We do not live after the flesh: life in the Spirit (Romans 8)

Chapter 7 of the letter to the Romans ends with a cry anyone can recognise: “the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do… O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:19, 24). It is the voice of someone who has tried to be good in their own strength and has failed. And then, without transition, chapter 8 opens, and in it Paul writes a sentence that is not a command, nor advice, nor an ideal, but a statement about what we already are:

“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”

Romans 8:9

“But ye are not in the flesh.” A few verses earlier he had said it in the first person plural: we, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (8:4). This article sets out to understand that sentence: what “the flesh” is, what it means not to live according to it, what God did to make that possible, how we walk in the Spirit day by day, and what happens when we fall. At the end there is a prayer.

What “the flesh” is

We must begin by clearing up a misunderstanding. When Paul speaks of “the flesh” in this sense, he is not speaking of the body. The body is God’s good creation, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and one day it will rise. The Bible does not despise the body, or food, or rest, or love between husband and wife.

“The flesh” is something else: it is the whole human being—mind, desires, will, body—living on its own account, turned in on itself, without God. It is the “I” at the centre. That is why its works are not only the ones people imagine. Paul’s list includes “adultery, fornication, uncleanness,” but also “hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions… envyings” (Galatians 5:19-21). Envy is as “fleshly” as lust; gossip, as much as drunkenness.

And there is a religious flesh, the hardest to see: that of the person who wants to earn God by their merits and feels superior. Jeremiah called it making “flesh his arm” (Jeremiah 17:5): leaning on human strength. Paul, who had been the most zealous of Pharisees, learned it: we are those “which worship God in the spirit… and have no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3).

Two ways of living

“For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Romans 8:5-8

Paul describes two worlds. What distinguishes them is not, in the first place, conduct, but what they “mind”: where the mind goes when it is left free, what is desired, what one lives on. The flesh has a mind-set, and its end is death. The Spirit has another, and its fruit is “life and peace.”

And he adds something hard: the carnal mind “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” It is not that it does not want to enough: it cannot. That is why the human problem is not solved by more rules or more willpower. Another life is needed.

What God did first

Before asking anything of us, chapter 8 announces what God has done:

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”

Romans 8:1-2

“No condemnation.” The Christian life does not walk towards that verdict: it starts from it. And Paul explains how it became possible: “what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (8:3). The law was good, but it could not give the strength to fulfil it. So God did two things. He sent his Son, who took our condition and bore on the cross the sentence that hung over us. And he gave us his Spirit, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us” (8:4). It does not say “by us” but “in us”: it is his work within us.

This order is everything. First the gift, then the way. Whoever tries to stop living according to the flesh so that God will accept them has gone back to Romans 7. Whoever knows there is now no condemnation can begin to walk.

“Ye are not in the flesh”: a change of place

Paul uses two expressions that should be distinguished. One is being “in the flesh”: living in that territory, under that rule, without the Spirit. Of that he says to believers: “ye are not” there. They have been transferred. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The other is to “walk” or “live after the flesh”: to behave in the old way. That can still happen to a Christian, which is why the letters are full of exhortations. The believer still lives in a body and in a world that pull backwards: “though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh” (2 Corinthians 10:3).

The difference is that between a citizen and their habits. Someone who has moved to another country no longer belongs to the former one, even though for a time they keep its customs and its accent. They do not have to struggle to earn the new citizenship: they already have it. They have to learn to live in accordance with it. And the proof of that citizenship is one thing only: “if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.” Everyone who belongs to Christ has him. Read The Holy Spirit today and How to be born again according to the Bible.

Debtors, but not to the flesh

“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”

Romans 8:12-13

We owe the flesh nothing. It never gave us anything good: it promised freedom and left us bound; it promised pleasure and left us empty. We have no reason to obey it.

The second sentence contains, in a few words, the whole teaching on changing one’s life. “Ye… do mortify”: we do it; it is not passivity. “Through the Spirit”: not by our willpower alone; it is he who gives the will and the power. In the present tense: it is a daily matter, not a once-for-all act. And what is put to death is “the deeds,” not the body: it is not about punishing or hating oneself, but about starving what destroys us. Paul says it elsewhere with a simple image: “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14).

The struggle goes on, and that is a good sign

No one should read Romans 8 as though the battle were over. “The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other” (Galatians 5:17). Jesus said it in Gethsemane: “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).

