The death in which the believer is joined with the Lord has already become a reality in his spirit. (The death of Christ is a most powerful and active death.) Now the believer should bring that definite death out of his spirit to deal with all the activities in his members because the lust in his members can operate at any moment. This kind of spiritual death is not once for all. Whenever the believer is not on the alert or loses faith, the flesh will operate again. If the believer wants to have his whole being conformed to the Lord's death, he must often put to death the deeds of his members so that that which is in the spirit can also reach his body.

But how can we have power to apply the Lord's death to our members? Romans 8:13 says that "by the Spirit you put to death the practices of the body." A believer who wants to put to death the practices of the body must depend on the Holy Spirit to make his co-death with Christ become experience. When a believer puts to death the practices of his body by the Lord's death, he must believe that the Holy Spirit will cause the death of the cross to become real in the particular matter which he wants to put to death. The crucifixion of the believer's flesh with Christ on the cross is an accomplished fact. There is no need to crucify it again. Nevertheless, if the evil deeds of the body seem about to operate, then the Spirit should be there to apply the death which the cross of the Lord Jesus has accomplished for us to that very evil deed that it might be put to death by the power of the Lord's death. The evil practices of the flesh at all times and in every place are ready to come out and be manifested from our body. Therefore, unless the Spirit empowers the believer with the power of the holy death of the Lord Jesus, the believer cannot overcome. If the believer can put to death his practices in this way, the indwelling Holy Spirit will be able to accomplish God's purpose that the body of sin might be annulled (6:6). When the baby believers know the cross in this way, they can be liberated from the dominion of the flesh and be joined to the Lord Jesus in the life of resurrection.

From here on the believers should "walk by the Spirit" and "by no means fulfill the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16). We must take notice that no matter how much the death of the Lord is rooted and grounded in our life, we cannot expect, even for an hour, that we will not have to be watchful in order to prevent the practices in our members from rioting in us. Whenever a believer is not walking by the Spirit and being led by the Spirit, right away he is walking by the flesh. The real condition of the flesh which God reveals to us in Romans 7, after verse 5, is the real condition of the believer himself. If for one moment the believer stops walking by the Spirit, he right away becomes the kind of person about whom we are speaking. Since Romans 7 stands between chapter six and chapter eight, some people consider that once a believer has passed through chapter seven and has entered into the Spirit of life in chapter eight, chapter seven will become merely a past history. But in reality chapter seven and chapter eight are simultaneous and parallel. Whenever the believer does not walk according to the Holy Spirit in chapter eight, there immediately is the experience of chapter seven. Therefore Paul says in verse 25, "So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin." "So then" is the conclusion of all his speaking concerning experiences before 7:25. Before verse 24 he was a failure. Not until verse 25 is he victorious. But, it is after he failed and then gained the victory that he said, "With the mind I myself serve the law of God," which means that what God wants is my new life. "With the flesh, the law of sin" means that no matter how he served the law of God with his mind, his flesh always served the law of sin. And no matter how he was freed from the flesh, his flesh always served the law of sin (v. 25). The meaning here is that flesh is always flesh. No matter how our life in the Holy Spirit is growing and rooted, the flesh has not changed its nature and still serves the law of sin. Therefore, even though we do not walk according to the flesh, in order to be led by the Spirit of God (8:14) and be freed from the oppression of the flesh, we always need to put to death the practices of the body and walk according to the Holy Spirit.