To live after the Spirit means letting the Holy Spirit direct your mind, instead of your sinful nature, which the Bible calls the flesh. It is not a task. It is a mind you receive from Him, one that minds the Spirit instead of the flesh.
What Does Romans 8:5-8 Say About the Flesh and the Spirit?
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 names two kinds of minds. To mind something means your attention stays fixed on it, shaping what you want and do. One mind:
- Is fixed on the flesh. Being carnally minded does not just feel empty. Paul calls it death — a mind cut off from the life God intended for it.
- The other is fixed on the Spirit. Being spiritually minded is the opposite: life and peace, because it stays connected to the God who gives both.
Paul goes further than saying the flesh struggles to please God. He says it cannot. The carnal mind is enmity against God — open hostility, not just indifference — because it will not submit to God’s law and is not able to.
Why Does This Start With No Condemnation?
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. For 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: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)
Paul does not open this chapter with a command. He opens with a verdict already settled: no condemnation — no sentence of guilt — hangs over anyone in Christ Jesus.
That verdict comes first, before anything is said about how you walk.
What the law could never do because flesh was too weak, God did through His Son at the Cross. Sin itself was condemned there, in the flesh, once for all. That happened before you ever minded anything.
👉 Living after the Spirit is not how you earn that standing. It is what naturally follows from already having it. Freedom comes first; walking in it comes second.
Is Living After the Spirit About the Spirit Living in You?
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. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. (Romans 8:9-11)
Paul shifts focus now. He moves from what you mind to who lives inside you.
That indwelling is not a mood or an effort — it is a Person actually present.
If the Spirit is missing, Paul says plainly, you do not belong to Christ. Nothing softens that line. It marks the line between belonging to Him and not.
👉 The same Spirit who raised Jesus lives in every believer. That is resurrection power, not self-discipline. One day He will give life to your mortal body too.
How Do You Actually Live After the Spirit?
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)
Paul calls believers debtors — people who owe something. Not to the flesh, though. You are not obligated to obey it just because it demands your attention.
Notice the phrase Paul uses: through the Spirit. Not through willpower or gritted teeth. The deeds of the body are put to death by the Spirit’s power working in you, not by effort straining against them.
That power traces back to the Cross behind every choice, where Christ settled what your effort never could.
Isn’t Living After the Spirit Just Another Command to Try Harder?
Read on its own, the command to put sinful deeds to death sounds like a call to white-knuckle obedience. Grit your teeth. Break the habit through raw willpower.
That reading turns Romans 8 into the same self-effort religion the rest of Scripture rejects. It sounds like something you produce.
It is not.
Paul already answered that reading in the same verse. The deeds of the body are put to death through the Spirit, not through the flesh’s own strength. That single word changes everything.
Self-effort and the Spirit’s work are not the same action described two ways. They are opposites.
One strains against sin using the flesh’s own strength. That is the same nature Romans 8 already called enemy of God, unable to please Him. The other lets the Spirit do what the flesh never could.
Faith is what opens the door between the two.
Faith placed in the finished work of the Cross is what gives the Spirit latitude — room, freedom — to actually do the killing Paul describes.
👉 Try to mortify sin your own way, and you are back under the flesh’s power, using the very nature that cannot submit to God’s law to fight against itself.
Why Are There Two Ways to Live in the First Place?
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:6)
Two ways to live exist because two births exist.
Natural birth produces flesh. Spiritual birth — being born again, made alive by God’s Spirit rather than merely improved — produces something the Bible simply calls spirit.
This is why living after the flesh is not a phase someone outgrows through effort. It is what a person born only once still is. Living after the Spirit requires the second birth first.
How Do You Enter Life After the Spirit?
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:11-14)
Paul’s word here is “reckon.” To reckon something is to count it true and act on it, the way you’d trust a bank balance without needing to recount the cash day after day.
You reckon yourself dead to sin because Christ’s death already made it true.
That reckoning is an act of faith, not a feeling you wait to have.
I’ve found that placing my faith entirely and specifically in what Jesus accomplished at the Cross takes two things.
- Coming from a background where the Cross and what Jesus accomplished there was almost never mentioned, it now takes real effort. I have to turn my mind to it on purpose, reading about it in Scripture and anywhere else I can find it, until it starts to sink into my very being.
- It also takes reminding myself every day, many times a day, that my faith rests on nothing I can accomplish. It rests only in what Jesus accomplished at the Cross.
So, yield your self to God the same way — a decision made from what you believe, not from how disciplined you feel that day.
Faith is the entry point, every time.
Why Can’t the Flesh Understand Spiritual Things?
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Paul calls the unregenerate mind the “natural man” — a person operating only on the flesh’s understanding, with no Spirit inside to perceive spiritual things. To him, the things of God are not just unappealing. They sound foolish.
This explains why living after the flesh isn’t simply weak willpower. It is a mind. That mind cannot receive what the Spirit offers, because it was never given ears to hear it.
What Does This Look Like Every Day?
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. (Colossians 3:1-10)
Paul gets specific here. Setting your affection above simply means where your desires and interests are aimed. He names the old life plainly — anger, lying, impurity — and calls it the “old man,” the identity a person had before Christ.
The new man is the fresh identity given at the second birth. It is renewed in knowledge day by day. Living after the Spirit looks like this trade happening in ordinary moments.
A held tongue. A dropped grudge. A desire redirected toward what is above instead of what is on the earth.
What Does Galatians 5:16-18 Say About the Flesh and Spirit?
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. (Galatians 5:16-18)
Paul says this again, another way. Flesh and Spirit are not just different. They are contrary, actively opposed to one another inside every believer.
Galatians says the same: two natures, one real fight.
What Do You Do With This Today?
You do not live after the Spirit by trying harder than yesterday. You live after the Spirit by trust. Faith in what Christ finished at the Cross gives Him room to do what effort never could.
The fight is real. But the win was never yours to produce.
Today that might mean one honest moment: naming the specific thing your flesh is straining to control, and simply stopping the strain. Remind yourself that Jesus Christ, The Son of God, went to the cross to break the dominion of sin over you and your life. Jesus Christ already settled the issue.
Our job is to live in that, breath in that, walk in that finished work by faith.
Let the Spirit mind it instead. That is what living after the Spirit actually looks like — not less effort toward sin, but faith placed somewhere effort never belonged.
