Because the Spiritual man obeys Jesus through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, he experiences the by-product of obedience which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.¹⁰⁷

The spiritual man is completely at rest in Jesus. He is completely at rest because he never allows fear to be a motivating factor in his life but trusts totally in Jesus’ promise: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:18).¹⁰⁶

About the fleshly man Paul says,

"And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to men motivated and controlled through your spirit, but as to men motivated and controlled through your flesh¹²⁰, as to babes in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still motivated and controlled through the flesh. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not motivated and controlled through the flesh, and are you not walking like mere men?" (1 Cor 3:1-3)

The word in the Greek for flesh here is sarkikov"¹²⁰ (sarkikos). Sarkikos means literally to be motivated and controlled by the appetites and desires of the body, the flesh. This is what the Bible means by being fleshly. It means that not only is man’s dead spirit sunk down into submission to the soul, but even the soul has yielded its sovereignty to the appetites and desires of the body so that God declares of man, "My Spirit shall not always strive¹²¹ with man; in their erring he is flesh" (Gen 6:3). A fleshly man can be a believer as well as a non-believer. For the sake of our discussion here, we will talk about the fleshly believer who has a relationship with God.

When we say fleshly man, we are talking about a born-again Christian who is motivated and controlled through his soul: his intellect and feelings; and through his flesh: his appetites and desires. By fleshly we mean self-dependence rather than Jesus dependence. These are Christians who are trying to live the Christian life out of their own strength and thoughts rather than relying on Jesus’ strength and Holy Spirit guidance.¹⁰⁸ Sometimes this is out of ignorance, sometimes out of self-will.

Christians who rely on their own strength and thoughts live in frustration, confusion, and defeat. Their lives are not really much different from the life of the fleshly unbeliever except that they are more miserable because they are aware of what they can have in Jesus. They are more miserable because they have experienced God’s love, forgiveness and power over their sins and plan for their lives.

In most cases they live defeated lives because, first, they do not know how to appropriate and experience God’s love and forgiveness on a daily basis in spite of daily momentary defeats. No Christian walks in the Spirit perfectly twenty-four hours a day; but if a Christian does not know how to immediately appropriate God’s love and forgiveness when he becomes aware of sin in his life, Satan can keep him in an attitude of defeat for months. Once Satan has convinced a Christian in this position of how bad he is and because of his ignorance about how to draw upon Jesus’ power to overcome sin in his life, out of frustration he turns back to relying on the power of his flesh to try and solve his problems.

The only problem with this, however, is that our flesh is in bondage to sin. Therefore, when you rely on the power of your flesh to overcome your problem, you stimulate the soul and flesh. Since the soul and flesh are in bondage to sin already, to stimulate them is to also strengthen their power to sin. The end result is that for a moment the Christian seems to be making headway only in the end to find himself more in bondage to the problem he tried to overcome in his own strength in the first place. Concerning this Paul tells us in Romans 8:6-7,

"For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so."

Paul tells us plainly that the flesh cannot make itself submit to God’s law. Trying to do so only empowers it to sin all the more so that the apostle Paul cries out, "Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?" (Rom 7:24).

There is no one more miserable in the world than a Christian who finds himself caught up in this kind of cycle of trying to live the Christian life in the power of the flesh. It destroys his freedom in Christ and his ability to experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit in his life. The fleshly Christian finds himself unable to really trust God. This is why he is frustrated and striving. He is a very self-righteous person because the appearance of spirituality in his life is self-produced, not Holy Spirit attained. As a result he is intolerant of Christians who do not live up to his self-made standards of spirituality and even looks down upon them with a critical judgmental spirit.

The Christian life is a supernatural life. No Christian can live it in the power of the flesh. This is why Paul writes in Ephesians 6:10, "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might." This is the secret to victorious Christian living, learning how to draw upon Jesus’ strength and power to live it. Appropriating Jesus’ strength and power is all wrapped up in what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to walk in the Holy Spirit and what it means to be Baptized with the Holy Spirit as related to ministry outreach and release.

