<p>8:13&nbsp;<i>For if you live after the flesh</i>- Paul happens to use this same phrase &lsquo;to live after&rsquo; in describing his life &lsquo;living after&rsquo; Judaism (Acts 26:5). As he has implied elsewhere in his argument, to live according to law, hoping for justification by works, is in fact not spiritual but fleshly. Again, the point is made that legalism doesn&rsquo;t defend the law and curb sin, rather does it encourage unrighteousness and spiritual failure.</p><p><i>You must die</i>- Note the change from the otherwise positive spirit earlier in this section &ldquo;we&rdquo;. As all believers have the &ldquo;mortal body&rdquo; of which Paul spoke in Rom. 6:12, it would seem that Paul is here threatening some kind of spiritual death; or, &lsquo;you shall die eternally at the coming day of judgment&rsquo;. He starts to balance out all his positive talk with this warning that we cannot just continue in sin, unaffected by the change in status and justification we have received by grace. Perhaps Paul here is alluding to the serpent&rsquo;s lie: &ldquo;You shall&nbsp;<i>not</i>&nbsp;surely die&rdquo;, and putting the record straight again.</p><p><i><br /></i><i>But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body</i>- See on Rom. 8:14&nbsp;<i>led by the Spirit</i>.</p><p><i>You shall live</i>- Yet the whole tenor of Paul&rsquo;s argument has been that it is not by steel willed battle against the flesh that we shall attain the life eternal. He laments in Romans 7 that we simply don&rsquo;t have that strength of ourselves, but rather are we saved by our status in Christ. We &ldquo;shall live&rdquo; only because of the life of Christ being given to us at our resurrection, because we are in Him. The deeds of the body are therefore &lsquo;mortified&rsquo; not in our own strength- as Paul makes clear in Romans 7, we simply lack the power to do this- but on account of the Spirit. We are made dead to the law by our participation in the body of Christ (Rom. 7:4 s.w.). Here in 8:13 we learn that we mortify the flesh by &ldquo;the Spirit&rdquo;. The spirit of Christ in this sense&nbsp;<i>is&nbsp;</i>Christ personally. Hence &ldquo;the spirit&rdquo; is used as a title of Christ later in this chapter (Rom. 8:26,27). &ldquo;The spirit&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t defined, i.e. as to whose spirit it is- because the spirit / mind of God is that of Christ and is that which is to be found in the believers. So I suggest the idea is that we shall live &ldquo;if&rdquo;, or &lsquo;because of the fact that&rsquo;, the Spirit- the Lord Jesus- puts to death the deeds of the flesh in that we are in Him, and in Him was no sin, no deed of the flesh. His death on the cross is counted as our death- several usages of the Greek verb &ldquo;mortify&rdquo; used here are actually speaking of the death of Christ on the cross (Mt. 26:59; 27:1; Mk. 14:55; 1 Pet. 3:18). And significantly, the word occurs a little later in Romans 8- &ldquo;For Christ&rsquo;s sake we are killed &lsquo;mortified&rsquo; all day long, we are counted s.w. imputed, reckoned as the sheep for the slaughter i.e. Christ on the cross&rdquo; (Rom. 8:36). So we are counted all day long as mortified, put to death, with Christ; for we are counted, 24/7, as being in Him, counted as the sacrificial lamb. His dead body becomes ours. It is in this way that through / on account of our being in &ldquo;the Spirit&rdquo;, &ldquo;the Lord the Spirit&rdquo; (2 Cor. 3:18), we have the deeds of our flesh put to death. As Romans 7 labours, this doesn&rsquo;t mean that we will not commit the deeds of the flesh. But we have identified ourselves with Christ, with His body, and in this sense those deeds of the flesh are rendered meaningless.</p>