But that struggle must be rightly understood. Before knowing Christ there was no war: the flesh ruled unopposed. If there is now conflict within you, if what did not hurt before now hurts, it is because the Spirit lives in you and has planted his flag. The dead do not fight. The tension you feel is not a sign that God has left you, but that he has arrived.

How we walk after the Spirit

“If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). Walking means taking steps, one after another. Scripture points to several.

1. Reckon on what God says about you. “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:11). Before fighting, remember who you are.
2. Watch what your mind is occupied with. What you look at, what you read, what you go over inwardly feeds one or the other. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
3. Present your body to God. “Yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Romans 6:13). Your eyes, your hands, your tongue, every morning.
4. Give no opportunity. A temptation one goes looking for is not overcome.
5. Sow to the Spirit. “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:8). Every small decision is a seed.
6. Watch and pray. Ask the Spirit to fill you each day; he does not force himself on us.
7. Confess quickly. Do not let a fall turn into a road.
8. Do not walk alone. Look for brothers and sisters with whom you can be honest.
9. Depend. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

You will find practical help for specific struggles in How to overcome the temptations of the flesh.

The flesh disguised as holiness

To the Galatians, who wanted to perfect themselves by keeping rules, Paul wrote: “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3). One can give up drunkenness and fall into the pride of not drinking. One can leave a visible sin and cultivate contempt for those still struggling with it. That too is living after the flesh, and it is more dangerous, because it looks like virtue. The sign that the Spirit is the one at work is not that a person becomes stricter, but gentler: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness.”

Neither licence nor legalism

There are two ways of leaving the road. One says: “if there is no condemnation, I can live as I please.” Paul replies: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1-2). Grace is not permission: it is power. Grace itself teaches us to deny “ungodliness and worldly lusts” (Titus 2:12).

The other says: “I have to earn God’s love every day.” And Paul replies: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1). Between the two precipices the road is narrow, and it has a name: walking in the Spirit.

Children, not slaves

“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

Romans 8:15

Here is the deepest reason for not living after the flesh. It is not fear of punishment. It is that we have been adopted. A slave obeys so as not to be beaten; a child, because they belong to the house and love their Father. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” (8:14). And if children, “then heirs” (8:17). The old life is not abandoned by gritting one’s teeth, but by discovering that something infinitely better awaits us.

When you fall

You will fall. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1:8). What matters is what you do next. The flesh will tell you two lies: first, that it is no great matter; and afterwards, that there is no remedy now. The Spirit says something else: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1:9).

The sentence “there is… no condemnation” does not expire with your first fall. There is a difference between stumbling on the road and changing roads. Get up quickly, without excuses and without despair. Read I am a sinner: will God accept me? and Coming back to Christ.

More than conquerors

The chapter that begins with “no condemnation” ends with “no separation.” “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (8:37). And Paul, who knew his own weakness well, concludes: “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life… nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:38-39).

Victory over the flesh does not rest on how strong we are, but on how strong that love is.

Frequently asked questions

Is the body bad? No. “The flesh,” in this sense, is not the body, but life centred on oneself and without God. The body is the temple of the Spirit.

Can a Christian live after the flesh? They can walk that way at moments or for seasons, and the Bible warns of it seriously. But they no longer belong to that realm, and the Spirit who dwells in them gives them no peace there.

Does “mortify” mean punishing the body? No. It means putting “the deeds” to death: ceasing to feed what harms us, in the strength of the Spirit. It has nothing to do with hurting oneself.

I have the Spirit and I still struggle with the same thing. Why? Because sanctification is a road, not an instant. The struggle is a sign of life. Ask for help, be honest with someone you trust, and do not stop getting up.

How do I know whether I am walking in the Spirit? By the fruit, over time: more love, more peace, more self-control, more readiness to ask forgiveness. And by the direction in which you are walking, more than by how far you have got.

Prayer

Father, I know the cry of Romans 7 well. I have wanted to do good and could not; I have promised to change and gone back to the same thing. I am tired of fighting in my own strength. Thank you that your answer was not one more rule, but your Son: there is now no condemnation for me. I find it hard to believe; help me to believe it. Come, Holy Spirit, and do in me what the law could not. Dwell in this house and govern it. Show me what I am feeding without noticing. Give me strength to put to death, today, what destroys me, and not only what can be seen: my pride too, my envy, my harshness towards others. When I fall, lift me up quickly and do not let me listen to the voice that says there is no remedy now. I am not a slave: I am a child. Abba, Father. Nothing will separate me from your love. Amen.