Put Off the Old Self
Put Off the Old Self
Living the New Life - Part V
August 26, 2007
“To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” Eph 4:22
1. In Genesis 2:16 “the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” How did man die that day?
2. Sanctification includes dying to sin (mortification of the flesh) and living to righteousness; or, as it says here, putting off the old self and putting on the new self.
3. The obvious allusion is to a change of clothing. To put off is to renounce, to remove from us, like clothes that are set aside. To put on is to adopt, to make our own.
4. We are called on to put off the works of darkness (Romans 13:12), to put away lying (Ephesians 4:25), to put off anger, wrath, malice, etc. (Colossians 3:8), to get rid of all moral filth (James 1:21).
5. On the other hand, we are called on to put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14; Galatians 3:27), the armor of light (Romans 13:12), and compassion (Colossians 3:12); and people are said to be “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49), with the imperishable, and with immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53).
6. As a person’s clothes are what strike the eye, so these expressions are used to refer to the whole phenomenal life—all those acts and attributes by which the interior life of the soul is manifested; and not only that, but also the inherent principle itself from which these acts flow.
7. Here we are told to put off the old self—that is, our corrupt nature, which is old or original as opposed to the new self or principle of spiritual life. Compare Colossians 3:9, “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices”; Romans 6:6, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him.”
8. Compare “the desires of the flesh” as opposed to the Spirit in Galatians 5:16–17. We are to be changed—and not merely our acts. We are to crucify ourselves. This original principle of evil is not destroyed in regeneration but is to be daily mortified in the conflicts of a whole life.
9. It is not just the old way of life and its former manifestations or actions that are to be put away, but the old principle entirely. And as that was formerly dominant, the apostle says, “As for your former way of life, put off the old self.” Which is corrupt through deceitful desires—that is, “which tends to destruction.”
10. It is the old self or corrupt nature, which tends to perdition, which is to be laid aside or continually mortified. It is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. The apostle says in Romans 7:11 that “sin deceived” him; and Hebrews 3:13 speaks of “sin’s deceitfulness.” It is indwelling sin itself which deceives through those desires which tend to destruction.
Praise
One day all Christians will join in a doxology and sing God's praises with perfection. But even today, individually and corporately, we are not only to sing the doxology, but to be the doxology. - Francis Schaeffer
Nature: Revealing God
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. - George Washington Carver
Nature: Revealing God
Jesus taught men to see the operation of God in the regular and the normal - in the rising of the sun and the falling of the rain and the growth of the plant. - William Temple
Knowledge
Modern mankind can go anywhere, do everything and be completely curious about the universe. But only a rare person now and then is curious enough to want to know God. -
A. W. Tozer
GracePointe Baptist Church
2209 N Post Road
Oklahoma City, OK 73141
Phone: (405) 769-5050