Many have asked a crucial question when it comes to freedom from sin:
"When Christ was cruficified, did He cleanse our spirit from sin, or our flesh?"
The answer is very clear in scripture: He cleansed your spirit. Your spirit was made new, declared righteous, and joined to Christ forever (1 Corinthians 6:17). It is not being improved gradually over time. It has been made perfect by His finished work (see What The New Creation Is).
Your flesh does not get cleansed, it gets crucified.
“And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” – Galatians 5:24
Notice that you haven’t merely crucified the flesh, but you crucified its passions and desires along with it. Think about that whenever you feel tempted by “fleshly passions and desires.” Ask yourself why you’re still taking ownership of something scripture says was stripped from you when Jesus died.
That old man — the self enslaved to sin — was nailed to the cross with Christ and buried with Him. The command to “consider yourselves dead to sin” (Romans 6:11) only makes sense if your flesh truly died. And that is exactly what happened. You were not partially redeemed or patched up. “The old has passed away, behold! The new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) You were reborn (see Born of God, Not of Adam).
What remains is your soul — your mind, your will, and your emotions. This is where the conflict plays out. Your spirit is new, your flesh is dead. But your mind must be renewed by the truth so that your body can begin to live out of it. That is the only way to walk in the reality of the Spirit (see You Are Already Free From Sin).
Many believers get confused because they still live in physical bodies. They assume this means they are still “in the flesh.” But Scripture makes it clear: to be “in the flesh” is to be ruled by the old, sin-governed nature — not merely to inhabit a human body. Paul writes plainly: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9). This is the dividing line between the old man and the new — between life under the law and life in the Spirit. That new life doesn’t emerge from fleshly effort, it begins with a new birth; not of the flesh, but of the Spirit (John 1:12-13; see Born of the Spirit, Not the Flesh).
Imagine you move to a new country on the other side of the world. What happens? In order to function properly in that new place, you have to begin making changes to the way you live. You change how you speak. You change how you relate to people. You change when you eat, when you sleep, how you plan your days. If you move from California to Japan, you can’t keep waking and sleeping at the same times you did before. There’s a sixteen-hour time difference. If you stay on California time, you’ll be sleeping when everything is open and awake when the streets are silent. Your life won’t match your new environment. So what do you do? You put the old patterns to death because they keep you from functioning in the new place you now live.
That’s the call of Scripture when it tells you to put to death the deeds of the flesh. It is not a call to become something new, or to kill your flesh through your own willpower. It is simply a call to walk in accordance with where you are now. Live according to what has already been made new — and lay down anything that no longer fits the new life you now have in the Spirit.
This is the difference between the old covenant and the new: one required effort to meet a standard; the other is the gift of righteousness through union with Christ. The old worked through the striving in the flesh; the new works by resting in the Spirit.
If you forget that — or worse, if you try to live out of both covenants at once — everything collapses. Jesus warned clearly about this: you cannot pour new wine into old skins. You cannot blend grace with law. You cannot try to live by the Spirit while clinging to the flesh (that includes continuing to think as if you’re still in it; see Romans 8:7). One will always destroy the other (Mark 2:21–22). That is why so many believers remain frustrated: They are trying to live in the Spirit while thinking they’re still in the flesh — and that double life is impossible.
You cannot kill what is already dead. Therefore you have to choose whether you believe it is dead, or if you will continue fighting shadows. But in Christ, the choice has already been made: you are not under law; you are not in the flesh; you have been raised in the Spirit – now walk like it.
