Verse 19
These are they who make separations, sensual, having not the Spirit.
Who make separations ... They make separations, by separating themselves from the true church, and by inducing others to do so likewise. The rest of the verse means that, "They live as brute beasts, guided simply by their lusts and passions, their Bible being the manifold devices and covetousness of their own hearts."[49]
Having not the Spirit ... The blessed Spirit, long having been grieved, insulted, resisted, lusted against, and at last "quenched" by themselves, such men were no longer capable of any goodness whatever. This capacity for evil men to become, in some vital sense, actually sub-human was discussed in my Commentary on Romans, pp. 39-45; and we cannot but be impressed with this further evidence of such a phenomenon. Mayor observed it in these comments:
"The false teachers were so absorbed in the lower sensuous nature that they no longer possessed, in any real sense of the word, that element in man's compound being, which is itself spiritual, and capable therefore of communion with the Divine Spirit."[50]
[49] Adam Clarke, op. cit., p. 955.
[50] J. B. Mayor, op. cit., p. 273.
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