Dying daily signifies being led by the Holy Spirit to put to death the deeds of the flesh, which is exhorted throughout the New Testament to all believers regenerated in Christ. This daily death is accomplished through a spiritual dynamic activated by faith. We are able to put to death the deeds of our body through the Holy Spirit on account of our actual deaths in Christ. That is what separates the regenerate from the unregenerate. The unregenerate believer can only fall back on willpower to suppress the outward workings of the flesh. Inside him, however, the body of sin is untouched on account of his old man still being alive in Adam. Until His heart is set free from the bondage of Satan’s nature, his spirit will be yet dead in trespasses and sins. He can have no power over the body of sin until the axe is laid to the root of his Adamic engrafting.
When a person becomes regenerated, the believer is severed from the tree of death in Adam and engrafted into the tree of life in Christ. The old man is crucified with Christ so that the believer can be made free from the body and power of sin. But if this is true, how then do believers find themselves getting mixed up with the former lusts of their fleshly unregenerate states, such as viewing internet pornography and losing their temper? According to plain scripture, the lusts of the flesh are manifest because of our failure to walk in the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16).
When Jesus Christ died on Calvary, our rebellious flesh was not crucified with Him, nor was Satan’s influence over the world’s system banished. This was not God’s purpose in sending His Son. His death did not automatically delete the contents of our mind; i.e. all the reserve files on the illegal pleasures we partook of while in our sinful Adamic estate. The bad files were not deleted, but instead given the possibility to be overpowered and buried under new files. The old files were left in the memory bank to be a reminder and a warning to the user: if left unrenewed and ungirded by the Holy Spirit, the mind will seek to be realigned with the former lusts that once ruled us.
The Lord could have spiritually lobotomized us at rebirth, and reprogrammed our flesh to automatically be allied with the Holy Spirit, but then we would be reduced to robots. Instead, He tests our love for Him by gauging our willingness to suffer voluntarily in the flesh through the example of Christ by collaborating with His Spirit (I Peter 4:1-2). This collaboration is calling “walking in Spirit”, and we have our part in it.
Only I can make the decision on whether I will humble myself today to receive the grace to put to death the lusts of the flesh; God will not make that decision for me. I can choose to view internet pornography, and to let my mind wander down the many dangerous, flesh-inciting paths each day brings, or I can choose this day to resist the evil thereof by virtue of the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ.
It is the principle of darkness warring against light: Two powers, two laws are squaring off within the battlefield of my vessel (Romans 7:23). The unalterable fact is that light always vanquishes darkness, but take away that source of light – even for a moment – and sudden darkness will fill the void. We sin when we yield to that darkness.
As we walk in the Spirit’s light, we through Christ are able to overcome the whole world: of every allurement of flesh, all atheistic arguments, the love of money, soul-depression, the pride of life, explosions of anger, the lust of the eyes. It is not that we can merely suppress the outward workings of sin, but that God can change our inner wirings as well, to where we no longer have actual pleasure in doing them, and are even loathe to consider ungodliness in the inner sanctuary of our heart. This is where unconverted religious people and the psychological systems of men are at a fatal disadvantage to the real Christian.
The expulsive power of the Holy Spirit’s influence upon the soul of man is like a blinding light. Within its influence, the ungodly power of flesh is banished, the temporal things of earth grow vain and dim, and Satan runs for his life from the man or woman whose resistance of him comes from walking in the Spirit of God (I John 4:4; 5:4-5).
Understanding Mortification 