh as not in the flesh. They carried the flesh, they were not carried about by it. Whence he writes after this: 'For you are not in the flesh.' 2 He speaks to the people of God, He speaks to the Church of God. He wrote to the Romans, but he spoke to the universal Church. He spoke to wheat, not to chaff; to him hidden in the ear, not to the overt straw. Every man in his heart knows if this refers to him. William of St Thierry, Commentary on Romans, Book 5 1 Rom 8.8 2 Rom 8.9