What basically does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Does it mean that the Holy Spirit comes in doses, or is this a figure of speech? When a person receives Jesus into His life as Savior and Lord, he is at that moment filled with the Holy Spirit. Being filled with the Holy Spirit, then, simply means that Jesus is Lord of your life.

Maybe you have been a Christian for a while and yet have never before understood the filling of the Holy Spirit defined in this way. As a result you are not sure whether Jesus is still Lord of your life or not. Your next obvious question would be,

How can I presently be sure that I am filled with the Holy Spirit and that Jesus is presently Lord of my life?

If you are unaware of any unconfessed sin in your life at present, the way you are filled with the Holy Spirit is according to,

1. One, Paul’s command in Ephesians 5:18:

"And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit."

2. And two, according to the Apostle John’s promise in the first Epistle of John 5:14-15:

"And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him."

The Apostle Paul in God’s Word commands us to be filled with the Holy Spirit and the Apostle John in God’s Word promises that whatever we ask God according to His will is ours because He promises to answer any prayer according to His will. It is God’s will that you be filled with the Holy Spirit, or that Jesus is Lord of your life.

If you would like to reacknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ over your life right now, and thus be filled with the Holy Spirit, then pray the following prayer,

Accept this as a fact, not as a feeling. It is not based on feelings but on the trustworthiness of Jesus Himself and His Word. The Bible says, "It is impossible for God to lie" (Heb 6:18). Jesus promised in His Word that if we would ask Him anything according to His will that He would do it. If you just prayed the above prayer, you are presently filled with the Holy Spirit and Jesus is Lord of your life.

How do we get unfilled with the Holy Spirit? The Apostle Paul commands in the book of Ephesians,

"And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you." (Eph 4:30-32).

We become unfilled with the Holy Spirit when we grieve the Holy Spirit. We grieve the Holy Spirit when we allow unforgiveness, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander to rule in our hearts instead of forgiveness and edifying conversation. Paul says in an earlier verse,

"Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear." (Eph 4:29).

We also become unfilled with the Holy Spirit when we commit any act of immorality such as is outlined in 1 Corinthians 5:11, 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, and other related Scriptures.

We also become unfilled with the Holy Spirit when we disobey Jesus’ instructions and commands to us through the Holy Spirit. The writer of Hebrews states,

"Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.’" (Heb 3:7-8)

You might ask the question, How do I know for certain when I am grieving the Holy Spirit and have retaken the control of a certain area of my life? Grieving the Holy Spirit through attitude or action is not a guessing game. Sometimes it is obvious to us, whether Jesus makes it obvious to us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit or not, such as when we make false accusations against another. You know if you are telling the truth about someone or not. Therefore, whether you are aware of it or not by the Holy Spirit, you know when you have committed the sin of slander. If you are mindfully aware of it, then whether you feel convicted by the Holy Spirit or not the Bible says, "Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin." (James 4:17).  If you know you have knowingly sinned, then you have grieved the Holy Spirit. When you sin, you grieve the Holy Spirit.

Outside of known sin, Paul plainly says that we are not qualified to judge ourselves.

"But to me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord." (1 Cor 4:3-4).

Paul says here plainly that we are not qualified to judge the rightness nor the wrongness of our actions. We are not to play the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit came to convict the world concerning sin, judgment and righteousness.¹⁰⁹ This is what Paul is talking about in Galatians when he says, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal 5:1).

Jesus came to set us free of ourselves and self-examination so that we would be free to enjoy Him and His plans for our lives and so that we would look to Him and Him only to be the judge of sin in our lives, outside of obvious sin.

As was said earlier, the Christian life is a supernatural life. Only Jesus can live the Christian life, and only Jesus can live it through us. Only Jesus can intimately. Since Jesus created us and is Lord of our lives and since only Jesus knows what His plans for our lives are, only Jesus can know for certain what is truly sin in our lives against His Lordship and personal dictates to our lives. We cannot nor can anybody else. This is what Paul means when he says, "But he who is motivated and controlled through his spirit discerns all things, yet he himself is discerned¹¹⁹ by no man." (1 Cor 2:15). We are discerned, or judged by no man because only Jesus knows His individual Lordship over our lives. Paul says,