Beginning with Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, you see the difference between what is of the flesh and what is of the Spirit being pointed out throughout the New Testament, and with Paul's and John's writings in particular; what is born of flesh and what is born of the Spirit, or in John's first letter, what is born of God.
In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again from above in order to even see the kingdom of God, and that what is born of flesh is flesh, and what is born of Spirit is Spirit, emphasizing that one cannot produce the other. In John 15, Jesus tells His disciples to stay put in or make their home within Him, and if they don't they can't do anything at all. In John's first letter he says both that the person who does this doesn't "sin," and that what is born of God does not "sin." In Paul's writings he becomes adamant about walking in the Spirit and not living according to the flesh, and states that these things are opposed to each other, so that you don't do what you want to do. He says that those living by the flesh cannot please God because the thinking of the flesh is hostile to God, and says that there isn't a condemnation for those in Christ Jesus who don't walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
This understanding of the inability of those functioning from, living according to, or walking in the flesh to do anything other than "sin," and the total inability to do what God wants by them is the foundational understanding that runs throughout the New Testament. In the same way is this understanding that those who are born again from above, walking in or living according to the Spirit, inheriting the Kingdom of God can do nothing else but please God while they are so doing because it is God doing it through them.
That both Jesus, Paul, and John were almost begging the disciples to do this and not to live according to their flesh says that it was a completely voluntary, and not a once and done thing. It was possible to make mistakes if you stopped walking in the Spirit, if you stopped making your home in Him, and it was possible to return to dong so if you did find that you stopped.
The genuine teaching of discipleship, of even the Gospel itself, got muddied, shoved to the side, and even outright thrown away in some cases in favor of the teaching that it was all about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. And this latter thing has been used to beat and control people with fear for hundreds of years, something which Jesus never did. Neither did Paul.
The Gospel which the New Testament preaches isn't about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. It's about what source our behavior comes from in the here and now. It's about manifesting the God who is Love through us instead of living in the existential hell which our own flesh forces us into. That Gospel about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell is a human construct based on human misunderstanding, guilt, and fear and transforms our perception of God into a cruel, vengeful, abusive bloodthirsty pagan deity, nothing like what Jesus showed us the Father is.
"Walk in the Spirit, and you won't bring the desires of the flesh to completion." This is the practice of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, the sum total really, in a nutshell. The rest is commentary.
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