24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.
The phrase 'they...have crucified the flesh…' has caused difficulties in some minds. There are those who differentiate between 'the flesh' and 'the old man', and maintain that the destruction of the old man is something Christ accomplished in His death on the cross, but the crucifixion of the flesh is something we must do. This, it seems to us, is to misunderstand Paul's teaching. Paul does not teach that part of the work is done by Christ and part by us. What he says (e.g. in Philippians 2:12, 13) is, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure'. This is the principle that underlies Paul's thought here also. We must crucify the flesh, because in fact God has done so in the death of His Son, and it is only because God has in fact dealt with the problem, and only on the basis of what He has done, that we can do this work of 'crucifying' or - as the Apostle puts it elsewhere - 'mortifying' the deeds of the body. We note once again how the cross and the Spirit are intimately connected, both in doctrine and in the experience of the believer. This is the force of 'living in the Spirit' and 'walking in the Spirit' in 25. Life in the Spirit is what is ours in the gift of God, our position in Christ; walking in the Spirit is the outworking of that life in our lives, through the daily experience of the cross in our hearts. As always, we die to live.